A Very OK Podcast
Episode 53: “Rough Riders from Oklahoma”
December 16, 2025
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. With me as always is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to be with you, here today, and I hope you are doing well.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Thank you, Trait. I’m great. I had a great Thanksgiving holiday with my son and daughter-in-law and two grandsons. Went up to Estes Park and stayed in a cabin for about four days. My sister brought her two girls and two grandsons, so the boys just wreak havoc on the cabin. But we had a great time and just, I’m already missing that, you know, camaraderie with the family.
Thompson: Yeah. That’s great. I’m glad you got a chance to do that. We traveled down to my aunt’s house. She lives just a few miles west of Abilene, Texas, in a little town of Merkel of I-20. And we try to do Thanksgiving as often as we can over there. She’ll be 82 next year, and so she’s really the matriarch of our family on my dad’s side now. There’s, out of five siblings, she and her younger brother are all that’s left now. And so she’s always been kind of the keeper of our family history from that side of the family. And one of the things that was really touching is she has seen pictures on Facebook of my daughter Lilah and I doing the living history program at the Doaksville candlelight tours. And, just an aside, if you’ve never had a chance to go to those, next October, you should really make a point to come down because Calista Stephens and our staff at Fort Towson do an incredible job there. But she saw that Lilah enjoyed doing that. And so she brought Lilah back into her bedroom and kind of opened up this hutch and pulled out a red bonnet, and she gave that to Lilah. And it is Lilah’s great-great-great-grandmother’s bonnet. My two times great-grandmother through, so it was, through my dad’s mother’s side. And her name was Annie Shaw. She was born in 1890 in Erath County, Texas, but, really special heirloom that she gave. And so she said she wanted Lilah to have that to use when she’s doing her living history presentation. So we were all very touched by that.
Blackburn: You know, it’s funny. And, you know, over the years, probably the greatest joy I’ve had at the Historical Society was getting collections in. And one thing I noticed is that typically families tend to focus on the descendants of a family that will appreciate history. Like, you know, early on, my aunts and uncles all knew I would be a historian someday. That’s just because I loved it. And so I ended up with my grandmother, born in 1893, I have a bonnet that she wore. She never went outside without a bonnet on. She was from that generation. And I had my granddad’s Stetson. He was born in 1888. And he started working for Oklahoma Natural Gas in the 1920s. And I have his pressure gauge, and I have stuff from all that. So I’ve been able to collect the pine knots down in Arkansas and use them for torches. So I have pine knots. So I have, you know, just things like that that means so much to me that I’m going to pass on to whichever of my grandsons become more of the historian. I got to live long enough to figure out which one is going to really treasure those things and remember.
Thompson: Yeah, well, those are great. And those kind of heirlooms, you know, they really connect us to our relatives from the past. And when you can hold something tangible in your hand that you know that they held or they wore, it just feels more special, I think. I have a few of those things. I have a Colt revolver that belonged to my great-grandfather. Of course I have my father’s cowboy hat that he wore when he was doing some ranching and several items from my stepfather as well. And so it’s just nice to be able to have those items and to be able to pass them down.
Blackburn: With the stories, and the stories are what keep people alive in our memories. We’ve got to remember those stories.
Thompson: That’s exactly right. In fact, I told my aunt, I said, you know, I need to get you to write these stories down. And so I told her, I’m going to start sending you emails, which I haven’t done yet, but I need to do. I said I’m going to start sending your emails with questions so you can answer the questions so I will have a record of these stories, because every time I go visit her, I learn something new about my family that I didn’t know before.
Blackburn: Well, you know, we all have these regrets. Why didn’t we ask somebody a question when they were alive? And as we age, we see the perspective of time, and it becomes more important. Why didn’t I ask that? I want to know more about it. And, to me, that keeps families, you know, the stories of families alive and passed on to the next generation.
Thompson: Well, our topic today is a good one, and I’m really excited to get into it with you. Last year, I read a book that captivated me, and it was called The Boys of ’98: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders by Dale L. Walker. And as I was reading that book, and it’s not a terribly long book. I’d say maybe 250 pages or something like that. The book is peppered with references to people from Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory who enlisted in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, the first US Volunteer Cavalry regiment and eagerly wanted to go to the front. And it’s also peppered with quotes about Roosevelt’s admiration for the Oklahomans and those from Indian Territory who fought in the war. And I thought, you know what? This is a topic that we don’t get into very much. The Spanish-American War seems to be a little bit of a forgotten war. Civil War is a biggie. World War I is a biggie, but I feel like that it’s something that’s important that we should all know about. And at the time, it was the biggest thing going in the country. I mean, it was all the newspapers, it was all the rage, and it was a source of patriotic fervor that we were going to go over there, and we were going to liberate the island of Cuba from the Spaniards. And, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about the Spanish-American War, but also talk about the role of Oklahomans in that war.
Blackburn: Yeah, Trait. I really see two themes that would impact why so many Oklahomans were part of that war, why Theodore Roosevelt took such an interest in the Twin Territories and would be such a big part of our history. Really, no one knew about Theodore Roosevelt before. He was, you know, New York governor, reformer, businessman, but he was also a cowboy. No one would have known that in Oklahoma Territory or Indian Territory. But there are two things that, to me, tie in to why the war was so important. And again, it’s timing. 1898 was a pivotal year in Oklahoma history. Everyone thinks of 1889, the first land run, or they think of 1861, the Civil War, or 1803 Louisiana Purchase, or even 1907 was statehood. But to me, to understand communities in both Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory, 1898 is critical because by 1898 you already have nine years of land openings in the West. So you already had the Unassigned Lands open in 1889, Cheyenne-Arapaho lands in 1892, Cherokee Outlet in 1893. And really only parts of western Oklahoma, unopened, Kiowa and Comanche lands, most significantly in Wichita and Caddo. But, so you have people coming to Oklahoma. Now, if the war had been fought ten years earlier, there would have been no one here to join largely. But you had the land openings and then on top of that, you had the prosperity coming back to the Southern Plains. The Southern Plains had had an extended period of drought from the 1880s into the 1890s. But we were coming out of that drought, good, good rains in 1896 and 1897. The price of crops on the world markets were going up. People were looking for opportunity.
For example, in 1892, when the Cheyenne Arapaho lands are open for settlement, over half of the homesteads were never claimed originally. And so because people didn’t think they could make a living by farming out in western Oklahoma with the drought, so they didn’t come. Well, that began changing by 1898. People started moving farther west, claiming more land. Developed, adding value to the land and the sun and the seeds and growing crops, bringing in livestock. And so the population is growing and coming in from around the country. And typically those who were coming to be homesteaders were those who were the most adventurous of their family. There might be five brothers or five sisters in a family in Illinois or Missouri or Arkansas. And the one that was the most bold and the most aggressive is the one that said, I am going to leave my family. I’m going to leave the place I know. I’m going to leave my church. I’m going to leave this sense of community and go out to the frontier. You had to have a certain sense of adventure and willingness to get involved and almost this aggressive assertiveness to do that. So the DNA starts changing in Oklahoma Territory. And then in Indian Territory, 1898 is important again because of the Curtis Act was passed by Congress. And with the Curtis Act, it starts the clock ticking of when tribal sovereignty will end in the Indian Territory, and the lands of the Five Tribes would pass from tribal ownership or communal ownership to individual ownerships. And so the timing with each of the tribes is different, the Chickasaws and Choctaws or early Cherokees, not until 1904. So all of this turmoil is going on, displacing families from things they had known for so many years. But it’s also opening the Indian Territory to non-Indian immigrants coming in to towns like Muskogee and Vinita, Wagoner, Atoka, Durant. And so you get these populations growing. And again, the most adventurous coming out to this frontier.
The American Indians now have not been allowed to be the warriors that their culture really demands since the Civil War, when the Five Tribes all saw another opportunity to put on the war garb and give up peace and go fight. And that was part of their warrior culture. And then with the prosperity coming to rural Oklahoma and Indian Territory, they had the opportunity to say, hey, I’m going to go off and fight now that I have this opportunity. And so when the war begins, really before the war began, let me back up just a little bit. The other main theme out all of this is the fact this is the golden age of newspapers in both Oklahoma and Indian Territories. Of course, no radio, and obviously no television or internet. So you get to the point of the way to communicate within a community, whether it’s a village, a town, a city, or the territory, newspapers are it. Every town had a newspaper because you could get an old Washington press handfed and do your 200 issues of a daily or a weekly newspaper. Every little town had a newspaper. I’m doing an exhibit on Weatherford right now. They had six newspapers in 1899, one year after settlement. So every little town has at least a paper. And then you go to the cities, like the big city would have been Muskogee, Oklahoma City, Guthrie. There you’d have five or six newspapers competing. One of my professors at OSU, Norbert Mahnken, wrote an article for me when I was editor of The Chronicles called “Black Ink and Vitriol” and how aggressive these territorial editors were. And of course, it was not to be aggressive just to be aggressive, but they were they were trying to get subscriptions, and they needed to attack the opponents and say my newspaper’s better, and we want you to subscribe and we want you to put your advertisements in my newspaper. So they were fighting each other. And because of this intense competition, not only in Oklahoma, what would be Oklahoma, but in the country, especially in towns like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. You know, Cincinnati, St. Louis. There would have been this intense competition, and you get the early days of national networks of newspapers like the Hearst network and others. The New York Times is coming out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the time and expanding and so you get this intense competition with the black ink and vitriol of being aggressive, trying to be sensational, coming up with the latest news that will generate attention. So if someone is at a news rack, they’re going to buy your newspaper, not the other newspapers.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: So you throw in this new culture of newspapers being so competitive and so aggressive and, in a way, sensational. You add that to Oklahoma’s martial spirit of warrior traditions among Indians, the militaristic physical nature of the immigrants who have come here, the prosperity that makes everyone feel proud of the American story. We’re emerging from the damages of the Civil War. We’re becoming an industrial might in the world. Soon Theodore Roosevelt would be president and express that better than any other leader of his time. And people are ready for something new. That’s what’s the next frontier? How can we prove ourselves, our manhood? And how can we satisfy this martial spirit? And suddenly, when Spain really starts stepping on this revolutionary effort on the island of Cuba, then all of a sudden that lights a fire that ends up with Oklahomans being involved in the war and Spanish-American War.
Thompson: Yeah. And we had had a fascination as Americans with Cuba for quite some time. In fact, James Polk, when he was president, offered to buy Cuba for $100 million. Franklin Pierce renewed that offer in 1854. So we’re talking even before the Civil War, there was an interest. In the Spanish War, some of the last of the remaining of the old world up in our hemisphere. And so I think there was also a little bit of an idea that we need to get those Europeans out of our sphere of influence here in the United States of America. It really heats up. There was a group of revolutionaries that start fighting in the mid-1890s. And things really start to heat up in 1896 when the Spanish appoint a military governor named General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau to be in charge. And he really tries to suppress the rebellion in very harsh terms. He opens up concentration camps, he rounds people up. He also suppresses the media, which Hearst, as you mentioned, Hearst was not a big fan of. So, Hearst actually sends over a couple of reporters to get a sense of what’s going on the ground over there. Interestingly enough, one of the reporters he sends was a man named Frederic Remington, who we all know today as the incredible Western artist who was a painter and in sketches and those great bronzes, and they end up touring around the island, and they end up interacting with some of the revolutionaries. But at that point, it’s pretty quiet. Not much going on. In fact, Remington cables Hearst in New York, and he asked permission to come home. He says, “Everything is quiet. There’s no trouble here.” This is in early 1897. “There is no war. I wish to return.” And Hearst famously replies, “You furnish the pictures. I will furnish the war.” And just the, it’s exactly what you said, Bob, with that era of sensationalism and this “free Cuba“ movement, it takes over because all of the newspapers across the country are really siding with these revolutionaries in Cuba. And I, I get the impression that we, our revolutionary spirit here in America, we really identified with these people trying to cut to throw these European overlords off their island so that they could govern themselves.
Blackburn: Very much so, in fact, this whole era is interesting in so many other ways. This new American spirit, you know, finally, I’m sure a lot of people thought, well, we can finally enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Let’s keep Europe out. And if you look at architecture, another way to look at this whole thing, this is the era when you start a Colonial Revival architecture where Americans are trying to get away from the European styles of Gothic and even neoclassical to a degree, somewhat. And they’re going to American Revival. Let’s back at our own heritage for the ways that we should be expressing what it is to be American. This is the age of Frederick Jackson Turner, the great American historian, who in 1893 came up with the frontier thesis of what makes America different from Europe. So there’s a national pride growing within the hearts of Americans, and almost an anti-European sentiment and kind of an America-first movement well before the current age. And Americans are really ready to express themselves. Mexico had been freed from Spanish dominance in 1820, so it had been a long time since the revolution spread through the, Southern Hemisphere and Mesoamerica. And Cuba was kind of the last outpost of this so-called decadent European aristocracy is a way Americans would look at it. We got to get rid of the king’s influence over here in the in the new world, and let’s get rid of the old. So very much people are ready for this.
Thompson: And so the powder keg that sets everything off is the USS Maine and the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. But the question is how, why was the Maine even there? And in January of 1898, the US consul in Havana, Fitzhugh Lee, he advocated for the ship to come as sort of a, hey, you know, the Americans on the island are getting a little nervous and a little restless. Maybe we can come and kind of tamp things down a little bit. So the ship arrives on January 25, 1898, and then they do all the pomp and circumstance that they have dinners on the ship, and it’s sort of diplomatic negotiations and all of those things. February 15, 1898, at 9:40 p.m., there’s a giant explosion on the ship. The captain heard a bursting, a rending, and a crashing roar, and 252 of the USS Maine’s crew ends up dead or missing as a result, and almost immediately, all of the speculation, well, and part of this is started by the captain of the ship, who speculates himself that it was a mine that was placed in Havana harbor and it blew up from down below. Interestingly enough, a a formal 1976 investigation by the Department of the Navy concluded that there was actually a fire in one of the coal bunkers that caused the explosion.
Blackburn: He was into self-preservation.
Thompson: Yeah. And so, and so it explodes. And then the big, you know, rallying cry, that would happen all the way through the Spanish-American War is “Remember the Maine.” They tag off of “Remember the Alamo.” Now it’s “Remember the Maine. Remember the Maine.” And so, finally on April 11, 1898, President McKinley sends a message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. And eight days later, on April 20, they give the declaration of war. They call for 125,000 volunteers, and he asks for a $200 million appropriation from Congress. Now, the reason we’re asking for volunteers is our our army was woefully unprepared for any kind of a war. We had been fighting Indian wars on the Western Plains, but really, by the early 1890s, most of those are pretty much wrapped up, as you mentioned. We’re all to reservations by that point in time.
Blackburn: And 1892 was one of the last to give up, and that wasn’t much of a war.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: Many starving out the these poor Indians in the desert.
Thompson: In April of 1898, the regular army consists of only 28,000 men, if that gives you any indication of how prepared we are to fight a war. So that’s why we need volunteers. And, President Roosevelt, not President Roosevelt, he’d be president later. Right now, he’s secretary of the Navy. He would be governor later too. But he is itching to get into a war. He is an advocate for the manly life. He believes very, very earnestly that the only way for a man to truly prove himself as a man is to earn recognition in battle. And that’s either by dying in battle or being a hero in battle. And so he immediately starts lobbying to lead one of these groups. And, the name Rough Riders almost, because he wants to go out into the territories. You’d mentioned he was a cowboy in North Dakota. He was familiar with these kinds of men. He knew they could ride. He knew they could shoot. He knew they were used to living in harsh conditions and surviving. And so that’s the kind of people that he wants. Secretary of War Alger offers him to be Colonel of the first US Volunteer Cavalry. And he actually turns it down, which surprises everybody because, he, you know, Alger thought, well, he’s going to want the glory on this. Roosevelt turns it down because he knows he doesn’t have the experience, but he recommends someone that he had become acquainted with when he was in Washington as secretary of the navy.
And that was Colonel Leonard Wood, and Leonard Wood had served in the Indian Wars. He was a US Army surgeon. He knew this life. He knew these people, and he knew how the army worked. So he becomes the leader, and Roosevelt becomes, serves underneath him. The navy secretary said this, John Long said this about Roosevelt. “He thinks he is following his highest ideal, whereas in fact, without exception, every one of his friends advises him he is acting like a fool. And yet, how absurd all of this will sound if by some turn of fortune, he should accomplish some great thing and strike a very high mark.” Which is what he ends up doing. Sorry. Spoiler alert, but, that’s exactly what he ends up doing. Because later, because of casualties, he will actually, he will actually rise to commanding the first US Cavalry Volunteer regiment, and he will acquit himself very, very well. He was an incredible leader. And, he’s largely responsible for the success in the Battle of San Juan Heights and Kettle Hill and up through there. So they all, all of the Rough Riders muster in San Antonio. They go through training. There are several troops. There were two troops or there was troops from Oklahoma. So Troop D was volunteers from Oklahoma Territory. That also included ten other states and Washington, DC. And Troops L and M were composed mostly of folks from Indian Territory. So of what would eventually become the state of Oklahoma, there were three troops assigned there. Later on, we’ll talk about some of the individual personalities with our guest, Dr. Denise Neil. But the interesting thing, this war is almost a comedy of errors in terms of just being able to mount all the logistics necessary. They ship them on trains to Tampa. Then they determined, they find out that all of the transport ships that are going out of Tampa Bay, none of them can they can’t accommodate horses. So the cavalry all of a sudden is afoot, and they determine that they’re going to do a coastal landing, which the US Army hasn’t done since the Mexican War. We’ve kind of forgotten how to do it. And so they determined that they’re going to bombard Daiquirí as a feint, and then they are going to come ashore a little bit down the beach, and then they’re going to try to make their way to Santiago, where the Spanish defenses are, and try to dislodge the Spanish from the city of Santiago. It is Colonel Leonard Wood says this, “It was a good thing that we were fortunate to be going to war with a broken down power, for we would surely have deduced a hard time with any other.”
Blackburn: Well, and too, a lot of people forget that Cuban culture was split. You had a lot of native-born Cubans that wanted the Spanish there because they took advantage of their connections, but then you had a lot of the former slaves. You have a lot of the poor people who wanted to overthrow the Spanish and the aristocracy of the age. So the Americans had the advantage of having a lot of people in rural Cuba very supportive. And without that, we may not have won the war.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, the training that they got in San Antonio, you know, we had that fight in the jungle environment before. And what they find out when they get there is those roads are narrow. The canopy on either side is very, very thick, and they have the Spanish firing down on them, and they can’t see where any of the fire is coming from. Part of the reason for that is the Spanish are using smokeless powder, and so they can’t see where those shots are coming from. And for a while is kind of mass chaos. The first battle that we fight is on that road up to Santiago called Las Guasimas, and we end up being victorious. It’s about a 2.5-hour battle. But we took, the Americans in the Rough Riders took, casualties in there. One of those, was Captain Allyn Capron Jr., who was, we’ll talk about in a little bit with our guest And then the next battle will find us at the base of the San Juan Heights, and the San Juan Heights are these hills you have to get through to be able to get to the city of Santiago. And they are heavily fortified by the Spanish. And not only that, there’s lots of structures on these heights for the Spanish to hide behind. And ultimately, San Juan Hill was a short distance behind Kettle Hill, and it was at about, San Juan Hill was about 125 feet high. The assault on the San Juan Heights begins on July 1, 1898, at 8 o’clock in the morning. And it was a fierce battle. The battle lasted most of the day. And Roosevelt is actually riding his horse around. Roosevelt has several close calls, both at Las Guasimas and at San Juan Heights, where he was almost shot but didn’t end up doing. And he’s riding his horse because he says he can see better from atop the horseback here. And so he leads his men up the hill. In fact, at one point, he actually gets out a little bit ahead of them, and he has to kind of go back in and encourage them further a little bit. But, by 2:30 on July 1, the 8,400 men and the American force had possession of the San Juan Heights, and that was really the end of the war. Now, the Spanish kind of put up, put up some skirmishes for another week or so afterwards, but that ends up being it. There was not much of a resistance by the Spanish forces. And in the end, the Rough Riders end up taking the majority of the losses of anybody else, 37 percent of those Rough Riders who got to Cuba were either killed or wounded or stricken with disease. In December of 1898, the Treaty of Paris is signed, and out of that, Spain relinquished their sovereignty over Cuba, and they ceded to the US, Puerto Rico, Guam, and we bought the Philippines for $20 million. Now we would end up having to put down a resurgence in the Philippines right after this war. But that ends up being the Spanish-American War. Through that, Roosevelt comes to have a great affinity for Oklahoma. He visits Oklahoma during the territorial days and afterwards has Rough Rider reunions here. And, I think it’s safe to say, of course, we’re inextricably tied to Theodore Roosevelt because he signs our statehood proclamation on November 16, 1907. And that is, the Spanish-American War. Short, but, thankfully, like Leonard Wood said, we were fighting a far inferior force. Otherwise it could have gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Blackburn: Well, too, in terms of turning points in history, not only does it give rise to Theodore Roosevelt, who would eventually become president and probably one of the most popular presidents of all time other than George Washington, maybe George is more popular, but Theodore became that. But it also, it’s the emergence of America as a world power. So what we think of as the imperialism of Americans, the American story really starts with the Spanish-American War. We get our first territories overseas. We are already becoming an industrial giant with US steel, with the Vanderbilts, and shipping, and goes on and on with our industrial might. And within a few years, our industrial output would exceed all of the European countries together. And so we were emerging on the world stage. Roosevelt would flex his muscles again and send the fleet around the world, the Great White Fleet, to show this American nation could defend itself and defend, you know, its markets around the world. So some of the fights we’re still having today about world markets and where we have business opportunity started with the Spanish-American War.
Thompson: And I would say after this, the world changes quite a bit. This is one of the last battles of the old style of warfare, where you do a mass assault on a fortified position where you, at least ideally, they would have had cavalry involved, but not much cavalry in this engagement. And you can start to see the modern form of warfare coming because one of the difference makers at the San Juan Heights was the Gatling gun and the Gatling gun was able to clear out a lot of those defenses. In fact, I read a quote in one of the articles I read about this war that almost every American who served at San Juan Heights specifically remembers that *imitates gunshots* of the Gatling gun. And, it was influential. Now, of course, less than twenty years later, we have machine guns, we have tanks, we have submarines and warfare. The world changes and flight. You know, flight wasn’t a thing really at this point yet, you know, of course, Kittyhawk doesn’t happen until 1901.
Blackburn: But they had balloon for observation. So really, in terms of the Signal Corps going up, this is the beginning of that.
Thompson: Yeah. And they had done that in the Civil War, too. There’s an interesting story I read about that, that they put their balloon too close to the line during a couple of these battles, and it was target practice for the Spaniards in firing at the balloons. So there were a lot of people who were upset with the Signal Corps and the balloons in this particular instance, but, yeah, I mean, this is, this is certainly an example of old meets new, and the old will not come back after this war. It will be a lot different by the time we do this again in World War I.
Blackburn: You know, you mentioned memory too. I’ve read a lot of accounts of the Oklahomans who came back from the war, and they do remember the Gatling gun, but they also remembered the crack of the bullets whizzing by them. And it’s because with those Mauser-made guns the Spanish were using, basically a bullet was breaking the sound barrier as they came by. You’re hearing the crack of that sound barrier coming with that bullet by you. And so you, you hear the, the gunfire, then you hear that bullet coming by you breaking the sound barrier, and it was a terrifying sound. Whizzing. And a crack, crack, crack all around you. So you knew that you were going in to fire even though you couldn’t see the muzzle fire. You could hear it.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, after this quick message, we will talk to our guest, Dr. Denise Neil.
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Thompson: Welcome back. We are here with Denise Neil. She is the executive director of the Oklahoma National Guard Museum. She’s done that for six years. She has her PhD. She’s also previously been at the 99s Museum here in Oklahoma City. And Denise, we are just thrilled to have you on this podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Dr. Denise Neil: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thompson: Well, Denise, you’re working on a big project right now. Before we jump into our topic, I really wanted to want you to tell us a little bit more about it, because it’s pretty exciting what you guys are doing with a brand new museum that’s getting ready to open. Yeah, the museum project started, a few years back in, in earnest. We received funding from a bond issue, and we’re moving a half a mile away from our location that we’ve been at for 50 years. So it’s a big change for us. But the new museum allows us to tell the story of the Oklahoma National Guard in ways that we haven’t been able to do before, including to always include, the history of the 45th Infantry Division and so our exhibit space has gotten a lot larger. The storage space is going to be immaculate so that we have room for all of our artifacts to be properly stored. And we’re really looking forward to educating the public, Oklahomans, people from out of state, international, to come and learn about the Oklahoma National Guard.
Thompson: Very nice.
Blackburn: Trait, my little interaction with Denise over the years have been very positive in a number of projects, but I’m old enough to have been around when General Fred Daugherty was building the museum, that there was a small collection inside the building, but General Daugherty, who had been commanding officer of the 45th at one point, wanted to really develop that museum. And he had the connections around the country as a federal judge, as a former, you know, commanding general, he was able to get stuff from all over the country. And so it, when we started that project, it was a great collection, not enough stories. The exhibits are really not been updated much since General Daugherty’s time. And so when Denise came in, the task given to her was, how can we improve this and add value? And so expanding the theme from just the 45th to the National Guard, you know, from the beginning to the present day was a huge step forward, and they were rewarded with the state supporting their bond issue and military department carving out money to expand Denise’s staff. And so I, I encourage everyone to put that on their calendar. Because if they’ve been to the 45th, they’re not going to they’re not going to believe what they see in the new museum. When does it open again?
Neil: We’re looking at May of next year. We’ll definitely be keeping people apprised through our Facebook and website and letting people know, you know, these things are kind of nebulous as you get kind of working through them. But, we’re on schedule, and right now it’s going to be somewhere between that and the end of May is what we’re looking at.
Thompson: Very nice. Well, we are all very excited. Where is it located?
Neil: So the new address is 3301 Northeast Grand Boulevard, which is between Martin Luther King and just off of Grand, on from 36th Street.
Blackburn: If people know where the Railway Museum is, it’s across the street.
Thompson: Very nice. Well, we’re going to be very, very excited about that. And we’ll be looking forward to future announcements about the big grand opening. Today we’re talking, we’ve been talking about the Spanish-American War and its impact on Oklahoma and Oklahomans who have served or did serve in the Spanish-American War, particularly those that are in the Rough Riders. And this is a subject that I think not many people know about. The Spanish-American War tends to be a war that kind of gets forgotten there in between the Civil War and World War I. But, as short as it was, it did have an impact. And so, you know, in your studies, Denise, what do you judge as the impact of the Spanish-American War on Oklahoma itself?
Neil: So I think from our perspective at the museum, we think about the Spanish-American War as it relates to people that volunteered either with the Cav, where they were serving with the Rough Riders and Roosevelt and also, we had guardsmen that also had enlisted to serve with the, Volunteer Infantry as well. And from the perspective of the guard, I think when the guard is established as a territorial militia in 1890, by 1895, they’re starting to get more. They get funding, they get a little bit of more guidance from the from the Territorial legislature and what we have is a burgeoning organization that, going off to fight, those soldiers that left the guard, joined the volunteers, they go into war. And I think they come back with a renewed sense of what the guard should be in Oklahoma as far as military training goes. And so there’s very specific people that not only cut their teeth in going to the Spanish-American War as Oklahomans from the Territory, but they come back and the guard grows up. And these are people like, Roy Hoffman and Charles Barrett and Charles McFerran, who all became generals in the guard became adjutant generals, became people that were division commanders early on in the division history. So for us, it very much is related to a development of guard soldiers.
Thompson: When the Spanish-American War started or, when they knew it was going to happen, of course, this is, this had been a war that had been ginned up in the papers for quite some time. And so there was, by the time we finally did declare war in April of 1898, there was a fervor about participating in the war. And, I found in my research, there was a telegram from Governor C. M. Barnes to the Secretary of War Alger, April 5, 1898. “In the event of an increase of the arm of war for Spain, Oklahoma can furnish one full regiment of infantry within thirty days, a full regiment of cavalry within sixty days.” Alger responds, “The president has authorized, this is April 25th of 1898, authorized an enlistment of eighty-five men in your territory, good shots, good riders to form a company and a mounted rifles regiment. Company officers to be taken from your section. Can you give us the men?” And, not only Oklahoma Territory showed up in a big way. Over four-hundred people showed up to try to enlist for 85 spots. Indian Territory was the same thing. It was, there was this fervor to want to participate in this war. And, Bob, I, I have a I have a suspicion that part of this was because of all the publicity surrounding it, but was there an air of wanting, maybe, to cleanse the palate of the Civil War in this war?
Blackburn: Could have been, of course, Oklahoma and especially Indian Territory was very pro-Confederate. So the Lost Cause would have been very much on the minds of many families, including my families, both from Cherokee country and from southwestern Arkansas. And that was very much there. But a lot of the former Confederates and Union soldiers were almost reconciling. This is when you start having the big conventions nationally, where the Confederate and Union soldiers would gather at Gettysburg and shake hands, and it was, with the newspapers it was covered very heavily, but it almost romanticized military action. And so this idea that our granddads got to fight and all the glory and this camaraderie they have now, we want part of that too. Then you combine that with the fact that Oklahoma is really still a frontier, and it’s very much a physical world where people are used to working hard with their hands, with their bodies, physical world where it was a good idea to go to town to get drunk and get in a fight on a Saturday night. You know, things now we think of, who would want to do that. Well, then, if you didn’t do that, you weren’t considered a, you know, a real man. And so how do you prove yourself? You know, you do it a number of ways, and then you add in the warrior spirit to the American Indians that had always been part of of Indian culture, whether it was the Southern Plains tribes or the Five Tribes, is that this way to prove yourself as a person, as a leader, was to be a military leader. So you had war chiefs and peace chiefs. You had those who, in former generations, had songs written about them because they were these great warriors. Well, that was still very much alive among the tribes. And then you throw in the cowboys and the frontiersmen who had come here from rural areas of the country where physical labor and military action was considered to be part of being proven as a man. You get this almost as martial spirit of the population, and then you throw that in with the nostalgia for the Civil War and being able to prove yourself there in the face of gunfire and, you know, cannon fire. And so it was fertile ground for recruiting people into the guard and recruiting people for the volunteer regiments put together.
Thompson: Denise, who were some of the Oklahomans who took part in this grand adventure over into Cuba as part of the Spanish-American War?
Neil: Well, it’s interesting as Dr. Blackburn was pointing out, kind of this idea that Oklahomans were ready and willing to serve and to volunteer to be part of it. And Roosevelt’s kind of cast of characters is really interesting. And he gets people that he knew from the northeast. But he’s certainly looking at the frontier and kind of that spirit that that Dr. Blackburn alluded to and the Native Americans’, I think participation is really interesting. One of the stories that we’re going to cover in the new museum related to the Spanish-American War is William Pollock, who was Pawnee, and Pollock was singled out by Roosevelt as being a really great fighter during that war. And Pollock, along with, I think, seven other Pawnees, that had signed up to participate. Certainly there are other tribes involved, Cherokee fighters, etc., and this idea of diversity within this troops, certainly there’s Buffalo soldiers that fight in this and in the Spanish-American War, but there’s a connection between, Native Americans and white soldiers that isn’t as segregated in that way. And they fight along side by side. And so Pollock’s story is really interesting, not only because Roosevelt singles him out as being exceptional fighter, but Pollock contracts malaria as many soldiers did when they were fighting in Cuba and comes home, and he dies about six months later from pneumonia that was exacerbated by contracting malaria. And Roosevelt even sends a letter to his family afterwards and offers his condolences for his loss. But, you know, so that’s just one story of a Native American that serves. But certainly you have early soldiers that are involved in the regulars that, like Capron, who becomes the first officer that’s killed in action in Cuba. It’s an interesting thing to think about that kind of idea of sacrifice for someone else’s revolution.
Thompson: I want to go back to Pollock for just a second, because I found a great article as I was working through, in The Chronicles of Oklahoma that mentions him. And there’s some really good quotes about him. Of course, like you mentioned, Theodore Roosevelt said he was one of the “gamest fighters and best soldiers in the regiment. A full-blooded Pawnee, Pollock was a solitary fellow, an excellent penman, much giving to drawing pictures.” He was an accomplished artist, and he was best remembered for his paintings on wagons used by the Indians, and some of his work was actually exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution. This is one of my favorite quotes that I found in all of my research, though. Roosevelt recognized Pollock’s sense of humor, and there was a barber that was cutting hair there, and, Pollock said, “You better cut mine. Don’t want to wear mine long like a wild Indian when I am in civilized warfare.” (laughing) I thought that was a great line there.
Neil: I thought I had heard most and looked at most of Pollock and the quotes surrounded there. But that one is new to read, so I am delighted to learn that ’
Thompson: Maybe it’s not too late to make it into the exhibit.
Neil: At least I’ll inform our volunteers of a great docent story to share.
Blackburn: Trait, you know, speaking of the Pawnees, Pawnees were known as some of the most fierce warriors on the Southern Plains. In fact, they were almost a solitary tribe against everybody else. The Osage fought them, the Cheyenne-Arapaho fought the Pawnee. The Pawnee were known as warriors to be feared. And in the movie Dances with Wolves, to get back to a popular culture theme, the, when Wes Studi and three other American Indians are on a hilltop looking down at smoke coming up from a white man, obviously, because no Indian would make a fire like that, as they say, those are Pawnees in that movie. And they were feared by white settlers. They were feared by the other tribes. And disease is what really decimated the Pawnees. But now Pollock had survived. But he continued that warrior tradition that had been passed down from generation to generation and revered around the campfires. So you want it to be honored.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: That was a driving force for, you know, today we might say we want, you know, money, cars, houses, vacations. Well, then to be really, celebrated, you were a warrior. And I think that he fulfilled that in the Spanish-American War.
Thompson: Another warrior you mentioned was Lieutenant Allyn Capron Jr. because his father was actually a regular artillery officer who also served in the Spanish-American War. And Capron was in charge of mustering the troops in Oklahoma Territory. In other words, he was giving the examinations, and they did on Division Street in Guthrie, in an old building there in Guthrie, and Theodore Roosevelt said about Capron, that “he was the archetype of the fighting man, some of his Indian Territorials were the scruffiest and the fiercest looking of all of the volunteers.” So, he ultimately was assigned to lead troops from Indian Territory instead of Oklahoma Territory. Roosevelt said, “Captain Capron had under him two companies, and he soon impressed himself upon the wild spirit of his followers. He got them ahead and disciplined faster than any troop in the regiment. He required instant obedience and tolerated not the slightest evasion of duty. But his mastery of the art was so thorough in his performance of his own duties so rigid that he won not merely the admiration but the soldierly affection so readily given by the men in the ranks of the superior who cares for his men and leads them fearlessly into battle.” Now Theodore Roosevelt, we all know, was a bit of a windbag. So you can see that here in this quote. But I don’t think Roosevelt was a man who gave compliments lightly either.
Neil: No, I don’t think he was. And I think that he saw in Capron, just like he did with Pollock, a leader. And I think that if you think about his leadership going into battle in Cuba and then leading from the front, he was a leader that worked with his soldiers. He was not somebody that was giving orders and then sitting back from behind. And so I think that he’s a really important figure, and I think the praise is definitely warranted.
Thompson: You know, he volunteered to be in the front during one of the assaults at Las Guasimas, which was the first battle that they fought in Cuba. And he was killed, he was killed in that action. And I found this quote from The Oklahoma State Capital newspaper, June 4, 1899. “At the engagement of Las Guasimas, Captain Allyn K. Capron of the Rough Riders, son of Captain Capron Sr. was killed. His body was left for a time where it fell. His hat was placed to cover his face and a black rubber poncho thrown over the body. Only the rough, mud-coated shoes protruded from beneath the poncho. Word was sent to Captain Capron Sr., and he soon reached the scene of the engagement. White faced but upright, he stood for a moment, looking down at the black, forbidding outline and the bypath and all that remained of the last of his three promising signs and stooping, he lifted the hat from the dead boy’s face, and, gazing at him with moist eyes, said, ‘Well done, boy.’ And then, replacing the hat, he turned on his heel and marched stiffly away.” I mean, what would that have been like to be? You’re in the same battle with your son. Your last of your sons has fallen. But also that that sense of pride of what your son accomplished in battle.
Neil: I think that, in the military, there is a closeness that exists between soldiers. And then I know we see it in the guard, where you have generational family members serving and sometimes serving in that same war. And I think that for that family, I don’t know how you process that grief in that moment, but, you know, as a soldier that he did his best and that he was a good leader and that probably his own self-sacrifice had helped save other soldiers. And so, one of the interesting things about working in a military museum is we get to tell these stories of tragedy, of triumph, of this process of what it’s like to be in battle. And I think that just goes to show that, you know, there’s always an underlying current of story filled with emotion at any time to tell the stories of war.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about someone, you can’t talk about Rough Riders in Oklahoma without talking about Frank Frantz. Because not only was he in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and acquitted himself very well, that’s where Theodore Roosevelt really got to know him and came to respect him, but later became a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt’s and then territorial governor of Oklahoma. So what can you tell us about Frank Frantz?
Neil: Bob, do you have a better sense of Frank than I do?
Blackburn: Well, he was a young man at the time, and I think the youngest of the territorial governors. And, Frank came to Indian Territory. Where was he from?
Thompson: He came to Enid.
Blackburn: To Enid.
Thompson: And he and his brothers opened up a hardware store, a lumber yard or brick, a brick yard and a hotel together in Enid. And he was in Troop A during the battle. And he took command of that troop when Captain Buckey O’Neill was killed. And he heroically led his soldiers up the hill, San Juan Hill, the San Juan Heights, amidst the Spanish bullets and all of the shrapnel that was being thrown. He was recommended for the Silver Star for gallantry under enemy fire by Roosevelt. And then, after the war, of course, he became a friend of Roosevelt. And, one of my favorite stories about Frank Frantz is he and Roosevelt. Frantz would drop by the White House occasionally. You know, Roosevelt believed in the strenuous life, the manly man and everything. He and Frantz would have boxing matches in the White House, and, more often than not, Frantz would knock Roosevelt down or knock him out. And so I think that that’s what, impressed Roosevelt enough that he eventually appointed him the postmaster of Enid in 1902 and then the Osage agent at Pawhuska in 1904. And then he was appointed the last territorial governor and he took office in 1906. And at 35, he was Oklahoma’s youngest governor at that time. I don’t know if we’ve had a younger governor since then.
Blackburn: I think 35 is the youngest you can serve as governor under our constitution.
Neil: So I forgot about those boxing matches. So that was a good story.
Thompson: Yeah. I mean, can you imagine just, stop by the White House and let’s have a boxing match with the president? But that was Roosevelt. And then Frantz ran on the Republican nomination to be Oklahoma’s first governor as well when we achieved statehood. And he was a Republican. And of course, we all know Republicans didn’t fare well in those first few elections in Oklahoma. So he did not win that election. But, certainly, you know, one of the more famous, there’s actually a painting in the Capitol, actually there’s two paintings in the Capitol of Frank Frantz. One of them is his portrait of the territorial governor that’s with all the other territorial governors in the Blue Room. And then the other one is representing his charge with Roosevelt up the San Juan Heights. And that one, if I remember correctly, it’s on the in the second floor in the Senate, Senator office complex in the north wing on the second floor. People can go see that painting.
Blackburn: Trait, one of the soldiers involved, I wanted Denise to comment in if if he’s going to be included in her story, but Chris Madsen was an interesting guy. He was serving Fort Reno in early territorial days. Became a US marshal, along with Bill Tilghman, and Heck Thomas, the Three Guardsman. And he must have been in his 50s by the time the war started. But somehow, through his connections with US Deputy Marshal or the Deputy Marshals Service, and political connections, he somehow got appointed and became quartermaster. But in his 50s—is he going to be included in the story and in the museum?
Neil: We do not have him included in the story. Space constraints kind of got us a little bit where we cover Span-Am, we give people a little bit of background because as, you know, sometimes wars that are far and distant away, people don’t have a knowledge. So we drop people in a little bit with a little background. Talk about the Maine going over. Right now, our plan is to borrow from OHS collections, the porthole from the Maine that you guys have in your collection. And so we want to give people that background information, and then, we focus on Pollock and a little bit about the guardsmen that serve, some other guardsmen. But the idea of older soldiers is always interesting that serve and, you know, I think, one of the thinking of Frank Frantz and relationship with governors, Harry C. Barnes had served in Span-Am, who was the son of Cassius Barnes. And so there’s interesting people that signed up to volunteer to be in the Spanish-American War. I will say, and you know, this, Dr. Blackburn, that as you get ready to do story lines in a new museum, you say, okay, how can I not only tell the story, but what are the artifacts that I have to share about this thing so that I can make an artifact come to life? And so, when we were thinking about things to display, we had, you know, the potential to borrow something from OHS. And another thing is there is a painting of William Pollock that is in the collection up at OSU, but the painting is by Brummett Echohawk, who was in the 45th Division, was also a Pawnee warrior. So we’re going to borrow that painting as well. So we had this connection between old and new. And so, but there are so many stories that have fallen away that I can’t, I don’t have room to tell in the new museum space, but it’s really exciting to think about the way that we can maybe have special programming that would center on Spanish-American War history, that we can make sure that our docents have those extra stories as well.
Thompson: Yeah. Going back to Chris Madsen, he was from El Reno. He was born in Copenhagen in 1851, so he wouldn’t quite have been 50 yet, but, in 1898. But he was on the older side for a soldier for sure. He fought as a foot soldier in the Danish Prussian and the Franco-Prussian Wars. And then he fought with the French Foreign Legion and in Algeria and then with the fifth US Cavalry. He served as a scout with Buffalo Bill Cody, and he helped bury the troopers that were slain in the Seventh Cavalry, Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and in 1891 became a deputy US marshal out of El Reno and became one of the Three Guardsmen with Heck Thomas and Bill Tilghman. And so, you know, these guys, their stories are fascinating and where they came from. Charles Hunter, a former Guthrie boy, came to Enid to enlist and was twice rejected on account of being undersized. He begged to the governor to let him in, with tears streaming down his face. And he got a special concession and was granted permission to come in. Corporal John Rhodes, this is a great story. He was wounded in the Battle of Las Guasimas and was taken to the hospital, and he was ordered to stay there. He broke out of the hospital to go fight in the second battle at San Juan Heights. He walked two miles to the front and then was arrested for disobeying orders and placed and placed under guard for two days after that. So, you know, you want Rough Riders. You’re going to get Rough Riders on these people, and these are exactly the kind of people that Roosevelt wanted.
Blackburn: My guess is that that testimony right there relates back to something that I discovered about soldiers. First time I went to Gettysburg. I would walk around Gettysburg and go to the different battles where my great grandfather fought, was captured on the retreat from. But the only thing that made sense to me, and Denise, I don’t know if you’ve dealt with this in the guardsmen, but the only thing that makes sense to me about being in the line of fire is that you were you stayed in your place, did your duty, partly because of the guys next to you. This sense of responsibility for those. So he didn’t want to be left behind because he thought he could help protect his buddies that he had either enlisted with or, you know, got to know. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. How do you, you know, at Pickett’s Charge? Why run up that hill facing the cannon? It has to be because I’m protecting my cousins and the folks from my hometown who are next to me.
Neil: I think that is absolutely true among guardsmen, especially when you think about the way that the National Guard grew up in Oklahoma. And so that you train, you enlist, and you train with the people from your hometown or your home area. And you know those people. Now, when you get to somewhere like World War II, and there’s a lot of enlistees that are just drafted into being in the division, but you still have that training and that camaraderie with each other. And it is very difficult to know why people fight. And I think when you think about Span-Am and people coming into that war, and you think about the people that are in Oklahoma Territory at the time, they have a pioneer spirit. They are willing to take on a fight or to forge their own path. And I think to be part of something, like a revolution to free the Cubans from Spanish rule. Plus the way that it had been portrayed in the media, there was a lot of people that said, I want to be part of this. I want to be part of a situation where I’m helping. Of course, you know, the sinking of the Maine and the way that portrayed by Hearst and his papers has a lot of influence. But I do think that there’s a pioneer spirit in Oklahoma Territory that led people to fight. And I know that people that have served in the guard at large as far as fighting and going ahead and charging and going into battle is a sense of duty and a sense of self-preservation for yourself and to help save your fellow soldiers.
Thompson: Here’s an interesting tidbit that I ran across too in researching this. Did you know that Will Rogers volunteered for the Rough Riders? But he was turned down because he was too young. So, he was born in 1879, so he would have been 18, which is interesting because nowadays, 18 is the age that, you know, you have to register for the Selective Service and you can go to war at 18 now. But he was turned down for being too young, but he did attempt to join the Rough Riders.
Blackburn: Think how history might have been different if he had been accepted and taken, might have been on a different career path, with the Wild West shows and vaudeville and his movies, it might all have been different.
Thompson: Well, there’s a couple others that I want to mention. Roy V. Cashion was credited as being the first soldier from Oklahoma Territory to die in the Spanish-American War. He was actually, rode, and I have to give credit to, our good friend Jay Hannah. I saw him the other day, and I told him about this podcast that we were doing, and Jay told me, he said, “Oh, Cashion, Oklahoma, named for Roy V. Cashion.” And I said, I don’t know that story. So he told me the story about him. He rode from Hennessey to Guthrie to volunteer. And he was in the, he served in the in the Rough Riders. He was killed in the July 1, 1898, charge up of San Juan Hill, and The Oklahoma State Capital newspaper, on July 27, 1898, wrote, “Roy V. Cashion is a noble soldier and a worthy member of the troop of Rough Riders. He fell with one of its noblest officers and chivalrous gentleman, Lieutenant Capron. May their memory and deeds of valor ever remain in the hearts of all Americans.” So there’s actually a monument to Roy V. Cashion in Hennessey, which now I want to take a little drive up there and go see it. But they raised money after the war, and then, the governor in, one of the, one of the sessions, I believe, in 1900 of the territorial legislature, asked the legislature for $2,000 to be able to complete that monument there, but it is there. And, that is the town of Cashion is named after Roy V. Cashion. And the town of Capron, Oklahoma, is named after Allyn Capron. Those are the only two towns that I know of that were named after soldiers in the Spanish-American War. But I could be wrong. So, another one I want to get to is Robert Bell Houston. We actually have his letters in our collection here at the Oklahoma Historical Society. And he was born in Hamilton, Ohio. He moved to Guthrie in 1892, opened a law firm there. Cassius Barnes appointed him the captain of Company A in the Oklahoma National Guard in 1895, and then he was appointed captain of Troop D, which came from Oklahoma Territory, to go as a part of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. His wife vehemently did not want him to go to war. She was, she was convinced that he would be killed or that he would die of disease over there. And in a little bit of foreshadowing, he didn’t die of disease during the war. But after the war, he enlisted in the regular army, and he, went to the Philippines as a part of the Philippine Insurrection, and he ended up dying as a part of that campaign. So, he describes the Battle of Las Guasimas. “My troop was under two fires from the front, in the right rear. We kept moving in, though, by running forward and lying down to fire. The firing was terrific. I saw one man shot through the right breast and another through the right, and through the left forearm. The Cubans captured a Spaniard the same afternoon, and he said to them, ‘We don’t understand those Americans. When they fire, when we fire, they don’t stop.’” So about the Battle of San Juan Hill, he said, “Our first battle was hard enough, but it but it only lasted two-and-a-half hours. The last continued all day with a desperate night attack two nights afterwards, and our regiment and the 9th and 10th Cavalry had the brunt of it.” So he was in the heavy fighting in the both of those engagements.
Neil: So I think he’s a really interesting character. There were a few other people, I’m sure, that left from the very short kind of wars, the four months or whatever Span-Am works out to be more or less, and then decide they want to keep fighting and go to the Philippines and deal with that part of the war. And there are almost separate kind of things when you think about them, even though they’re both for the same purpose trying to do away with Spanish Colonial rule in both areas. But, Houston is really, it is a really interesting story. And yes, his wife was definitely not pleased. And, you know, ultimately it did catch up with him. But yeah, we make our decisions in life, and I’m sure that he felt that he was doing what was the best thing to do to to be in the fight and continue fighting after the war in Cuba is over.
Thompson: Interesting story about those letters. His wife, toward the end of her life, was living at a hotel in downtown Oklahoma City and left those letters behind. And when they were found, they were donated to the Oklahoma Historical Society. And where, and, you know, Joe Todd, but he wrote, a great Chronicles article, and that’s where I found this information with some of his letters quoted. So, lots of fascinating things to discover as you start digging through the archives and the newspaper articles, during this particular time as well. I mean, we could probably talk for the next two hours about Oklahomans who made an impact. It’s, there’s no doubt whatsoever that Theodore Roosevelt felt like that Oklahomans were amongst the cream of the crop in that war. And, in fact, when he was coming to Oklahoma for a Rough Riders reunion when he was governor of New York, he said this. “This is my first visit to Oklahoma. I feel, though, that I know your people. I have served with your men, laying in trenches with them and endured with them hardships and pleasures. I am therefore tied to you by the closest ties that can bind one man to another.” So Roosevelt felt very fond of the Oklahomans that he served in battle with.
Blackburn: Trait, before we let Denise go, I wanted to make a point about the connection of the Historical Society and the 45th Division Museum, probably 30, maybe 40 years ago. An OHS board member, Jordan Reaves, had assembled a large gun collection. When John Wayne would come to town for the Cowboy Hall of Fame events, he would always go to Jordan’s to have, you know, shared the bottle of black Jack Daniel and look at Jordan’s guns. And at one point, he, Jordan worked with General Daugherty to transfer that collection. There was some money involved and a donation of all, but it was really a history of the technology of warfare, starting with the Chinese and gunpowder coming all the way to the present day. And there would be a few weapons that could be used to tell the story of weaponry during the the Spanish-American War. But it’s going to be a real asset for you, Denise, I think to have that collection and how weaponry developed the different kinds of ammunition that was used and what advantages an army might have with certain weaponry.
Neil: And it is a fantastic collection. And one of the weapons that we will be using from the Jordan Reeves collection is a rifle that was salvaged off of the USS Maine, that was part of Jordan’s collection that that came into our collection. And so we get to, we get to show that weapon as something that was salvaged after the fact. And so, there is just a wealth of information in our, in our museum waiting to be told. And so we’re looking forward to that in ways that we haven’t been able to do in our old space. We are going to miss our old building a lot. It is a fabulous building. The guard, one of the main questions I get is, what’s going to happen to the historic WPA armory that we’re in? And it will be maintained by the Oklahoma National Guard moving forward.
Thompson: Well. Very good. Well, Denise, we thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, shed some light on some of these stories, and I can’t wait to go see how you’re going to interpret these stories in the new museum.
Neil: Thank you so much.
Blackburn: Congratulations. We’ll see you soon, I hope.
Neil: Thanks.
Thompson: Well, Bob, I enjoyed talking to Denise about Oklahomans who served in the Spanish-American War, and I’m really excited about that museum she’s getting ready to open.
Blackburn: Yeah, I was asked years ago, maybe ten years ago, to write a project brief for that museum and what could it be beyond really remembering the sacrifice of the 45th Division? And I had an uncle who fought in that division, so it was personal. And so it really expanded the project brief to be more about citizen soldiers in Oklahoma, and then that has really become the story of the Oklahoma National Guard and the role of the guard has played in our story since the 1890s. So I’m anxious to see as well. Hopefully it will open in the summer, and hopefully you and I will be there for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Thompson: Well, I hope that all of our friends who are listening to this podcast have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we are going to have some exciting news for this podcast in 2026. It’s the 100th anniversary of Route 66, and all of our episodes will be centered somehow around the route, and I’m really excited about the topics that we have for all of you in the next year.
Blackburn: Good idea, Trait, and I appreciate you putting all of this together and I learned a lot about the Spanish-American War from you today. So thank you very much for doing the research.
Thompson: Well, Bob, any day that you say you learned something from me, I’m a little bit proud and a little bit terrified. Friends, we hope you have a great new year. We’ll talk to you soon.
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You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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