The 1834 Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition

In 1833, Congress authorized a new regiment in the Army that would combine the skills of Regular Army soldiers with the frontier savvy of the Rangers. The First Dragoon Regiment was tasked with being the first U.S. envoy to make contact with the Plains Indian tribes to negotiate for peace. The 500-person strong Dragoon unit set out in June 1834 to fulfill their mission, but their journey was fraught with lack of water, sickness, and death. In this episode, Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn discuss the hardships the Dragoons endured to establish relations with the Comanches, Wichitas, and Kiowas. Their guest is Correy Twilley, director of the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Training Support Facility at Fort Sill.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
(upbeat music playing)

TRAIT THOMPSON (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to “A Very OK Podcast.”
My name is Trait Thompson.
I'm the executive director of the OklahomaHistorical Society.
And with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn.
Bob, it's great to see you again,having some summer fun out there.
I hope you are doing well.(DR. BOB BLACKBURN) Well, good to see you
as well, Trait.
It's been the most unusual springthat I ever remember.
I'm growing webbed feet with all of thethe rain that we've been getting,

(00:27):
so that's one adaptation.
But I'm just loving everything is green.
I haven't had to
turn on the irrigation systemand having to mow about every three days,
but other than that, I'm just lovingthis spring we've had.
(THOMPSON) That's exactly right.
I read something the other day that saidthat all of Oklahoma is out of drought
for the first time in over five years,and this was the exact wrong

(00:48):
time for my mower blade to break.
And so I'm waiting for my new mowerblade to come.
So I may have to goaway from the mower
and just get a hay baler for my yard.
(BLACKBURN) I’ve got a scythe I’ll loan you. (THOMPSON) Okay!
(BLACKBURN) Yoo get out there anddo it the old fashioned way.
(THOMPSON) That's, I'm sure some of our historical interpreters have something they could,
you know, we could put on a little clinicabout how those work.

(01:10):
But, yeah, it's been a very wet spring
here in Oklahoma for sure.
And, I, I had a lot of fun recently.
I took my daughter camping outat Black Mesa for the first time.
And boy, didwe have a great time out there.
We went and we did some exploration.
We, of course,we hiked to the top of Black Mesa.

(01:30):
We went and found the monumentwhere the three states meet,
Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico.
And my daughter had a lot of fun going,you know, hey, I'm in Oklahoma,
I'm in New Mexico.
You know, and then,we went out to Autograph Rock, which is
that stop on the Santa Fe Trailwhere everyone stopped
and they carved their nameinto the sandstone cliffs.

(01:51):
And that was just really fascinatingto see all those names
and dates like 1858, 1865.
And just to think of all those peoplethat stopped there.
So we've had some fun so far this summerand looking forward to some more.
(BLACKBURN) Well, one of mygreat memories of the Panhandle
is that I've been to all those places,and I always enjoy going to the Panhandle.

(02:11):
You know, a lot of people complain
oh that’s so far, but it’s a different world out there.
The culture is so unique.I love going to the Panhandle.
We had a little museum in Goodwell thatwe were operating trying to change it.
I was working with
a couple of families out thereand the president of the university, but
I had a chance to go out and see, campKit Carson on the Santa Fe Trail.

(02:33):
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
(BLACKBURN) He had, actually at Camp Nichols,I said Kit Carson.
Kit Carson established
Camp Nichols.
But the foundations were just perfect.
And it was a cold November day,so I was out of the car for not very long
because it can get cold up there.
But I got to go out to the sidewith the rancher who is leasing the land
at that,
actually owned that land, leased land around it.

(02:53):
But but,
it was established during the Civil War
to help keep peace on the Santa Fe Trail,but it was so distinct.
And it's right on top of a ridge.
You can see almost four differentdirections perfectly from this knoll.
And you can see why Kit Carson established it right there.
It didn't last long,
but it was so distinctive, and I,I tried to get it as a state property.

(03:15):
And the rancher wanted like ten quarter
sections of school land for that one,you know, measly, you know, 40 acres.
And we couldn’t make that work,of course.
I'll never forgetseeing that side of the Panhandle.
(THOMPSON) Well, it's interesting you mention thatbecause I stopped at our historical marker
that's out thereright before you get to
Black Mesa State Parkthat mentions Camp Nichols.

(03:38):
And, I keep a running listin my phone of future podcast topics.
And so I wrote that down,Kit Carson and Camp Nichols
and possibly throw in the Santa Fe Trailthere as a future podcast topic.
So I think somedaymaybe we'll get to that one.
I only have about maybe 100 or 200 topics
in, in my phone,so, we'll get there someday, right?

(04:01):
One of the thingsI tell people about our podcast
is we're never going to run out of thingsto talk about.
(BLACKBURN) Never.
Well, Bob, I'm really excitedabout our topic today because we're going
to be talking about a seminal eventnot only in Oklahoma history
and the history of Indian Territory,but in American history.
And that is the 1834 Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition.

(04:23):
And I want to bring in our special guesttoday.
Correy Twilley is the director of the US
Army Air Defense Artillery TrainingSupport Facility at Fort Sill.
In his current position, he uses historyto influence the battlefield of the future
by overlaying current geopolitical eventswith what has happened in the past.

(04:43):
He's a former OHS employee.
He was a historical interpreterat Fort Gibson from 2010 to 2014.
He's been working there at FortSill since 2014.
He has a master's degree in public historyfrom Norwich University
and a bachelor's in military historyfrom Rogers State University.
And I know, Bob, you've done a lot of workthere at the Military Museum

(05:06):
at Rogers State.
But Correy, welcome into the podcast.
We are so thrilled to have you with ustoday.
(CORREY TWILLEY) Well, thanks. It's good to be here.
It's good to get out of the office
and let your eyes adjust to sunlightevery now and then.
(THOMPSON) Well, and you were telling me, aswe were trying to schedule this podcast,
that you've been pretty busy latewith an important anniversary.
(TWILLEY) Right.
So, of course, the Army 250th anniversarywas, this week or this last week,

(05:30):
and, man, there's a lot, a lot of stuffgoing on nationwide.
So, of course,we had the big national parade,
which a lot of us ended upwriting the script
for each of the vehiclesand things like that.
So, had a lot going on this last week.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, and I
think people would be really interestedto know a little bit more about your job,
because I had the pleasureof coming down there to Fort Sill.

(05:53):
It's probablybeen about two years ago now.
And you gave me a tourthrough your facility,
which you were stillin the process of finalizing.
Maybe you still are.
Maybe it's one of those projectsthat's never done.
But, I just found it incrediblyfascinating, the work that you were doing.
And I think, I think our folkswould be interested in hearing about that.
(TWILLEY) Right. So the Army operatesa series of museums now, we,

(06:16):
we operate, we operate more museums
throughout the worldthan all of the other branches combined.
So we operate a series of field museums,
but we also operate,four of these training support facilities.
And it's a brand new concept in the Army.
So the training support facilityisn't open to the public.
So it is strictly therefor soldier training and to assist

(06:39):
with researchand development of new weapons
and tactics based on the stuffthat we've learned throughout history.
In essence, that whole “those who don'tstudy history are doomed to repeat it.
And those that do study
history are doomed to watch other peoplethat don't study history.”
So, so it's our job to make sure that,that we're studying that history.
So, we offer a very unique perspective,to this stuff.

(07:01):
And since we're airdefense artillery–centric,
we specifically focus on the airdefense weapons.
So the majority of my missionis to teach the soldiers
that are coming in, the evolution of air defense systems and tactics.
But then we have a whole other missionmindset that's more big Army oriented.
(THOMPSON) Well, that's pretty fascinating.

(07:22):
And it's not so much teaching themhow each of those systems
works as much asteaching them the evolution
and maybe the strategy behind it,so to speak.
(TWILLEY) There's there's that aspect of it. Okay.
And think about, remember the old schoolprofessor that still uses,
you know, the transparencies,you know, on the overhead projector.
So you have all the current geopoliticalevents that are going on right now.

(07:46):
And imagine overlaying a transparencyof all of the historic events
that have happened in the pastand looking for things
that line up between those two.
And so we look for those commonalities,and then we advise the Army,
hey, we've tried this before,and this either did or didn't work.
So what if we try this instead.
And so it's a, it's a whole other mindsetof using history to influence the future.

(08:08):
(THOMPSON) That's pretty fascinating.
Well I have to say your,your facility was very, very impressive.
And in addition to doing this,you know, how I've gotten to know you is
you've been a volunteerat many of our educational events
and living history eventsover the last few years.
And you've been doing a long, long time.
Of course, I've just been here a few years, but,

(08:30):
seeing how you come out and portraydifferent eras of American history
in the American Army and then, you know,working with our students
and our adults to help them understanda little bit more about that history.
I always love to see you at our museumsand sites,
and I appreciate the workthat you do there as well.
(TWILLEY) Well, thank you, thank you.
I love, I love supporting the OHS,

(08:50):
and especially the field museumsand everything getting out and,
you know, getting dirty
a little bit and and teachingand teaching more than just what we teach.
(THOMPSON) So, folks, you'll never knowwhen, if you come out to,
Honey Springs Battlefieldor Fort Gibson or Fort Supply.
Fort Supply, we're working to get thatone back open, but,
Fort Towson, you never know if you'regoing to see Correy at an event there.

(09:13):
And, you've, even taught my kidshow to do some military drumming
on the battlefield when we were at Honey Springs a few years ago.
(TWILLEY) That's right.
We had a whole class on Army field musicand communication in the 19th century.
That was a lot of fun.
(THOMPSON) That's right.
Well, folks, and I'll just, sincewe're talking about it, I'll go ahead
and plug the, reenactment at Honey SpringsBattlefield is coming up this November again.

(09:36):
Hope we'll see you out there.(TWILLEY) Oh, absolutely.
I'll be there.(BLACKBURN) Correy,
You may have been a reenactorwhen we still did that in July.
(TWILLEY) I remember that.(BLACKBURN) Especially that first one when I was in charge of it.
And, Richard Ryan,one of your former colleagues,
we were all out there trying to takea barbed wire and get that ready.
And then on July,I think it was 17th, the actual date

(09:58):
of the anniversary,and it was at 105 degrees.
And during the reenactment,some of the reenactors had
strung copper wire out on to the battlefield.
So when you see a cannon firing up overthere, you can see dirt fly up over here.
Well, they kept catching the prairie on fire.
We had to stop that first reenactmentabout five times.

(10:19):
Finally, we said
the reenactors don't fireany more of those charges.
They had them charged.
They wanted to use all of them, and,
but that was quite an experience.And thank you.
We've come a long waysince then with our reenactments.
Educational school days were my favorites.
When the school kids come inand you all give them that training
and let them see a little bit of living history coming alive.(TWILLEY) That's exactly,

(10:41):
and that's why we do this.
I mean, otherwise we're a bunch of grownups playing dress up.
But I mean, like when we're out therewith an educational mission
and we're actually teaching these kids,
you know, here's what here'swhat really happened,
it brings, it brings historyto a whole new light when you can see it.
(THOMPSON) Well, let's dive into our topic for today.
And 191 years ago, in 1834, June of 1834,

(11:04):
there was a very special expeditionthat was sent out from Fort Gibson.
And it was really
the first of its kind that the Armyhad endeavored to put together.
And this was going to be an expeditionthat was led by, by a General Leavenworth
and Colonel Henry Dodge to go outto, to take a group of dragoons,

(11:26):
which is also a new kind of soldierthat would go from Fort Gibson.
They would march roughly westor southwest,
and their mission was to tryto make contact with the Plains Indians tribes
and to, to negotiate peace,
so to speak,so that we could be preemptive.

(11:48):
Of course, Western, Western movementwas going on with white settlement,
and this was an effort to, to go aheadand to try to make peace
with some of these Western tribes,like the Wichitas, the Comanches,
the Kiowas, and I'm sure anyone elsethat they happened to encounter out there.
And, this wassomething that had not been attempted

(12:10):
by the United States governmentin the War Department before.
And this was something special.
But, you know, Bob, in 1834,
you know, Fort Gibson had been establishedabout ten years before,
but much of Indian Territorywas still pretty, pretty unexplored,
and there was, especially west of the Cross Timbers,

(12:30):
there wasn't a whole lot of of white folksthat had gone out that direction
and made contact,
other than what we've talked aboutwith the Santa Fe Trail previously.
So, you know, this was,uncharted territory.
(BLACKBURN) Yeah.
And and to really understand the militaryside of this, you need to understand
America's goals on Western settlement.

(12:52):
And there were really two waysthat the that Congress
and the president and the American peoplewanted to deal with Indians.
One was through trade, starting withLewis and Clark and then Zebulon Pike,
up Arkansas and the Red River.
It was that part of it was, let's tradewith these American Indians.

(13:12):
Let's draw them in to the American empire.
So let's pull them away from tradingwith the Spanish in Santa Fe or in Texas.
Let's pull them awayfrom dealing with the French.
Let’s pull them awayfrom the British in the far northwest.
Well, part of it was, let's establishthese trade relationships.
And in 1834,
you kind of can triangulatethis, is that you had American traders

(13:36):
in St. Louis to the north,American traders out of New Orleans
to the south, of course all coming upthe river, the Arkansas Post.
And then in the far west,
you had Bent's Fort as early as 1833,which was a place on the High Plains
where the Southern Plains Indianscould trade.
And they were trading horses and mules,of course, furs,

(13:59):
but also slaves and, they had this.
So the American government says, yeah,we want to trade with you,
so be good allies of America.
Quit warring on your fellow Indians,which went against their grain.
They didn't want to stop that.
That was why they got honor and the waythey made a name for themselves to go out
and attacking, leading a raid,stealing horses, counting coup,

(14:21):
whatever it might be.
But the other thing, other placethat Congress and the United States
put the Army in a tough position to say,
get out there and show them force.
If they don't behave,if they don't become good little Americans
and find a way to work within our system, you'll punish them

(14:42):
and we will attack their villages,and we will
we will take retribution on their womenand children as well as the warriors.
And so the Army was put into thistough position, underfunded,
of course.
The military usually has been overthe century, a couple of centuries, but,
especially after the War of 1812,

(15:04):
Congress doesn't want to have a large military.
And not again until you get to the MexicanWar in 1846 does it start growing again.
So in the '30s,
you have this unusual situationwith a few soldiers in the American West.
You have
the Bureau of Indian Affairsand the Department of Interior
trying to use trade to lure the Indiansinto being friends, but then saying

(15:29):
if you don't want to be allies,we have another way to deal with you.
And then it was a matter of learningwhat was out there.
People need to remember, too,at this time, south of the Red River
was the New Spain,
in Mexico after 1820.
So that was the international border.
And even though there were Americansmoving in

(15:50):
to south central Texas, Sam Houstonand that generation
beginning to settle, westTexas was still pretty much Comancheria.
That's where the Comanchesand the other Plains Indians dominated.
Then to the west ofthat would have been the garrisons
the Mexican garrisons in Santa Feand Taos, kind of in that area.

(16:12):
And then the Indian Territorywent all the way from the
Red River on the south,all the way up to the Canadian border.
So you get settlement to the east of us,people moving into Arkansas at this time,
like where my family comes fromin Howard County, Arkansas, southwest,
the first generations of settlerstrying to move that far west.

(16:33):
And that's only about 60 mileswest of Broken Bow,
is that they were beginningto come in in the 1840s and '50s.
And so you already get settlersmoving in past the Mississippi River,
Missouri, Arkansas are being settled, east Texas.
And so here's the military trying toto tame these
these Plains Indians who are very mobile,who are not going to stand and fight.

(16:58):
They're going to, you know, if they seetroops coming, they're going to get away.
And they've got their warriorsand their societies,
and they can kind of trackwhat the soldiers are doing.
So there are many pitched battlesand it's it's a war of attrition.
And these Indians learnif they just get away
and they're mobile, mobilitywith their camps,
they can wear down the troopsand not have to really deal with them.

(17:18):
So you get this international intrigue,you get the settlers coming west,
moving into
the lands of the Plains Indians.
And then you got the Indian tribeskind of in between.
The Osages coming out of Missourihave more than 100 years
of working with the French. They’rewell armed, very mobile, very aggressive,

(17:39):
(THOMPSON) Fierce warriors(BLACKBURN) Fierce warriors.
And they're attacking the Comanchesand their allies, the Wichita.
And, most of the tribesdon't want to really fight the Osages,
because they're such fiercewhen they're so well armed and numerous.
And so here on the Southern Plains,southern part, the Comanches
and their allies, the Wichitas, the Kiowas, an ally with the Comanches.

(18:04):
And you get the Cheyenne,
the Southern Cheyenne that is split offfrom the Northern Cheyenne.
And about this time in the 1820s and '30s.
And the Cheyenne sacred medicinebundle had all come south
with the Southern Cheyenne. Bent’s Fortis their real connection.
But between the North Platteand the Arkansas River is their domain.
South of the Arkansasis pretty much the Comanches and Kiowas

(18:27):
and, they'rethey're really controlling the area.
And the militarycan't go toe to toe with them.
So how do they do this?
Well, when you get into exploration,you try to go out and counsel with them
and try to lure them in with trade andand with treaties.
So generally,
the Indians don’t really understandthe implications of those treaties.

(18:48):
(THOMPSON) And we never really kept our word.
(BLACKBURN) Exactly.
And so you get this combustible timeperiod when everything is changing
and that leads to this expedition.
Go out and deal with the Indians,find out what you can, where they are,
who they are trading with,
what they're looking for, and see whatwe can do to make things better.
(THOMPSON) Correy, when we watch a Western movietoday, if we see the Army, we,

(19:13):
soldiers in the West, it's typically horsesoldiers.
It's typically cavalry.
And I think that's the imagethat people have in their minds.
But it might be surprisingfor some people to know that
when Fort Gibson was established,it was all infantry soldiers.
(TWILLEY) Right.
(THOMPSON) And so this idea of putting soldiers on horseback
in the western part of the,or the southwestern part of the US

(19:36):
at that time was pretty new.
So let's talk about the establishmentof the dragoon,
the First Dragoon Regiment, established by Congress in 1833.
How do they get their start?
Where do they get their start?
What is their mission?
(TWILLEY) So you have to you have to look atwhat had been transpiring, just like what
we've been looking at and tryingto make contact with these tribes.

(19:58):
Most of these tribes are highly mobileand the majority
of your firepoweris going to come from infantry soldiers.
The problem is, isyour infantry is not nearly as mobile
because they're not mounted.
So you need a almosta mounted infantry style unit,
almost a special forces style unitthat can move in quickly

(20:18):
with the speed of cavalry,but have the armament of infantry.
And so you see Congress beginning toto mull this around based on concepts
that have been around
since really the revolution and beforereally with the dragoon concept.
So you see them begin to establish the regiment of dragoons
there at Jefferson Barracks.
The the problem is, iswhen they first start to establish,

(20:42):
Congress doesn't make many,
they don't leave a lot of leewayfor equipping them in the very beginning.
So when they start to form up,they form up entirely without horses.
It takes them a while to get the horses.
In fact, they deploy to Fort Gibson.
The majority of themdon't even have horses
by the time they move to Fort Gibson.

(21:03):
They're, they're infantry soldiers.
They're, if you look at their armamentsthat they're using,
I mean, they're still wearingcivilian clothing.
They don't have their uniforms yet,
and they get thereand they're using old antiquated
weapons systems, and they kind ofbecome a joke at the very beginning.
And it's not until they really startto receive that equipment and the training
that they need to operate that equipment,that they become that fighting force.

(21:25):
(BLACKBURN) Correy explain a little bit, too, about what are the primary weapons
that would have been used by the dragoonsor even infantry?
Because really, the as you say, athis is a way to get the infantry fast
to a spot
where they get off and have mass firepowerbecause of the single shot weapons.
What were some of the weaponsthat they would have been carrying
when they finally start the expedition?
(TWILLEY) So, so early onwe see they’re, they’re being issued,

(21:48):
you know, like I said, old things that,that they can't load on horseback.
And that's the problem.
So with a standard infantry musket,it's so long,
it's it's very difficult to loadand discharge that weapon on horseback.
So in essence, what happens is,
they begin to receive these new breechloading carbines, the Hall carbine,
and there's several different contracts,that the Army produces these,

(22:12):
or that produces these,these Hall carbines for the Army.
They have a lot of a lot of difficultiesin the very beginning there.
They're one of the contract models,has a,
has a propensity to,to explode when it's, when it's fired.
Now, if you've ever seen the
Hall carbine up close,it has a massive flaw in its design

(22:34):
anyway. So the way it loads,see if we can describe this.
The the top of the, in essence,what's the receiver, pops up
and you take the entire cartridgeand you place it in from the
from the back end, then you close it,but there's a small, about
a 16th of an inch gap in
between the back of the receiverand where you put that round in.

(22:56):
So when you pull that trigger and,and it eventually discharges the weapon,
the first thing that that soldier sees
is a wall of flameright in front of their face,
and it discharges up to the frontand out to the sides.
So it creates a, a wall of flame andsmoke right in front of the the soldier.
They have to make a few, a few changes, small changes

(23:18):
to the models that they're being issued.
But eventuallywhen they go out to the field,
the majority of them are carrying the the Hall carbine.(BLACKBURN) And they're shorter.
(TWILLEY) Yes, quite a bit shorter to make it a loteasier to handle on horseback.
But it gives themthat, the, the higher caliber round
that they need with a quick loadinground as opposed to the standard carbines

(23:39):
that were out at the time.(THOMPSON) Would they have had pistols?
(TWILLEY) Yes. We know they had pistols as well.
As far as the make and model,I don't I can't recall
which ones they had, but,we have several examples.
In fact, in the Fort Sill collection,we have one of the original dragoon saddles,
still has the originalpistol panels on it.

(24:00):
And so you can actually see howthose were stored.
(THOMPSON) That's fascinating.
Now, you were telling mebefore we started this
that the uniforms,we had a little trouble.
Not only did they not have horses,but we had some trouble
with the uniforms, too.(TWILLEY) Right.
So so one of the stories that comes out,and it’s documented
several times, and, and Dr. Agnewactually mentions that at one point.

(24:24):
But what happens is thethey finally get the uniforms
tailored by the contractor that Congress hires.
They load them up onto a steamship.
It ends up coming down the Mississippi River, coming up the Arkansas River.
And at some point, we know it hits a snag.

(24:44):
And the boat actually ends up sinking.
It stays submerged,we believe about about a month or so.
And then the,
the dragoons are actually taskedwith going out
and salvagingthose uniforms off of the boat.
They get them out,leave them in the boxes,
take them back to Fort Gibson,and then they issue them out.
Well, by that point,these these uniforms have all become

(25:06):
moldy and mildewy and everything else.
So the very first uniforms they get
just are are pieces of junkby the time they get them.
And so they, you know,they still end up getting these uniforms,
they end up getting the, the new approved headgear, which is the,
you know, the hog killer,which is, as Catlin himself described it,

(25:26):
the uniform itself was more suitedto comic opera than life on the Plains.
(THOMPSON) Yeah,these things were pretty ostentatious.
If you, they were colorful.
The hats,
if I recall correctly,they're kind of tall.
They have a, you know,like a ball on them or something.
And, they are,
I always wondered, you know, the firstthings if, our Native Americans saw,

(25:49):
were they scared or did they just laugh?
You know?(TWILLEY) It kind of makes you wonder. Personally,
you know, if I would have seen thatriding towards me,
I don't know that I could have taken themseriously.
(THOMPSON) I want to talk about Henry Dodgebecause he was born in 1782 in Kentucky.
He moved to Missouri in 1796.
He became he became a,

(26:09):
he served in the Missouri militiaduring the War of 1812.
He was later in the Blackhawk War of 1832,
and then went on to commandthe dragoons, and,
of course,then went on to a career in politics,
eventually servedas the governor of Wisconsin
later on in the 1840s,and the US senator from Wisconsin.
But, he was put in command of this dragoon unit,

(26:32):
and he said that he wanted to selectthese dragoon officers by taking part
from the regular Army who understandthe first principles of their profession
and uniting them with Ranger officerswho understand the woods service.
So he was trying to createa new type of soldier here.
(TWILLEY) And that's why I kind of liken themto the special forces as you're taking,

(26:53):
you know, from the Ranger expedition,you're taking the best of those guys,
mixing them with the best of the soldiersthat we can provide and trying
to create this, this,like you said, a frontier fighting force.
(THOMPSON) So by October of 1833,they finally get their horses.
They they march,they come down from St. Louis,
they go to Fort Gibson,only about half of them at that time.

(27:15):
There was half that stilldidn't have all their provisions,
so they were left in St. Louis.By November,
then by November,they get to Fort Gibson.
It is a very cold winter at Fort Gibson,getting all the way down
to as much as -12 degrees,or 12 degrees below zero.
They actually had to build their campand build their stables for their horses

(27:37):
at Fort Gibson.
We've talked before about how Fort Gibson,even ten years after it had been
established, was not much to look at interms of being a firmly established fort.
And, they begin their training sessions.
General Leavenworth is, he is assigned
to be the commanderof the Southwestern Theater in the Army.

(27:57):
He he replaces General Arbuckle,who, for reasons we'll talk about later,
General Arbuckle will come back into thatrole, a little bit later down the line.
And then we are getting ready to march out.
Sam Houston says,who is around Fort Gibson at that time,
Sam Houston is very,very suspicious of this mission.

(28:20):
He thinks that the display of forceis going to be
a detriment to the United States Armyand to United States mission.
He says the display of forceon the prairies would unite
all the Indians that inhabit themand overwhelm it all at once.
So he actually said,you should really just get
a small party of frontiersmenand go out and try and make contacts

(28:41):
so you're not trying to have thisbig show of force.
(BLACKBURN) Well, that's what Thomas Jefferson had done with Lewis and Clark.
He tried to keep it small.
Ended up being about 40 or 50 men,but not too big to be threatening.
And that was very common
because once the warriors saw a threatto their women and children and old folks,
that's when they would get, get anxiousand be at high tensions.

(29:05):
The people would move away.
It was disruptive.
And, no, he was he was right about that.
(THOMPSON) So one of the things that I think this is,if you're if you're
a soldier on the frontier, I think you'rethinking action and adventure.
But more often than not, your life waspretty much drudgery and it was hard.
And so one of the first thingsthat they actually have to do

(29:26):
when they get to Fort Gibson is not,you know, military training drills.
But guess what?
You're going to be building roads andthey're going to be building roads,
to the Arkansas River, from the Cimarron
to the mouth of the Little Riveron the Canadian River,
north–south roads to connectFort Towson to the Washita River.

(29:48):
So that's what you're going to be doing.
And then, Correy,one of the things that he does is
he establishes, he knows thethe general route they want to take,
and so he wants to be preparedwhen they, to basically
have some bit of civilization,some food, some ammunition,
and some of the provisionsthat they would need as
they're making their way on this journey.
So he establishesthree camps: Camp Arbuckle at the junction

(30:10):
of the Cimarron River and the Arkansas River, Camp Holmes at the Little River,
and the Canadian River in Camp Washitaon the mouth of the Washita River,
which is actually underneath Lake Texomaright now.
So, you know, talk a little bit about thispreparation and getting ready to go.
(TWILLEY) And, you know, that
that vital infrastructure that,that they're creating with those roads.

(30:32):
You know, first of all,
for as far as you can build those roads,that gives you at least,
it gives you an improved surfaceto, to move on quickly.
It allows you to move a lot fasteron that first leg,
as you move over those roads and,and it gives you the logistics, you know.
An armchair historian will study the tactics.
A true historian will study the logisticsbehind anything,

(30:54):
because it's logisticsthat will win that battle or or lose it.
And so he's setting up those logisticshubs to allow them to resupply.
And that actually comes into play later onbecause they need a lot more logistics
than what they realize.
(THOMPSON) Well, you got 500 people, 500 soldiersthat are going to be marching out.
And also you have civilians along the way.

(31:15):
And I want to mention, that as well,because you mentioned Catlin,
and that's George Catlin,who was an artist.
And, he made numerous expeditions outin the 1830s to sketch and to draw
the Plains Tribes and the landscapes outin the western United States.
Joseph Chadwick,who was a St. Louis merchant and trader.

(31:37):
He was hoping to, as Bob, as you mentioned, establish
trading posts with the Indiansthey would be making contact with.
And Count Beyrick,a German botany professor,
with his assistantthat would be collecting flora
and fauna in this new placethat they were exploring.
So it wasn't just going to be soldiers.
And also there would be Indiansalong the way.

(31:59):
They did have some Osagesand some Senecas
who would be helping them in terms of
scouting out, looking for water, looking to hunt game,
who would be helping them along the way.
(TWILLEY) You know, you mentioned the
botanist and this is a questionI get a lot, is botany of all things. Why?
Why are we studying flowers on the way

(32:20):
on the way out to a major actionlike this.
And when you, you have to look at itfrom a logistics mindset.
Now, if you are moving a large force,you know, this is Napoleonic tactics
throughout the 19th century.
And Napoleonic tactics were, basically as you had an army on the move,
it was a foraging army.
And so to know what kind of floraand fauna were in a region

(32:42):
were absolutely criticalto establishing a supply line
in that region,because you didn't take your entire,
your entire set of, of foodand everything that you needed for
the entire expedition.
You actually had to go out and huntand things like that.
So to have a botanist with you,
that could tell you, okay, well,these plants are medicinal.
These plants indicatethere's a water table here.

(33:02):
You know, to know
that is almost a secondary roadmapthat you can use in the future.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit more about theI mean, just think the water
that you're going to need, you'regoing to be, you know, crossing rivers.
I mean this is a hard trip.
(TWILLEY) It is, it is.
And it's why it goes the way it does,honestly.
And, the water is one of the biggest

(33:24):
critical pieces of the puzzlethat really gets overlooked.
And and we'll get into that herein a little bit.
(THOMPSON) Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
So, June 15, 1834,
500 officers and men,they embark on their journey.
Their column is a mile in length.
But even before it gets started,we've got problems.
And Bob, Fort Gibson was known for, being one of,

(33:49):
the places, the most sickliest fort
in the western United States.
People got sick up there all the time.
It's why they moved the fort in the 1840sup the hill,
you know, a quarter of a mileor so to get it away from the river.
But sickness is going to plaguethis journey all along the way.
(BLACKBURN) Well, many more soldiers died of diseasein the 19th century than of bullet wounds.

(34:13):
But, the,
when the fort was established in 1824,they had it within
probably a quarter mile of the river,and it was malarial
and mosquitoeswould have just been all over everyone.
And malaria was very mucha part of frontier life for everyone.
And, and then you have
poor sanitary conditionsand people getting diseases from that,

(34:38):
and cholera would spread through campsso quickly.
And, it was a real problem.
And of course, medicinewas very rudimentary.
It wasn't much differentthan it had been for centuries.
And so it really beforethe age of discovering
diseases, you know, that pass by germs.
No one even thought of that.
They still thought that malaria was causedby vapors rather than mosquitoes.

(35:01):
They didn't know what was happening.
They just knew that people were getting sick and dying.
(TWILLEY) You know, there's a reason that, earlyon, you know, the death rates at
Fort Gibson caused it to earn the nicknamethe "charnel of the west."
It was the place the Army went to die.
And it was it was known far and wide
you did not want to get sent to Fort Gibson.

(35:21):
(THOMPSON)Yeah. It's a good reputation to
be known.
(TWILLEY) Right?
(THOMPSON) So with that, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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(35:42):
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(36:02):
and make history part of your journey.
(THOMPSON) Okay. We're back.
So, our our intrepid group of
soldiers is heading southwest,southwest from Fort Gibson,
and they are making their wayto the Plains Indians.
And, one of the things that

(36:24):
they have trouble with alongthe way is water.
And, one of the Company Gsergeants remarked,
"we would travel whole days at a timewithout coming to any water at all.
And what we occasionally came towas the worst kind, the top all covered
with green slime, perfectly muddyand unfit for use by man or horse."

(36:45):
And so, as you mentioned before, Correy,this was this was a problem.
It seems like this was a dry springbecause they weren't coming
onto a lot of useful waterthat they could use along their trip.
(TWILLEY) Absolutely.
And there's there's another account fromone of the soldiers he talks about
by the time they made it to the Cross Timbers
they're moving through the Cross Timbers, and the soldiers are reaching up

(37:08):
and they're grabbing handfuls of muscadine grapes.
And and the grapes are apparently past their prime
because, you know, he's talking aboutthey're just
engorging themselves on these grapes,just trying to get water from them.
But he says they're starting to sufferfrom the effects of actually getting drunk
from the grapes. They're,they're just eating so many of them.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, and, I mean,

(37:28):
you eat enough grapes and other things start happening.(TWILLEY) Right?
(THOMPSON) You know that, make lifea little bit rough, too.
I won't go into it,but you all know what it is.
So, but yeah, we start having trouble.By the time
they get to the campon the Canadian River,
they have 27 men that are illthat they have to leave behind.
And this is just a continual,this is a continual issue

(37:51):
on this whole trip about peoplejust continuing to get sick.
Now, 12 days out on the trip, General Leavenworth, Colonel Dodge,
and about 40 soldiers left the regimentunder the command of Colonel Kearney
and proceeded to Camp Washita.
All this was at the mouthof the Washita River.
And, the rest of the regimentwould follow behind at a slower pace.

(38:12):
But this is a seminal timein this journey, too, because,
while Leavenworth wasn'tthe commander of the dragoon regiment,
he was the commander of basicallythe whole army at this particular time.
And he's along on this journey,and he decides he's going to do something
maybe a little foolish, but,I mean, who amongst us wouldn't do it

(38:33):
if we had the opportunity?
He wants to chase a buffalo.
And I'm reminded of that scenein “Lonesome Dove”
where Gus decidesthat he wants to chase buffalo.
And Pea Eye says, why do you want to do that?
And he's like, because pretty soon there'snot going to be any buffalo to chase.
And he wants to do it for fun.
And, he does it,but he ends up getting hurt.
He gets thrown off of his horse andhe develops a fever and a cough,

(38:59):
and things are looking pretty roughfor General Leavenworth.
(TWILLEY) Yeah.
So I have a theory on this one,and it's, it's,
you know, when you when you look at the injuries.
Now, of course I'm not, you know,a medical, person by any stretch.
But, you know, my theoryis, is when he gets, he gets thrown off,
he he describes a pain in his side.
And and my theory is, is thathe more than likely, probably broke a rib.

(39:22):
And what he describesand what they describe his symptoms
are something very similarto having a punctured lung
from that, from that broken rib.
And, that's kind of what my thought isbecause it seems as though it turns into
what we now know is pneumonia andstuff like that from, from that injury.
(THOMPSON) I think that's probably as gooda guess of any,

(39:44):
Bob, along what may have happened to him.
(BLACKBURN) Yeah, probably so.
But, you know, thebuffalo would have been a tempting target.
And they were.
The southern herdwas in the millions at the time.
And that's why the Indians were so mobileand and so prosperous at the time

(40:04):
is that the buffalo were really thick
on the Southern Plains and maybejust too tempting for him to pass up.
Well, and the Indiansthat were along with the regiment,
they would go out and hunt the buffaloand that would be a food source for them.
And another personthat we've neglected to mention so far
that was on this tripwas Jefferson Davis.

(40:26):
And Jefferson Davis would of coursego on to be Secretary of War
for the United Statesand be the president of the Confederacy.
But, years later Jefferson Davis'swife recalls
that her husband said that buffalo meatwas the most distasteful of all foods.
She said thatthat expedition ruined him,
he never wanted buffalo meat ever againafter this, because I suppose

(40:50):
they had to eat so much of it.
(BLACKBURN) Well, and typically people prefer to eat,
I have had buffalo tongueat the restaurant the Fort in Morrison,
Colorado.
They still serve buffalo tongue,and buffalo tongue is very tasty.
And the hump was good, but a lot ofthe other muscles would have been tough.
Very lean. Would have had the fatthat a lot of people expected at the time,

(41:12):
because the typical Plains warriorat the time would have been consuming
from three to five pounds of of meat a day,and it was not very meaty.
So it didn't have a lot of caloriesand so they ate a lot of meat.
But yeah, people would eat buffaloif they had to but if they could,
they would just eat the tongueand a little bit of that buffalo hump.
(THOMPSON) Well, after a
while they get to Fort Washita,which, as I mentioned,

(41:35):
was down by the Red Riverand the Washita River
and Leavenworth is sick.
And, at that point, Leavenworthkind of, he doesn't go
any farther on the trip.
And actually, on July 21, 1834,he will die of his wounds.
And, but this is a really interesting part of,

(41:57):
of the journey down through here becauseGeorge Catlin wrote about the landscape
around at Camp Washitaand he said, "we are at this place
on the banks of the Red River, havingTexas under our eye on the opposite bank,
our encampment is on the point of the landbetween the Red and the
False Washita rivers at their junction.And the country

(42:18):
about us is a panorama toobeautiful to be painted with a pen.
It is like most of the country in theseregions, composed of prairie and timber,
alternating in the most delightful shapesand proportions
that the eye of a connoisseur coulddesire.
The verdure is everywhere,everywhere of the deepest green.
And the plains about usare literally speckled with buffalo."

(42:39):
Can you imagine seeing that for the first timewhat that would have been like?
(TWILLEY) That would be amazing.
(THOMPSON) I think that,
you know, making your waythrough this untouched ground, you know,
Native Americans are the only oneswho have seen this before.
I just think how strikingthat might have been.
Of course we have,
we have George Catlin paintings of,you know, all along the way he's

(43:04):
doing sketches and drawings, and laterhe does paintings that are based on those.
And you can tell through those paintingsjust how beautiful it was.
And he would go on to amass
a huge collection of paintings,many of which survive today
and are in the Smithsonian.(BLACKBURN) And here in Oklahoma at the Gilcrease.
In fact, years ago, probably50 years ago, I bought some prints

(43:27):
of some of his paintingsthat were in the Gilcrease collection,
had them on my wall for probably 40 years.They faded
so I don't have them upnow, but, yeah, they had
Thomas Gilcrease was able to go outand find some of those when he was buying
art with, oil money in the 1920s and '30s.
(THOMPSON) Something else they would find alongthe way is, they would find oil,

(43:49):
seeping up through the groundat different places along the way.
And, you know, at that particular point in time, nobody
you couldn't drink it, you couldn'tdo anything with it.
But, a little bit of a harbingerof the future for Oklahoma to see what
what our future resourceis going to be along those lines.
They end up leaving Fort Washita or

(44:12):
or Camp Washita andacross the Washita River.
They reorganize their company to six companies of 42 enlisted men each.
Dodge was placed in charge, and then they continue on their way west.
So they've gone southwest
to the Red River, and now they'rethey're looking to go almost due west,
although they they kind of meander in aline, to get to where they're going.

(44:36):
On July 9,they encounter a party of Indians
that they believe to be Wichitas,and then
they try to make contact with them,but they aren't able to.
Now about this time, middle of July,is when they enter into the Cross Timbers.
And we talked about that lately,or just a minute ago.

(44:56):
I don't think, you know, in Oklahoma right now, today,
Bob, we can drive across the state
pretty easily on our highways and roads,and we don't give much thought
to the terrain or the landscapethat we're crossing.
The Cross Timbers were formidable
if you're trying to get through them
in 1834. Can you talk alittle bit about how, you know,

(45:21):
how difficultit might have been to get through that.
(BLACKBURN) Well, the Cross Timbers was this uniqueenvironmental zone that really goes
from north Texas through most of Oklahoma,up into southern Kansas.
And it was stunted growth, oaks typicallygrowing and red, the red Osage beds.
And so the trees did not grow deep roots.

(45:43):
And so they did not get very tall,
and they would grow intoan impenetrable barrier.
Washington Irving,who came west in the 1820s,
would write about itand he called it impenetrable
and like an iron wallthat you had to hack your way through.
And it was difficult.
And, it really was an impedimentto, to travel east and west, and,

(46:07):
and that's one reason the soldiers,wanted these Indian guides,
they knew how to get throughsome of these, these areas.
If you just tried to go cross-countrythrough the Cross Timbers,
you were not going to get there.
It would have been a real chore.
And so you can stillsee some of the native
Cross Timbers.
Okmulgee Countyhas probably one of the largest sections.

(46:30):
There's some
areas there where people can get out and see this.
But it was a unique formation,and if you’re familiar with Oklahoma City,
on the east side of Oklahoma City is wherethe Cross Timbers end on the west side.
And then you get into the High Plains.
And Oklahoma City was established there
because the railroads,when they were building north and south,

(46:51):
did not want to have to crossthrough the Cross Timbers
and have to hack their way throughand go over the hills and valleys,
just go a little bit farther beyond theCross Timbers and build on this open land.
That’s the reason the Chisholm Trail is where it is.
They didn't want to go through the Cross Timbers,
and so these soldiers had to deal withthat as an impediment to travel.

(47:11):
(THOMPSON) Correy,
talk about all of the equipment,the wagons, the animals
that would have been on an expeditionlike this,
and then trying to hack your waythrough the Cross Timbers.
(CORREY) Yeah.
So the standard expedition,I mean, you know, you have,
of course, your military equipmentand things like that, but you also have,
of course, all your supply wagonsand you have, you know,
nobody likes to ever talk,you know, about the lowly cook, but,

(47:33):
you know,you had cooks for your officers.
You had, you know,you had all of their cooking equipment.
Then you had the food itself, you know,in some of these expeditions,
they would they would actually have herdsthat they would,
they would call it eitherbeef or mutton on the hoof.
And they would literally drive livestockwith these expeditions

(47:55):
to keep fresh meat on hand.
Not as much on this one,especially in the later stages
of this, but, but, you see, like, it'smore than just a simple wagon train.
Usually it's a wagon train
plus all of these other logistical supportthings.
(THOMPSON) Yeah, it's a lot to get through.
And I live in Edmond.
I think I'm still in the Cross Timberswhere I live.

(48:17):
You go a few miles to the west of me,and of course, you get out of that.
But if you've ever dealt with greenbrier,I mean viney, prickly
thorns that are justgrowing all through the trees.
And, I mean, I just walk outin the little greenbelt behind
my house, and I think, how in the worldwould anybody ever get through this?

(48:37):
I mean, it is nasty stuff.
And, you come out of that,and if you're not wearing
long sleeve shirt,your your arms are just hacked up.
So it is it is tough.
And I don't think we havea proper appreciation for how dense it is.
I think in Oklahoma we think, oh,we don't have much dense forests,
but you're trying to work your waythrough it in a massive

(48:59):
train of animals and people.
It can be pretty rough.
(TWILLEY) As someone who's worn wool and triedto get through greenbriers like that,
yeah, it is such a pain.
And you end up almost on your facemore times than you'd like to admit.
(THOMPSON)Well, by
by July 14, we’re out of the Cross Timbers,and one of the things,

(49:19):
they make contact with a band of 30 Comanches. We're farther west now.
Colonel Dodge ordered a white flagbe put up, and, they approached
one of the the Comanches that was leadinghis particular group of people.
He has a white buffalo skin on a lance.
He approaches the group of dragoons,

(49:41):
and they actually greet each other,and they start talking to each other.
I thought this was pretty fascinating.
In order to communicate,
they had a translator that translatedfrom English to Spanish
and from Spanish to Shoshoniand to be able to talk to each other.
And I heard of similar typesof communications with Lewis and Clark

(50:01):
when they met severalof the different Indian tribes.
He had to go through threeor four different languages
before you could get to somewherewhere you could actually,
almost communicate to each other.
And Colonel Dodge, he talks abouthey, we're on a mission from peace
with the United States government.We want to meet with you.
We want to meet with your leaders.
And, the leader of the Comanche,

(50:22):
the Comanche chief
was actually on a hunting expedition,but he said, come to my village.
And the person that they, end upmeeting is a
Comanche chief or a Comanche namedHis-oo-san-chez.
I hope I said that right.
Correy, did I get even close there?
(TWILLEY) I couldn't even tell you.

(50:43):
(THOMPSON) But they meet
His-oo-san-chez, and,he's actually a mixed blood Comanche.
But he had earned the respect of his tribebecause of, like Bob,
you said earlier, all of his exploitsand bravery and battle.
And so they go back.
They were invited back to the Comanchecamp with about 600 to 800 lodges

(51:05):
at the foot of the Wichita, what we now knowtoday as the Wichita Mountains.
Although back in those days
they assumed that they were partof the Rocky Mountains.
(TWILLEY) You know, you'd made the commentabout them being met,
with that, basically that white flagmade out of the buffalo skin.
And if I'm not mistaken, that is one ofCatlin’s paintings is that exact moment.

(51:26):
So you can actually look that upand see Catlin’s view of that and Dodge
at the timewasn't even wearing his uniform.
He was wearing a buckskin uniform.
And if you look closely at the,at the painting that Catlin does,
you can see Dodge is actually wearing,like a civilian buckskin clothing.
(THOMPSON) Oh, that's fascinating.
Now, Correy,we're in your neck of the woods now,
where we're meeting the Comanches hereand where we're ultimately going to camp.

(51:50):
What do you know about that areaand where they would have been?
(TWILLEY) So we think we've identified at least, one spot where they were,
they ended up at one point.
So on Fort Sill proper, on the east sideof Fort Sill.
So the east side of Highway 44,there's a small encampment area,
what we believe

(52:10):
was one of the dragoon encampments,if not the, it was at least one of them.
And what we found there.
Now, there's never beenany archaeology done, as far as I know, but
there's a small oxbowin the creek over there, and the creek
has about 15 foot tall cliffs or banks.
And then across the mouth of that oxbow

(52:31):
is what you can tellwas, was an earthworks that was built.
And then we've had, two dragoon buttonsthat were found in that area.
So, it it hints now, two dragoon buttons
a camp doesn't make, but it does hintthat they were right there in that area.
So pretty much from where the mountainsare through to where Fort Sill

(52:52):
proper is, in that area iswhere all that contact is being made.
(THOMPSON) And interestingly enough,they're very hungry by this point.
And of course, thethe Comanches were more of a
nomadic tribe, but, another settlement just near
the Comanche camp was the Wichitas, which were more of a farming tribe,

(53:13):
and the Wichitas,they will make their way over
to the Wichita camp as well,
which held about a couple of thousand people,
and they will start taking buttons off
of their uniformsand trading that for food.
And so you kind of wonder if some ofthose buttons that they found, where were

(53:35):
they'd plucked those off to trade themfor food at that particular time?
(TWILLEY) It could have been.
(BLACKBURN) And too, most of the food that they would have had would have been corn, squash even,
and beans
would have been some of the main things
they would have addedand all very nutritious.
And so I'm sure that those hungry soldiersfinally had a good meal.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
So by July 18, Comanche guide leads

(53:57):
Dodge and 183 men to that Wichita village.
They,they end up, talking with the Wichitas.
And, on July 22, 1834
was the very first formalnegotiations between the Plains Indians
and the United States government inAmerican history.

(54:18):
And so it's, it'sa very important day in history
about making thatparticular bit of contact.
Correy, how do you put thatin historic perspective?
(TWILLEY) It's kind of interesting.
One of the things I was just thinkingabout while you were saying that is
that is still where the Army hasa lot of interaction with these tribes.
We still maintain contactwith those same tribes

(54:40):
right now at Fort Sill, rightwhere this all began.
We have a a large tribal presencein the region, in the area.
And, of course, they come onto Fort Sill on a regular basis.
And it's interesting to see that happening191 years ago.
And it's still happening.
Just
last weekend, we just had a big programwith a lot of the tribes.

(55:04):
So, it's it's interestingput into that perspective
that it's stillgoing on the same way it did.
(THOMPSON) The, the Wichitachief was actually off on a hunt as well.
And so they end up dealing with Waco Chief We-ter-ra-shah-ro
and, they,they have negotiations with them.
They end up going back to the Comanchecamp, and they, Colonel Dodge

(55:29):
and the expedition and convince themto come back with them to Fort Gibson.
And ultimately,the hope was to go on to Washington, DC
and make a formal peace treatyand a peace accord.
And so on the daythat they're due to leave, they had 2,000
armed Indians, at that meeting placewhere they were going to leave,

(55:50):
and you end up having the Comanches,the Wichitas,
and the Kiowas are going to go backwith them to Fort Gibson
with their respective delegations,and they're going to ultimately
try to move on to Washington, DC,
which, doesn't really end up happeningand we’ll talk about that

(56:11):
here in just a few minutes.
But, they don't go back the same way, though,
they take a more direct route back.
And that's because of sickness.
Ultimately, so many of them are sick,and are in poor health,
not only because of the sicknessthat they're enduring
but because of the food situation,that they take a more direct route back,

(56:33):
and they kind of follow the Canadian Riverall the way back to Norman
or present day Norman,and then on up to Fort Gibson.
What's interesting,we just talked about the,
we talked about the Cross Timbers is,the Plains Indians
were no fan of the Cross Timbers as well.
They did not like it one bit.
So they get back

(56:54):
to Fort Gibson and then, of course, they end up
meeting togetherbecause of a lack of budget and funding.
And really, the Plains Indians
delegation was not really thrilledabout going to DC anyway.
So they end up having meetings.
They convene on September 2, 1834.
And the three tribes I just mentioned,also the Cherokees, the Muscogees,

(57:18):
the Choctaws, the Osages, and the Senecasmeet together for about three days.
They don't end upreally making any agreements.
But, Colonel Dodgebelieved that it was possible to negotiate
a lasting peacebetween all parties on the frontier,
and the Ccommissioner of Indian Affairssaid this expedition

(57:38):
made a "deep and durable impressionon the Plains tribes."
And that was, that was the result of our first
expedition on the Plains to the Plains Indians tribes.
Any thoughts and wrapping upthis particular topic, Bob?
Well, the the lasting impact would beof illusion really at the time because

(58:02):
the history of American interactionwith Indian tribes.
Well, really until the 1870s in Oklahoma,
would be one of conflictand changing treaties and taking land.
And really, you don't have much conflictuntil people start
moving out onto the high plains,either going to the California goldfields,

(58:22):
you get a series of warscoming out of that, because here come these
people moving through the hunting grounds,scaring off the game.
And the Indians would have said,this is our land.
This is where we hunt.
So you get more conflictstarting in '49 and '50,
and then you getthe transcontinental railroads being built
and conflict and settlers movingfarther out.

(58:44):
And, you know, by the 1850s, you have the
the Five Tribesreally trying to control more to the west.
And then you get the cowboyswith the Chisholm Trail
and the Great Western Trail, just moreopportunities for this cultural conflict,
two different ways of lifethat are really incompatible.
American governmentcoming up with their solution,

(59:07):
which was let's make them goodlittle Americans, make them farmers,
make them good little housewives,and give them the infamous farmers,
educate them, and maybe they'll give uptheir ancient ways.
Well, the Indians who had these ancient ways
and their own code of honor,their own governmental systems, their own
worldviews of spiritualityand how they live on the land,

(59:28):
there was really no wayto find that compromise.
And so you get several generations
of of warring peoplebetween the military and,
then after the Civil War,you establish Fort Sill,
Fort Reno, Camp Supplyand the other forts all the way up
to the Canadian frontier and southinto Texas, Fort Richardson, and

(59:52):
really never found a way to make that workwith the Southern Plains Indians.
It was always a cultural conflict in onuntil they were defeated
and really discouraged with heat,losing the buffalo herds.
Their commissary on on hoofwas finally gone.
Here in the Southern Plainsby really '76, '77 the later in the north.

(01:00:13):
But basically it became downto placing them on reservations
and taking that land away with a General Allotment Act in 1887; statehood, 1907.
And not reallyuntil you get back to the 1970s,
and we talk about tribal sovereignty,
do we start really finding waysto make these two cultures

(01:00:34):
compatible and working togetherfor the common good.
But it largely was conflictcoming out of the 1830s.
(THOMPSON) And, Correy, we have,that's the long arc of history for sure.
But any progress that might have been madewith relations of the Plains tribes
was completely obliteratedwhen the Civil War came along.
(TWILLEY) Right. Oh, yeah.
And and when you get into thewhat the Civil War turns into here

(01:00:56):
on the Plains,I mean, it's it is more brutal here.
And I hate to say thatwith the size of the battles
that were out east,but it was more brutal
per capita here than anywhere else in thein the United States.
And, you know, when, Dr. Bob,you were talking about,
you know, kind of the, the wrap upof all this and what this turns into my,

(01:01:17):
my mind is going to how this wraps upfor those soldiers.
And, you know, Catlin himselfeventually ends up getting sick,
and he's sitting in his hospitalbed in Fort Gibson,
and he mentions,you know, this thing wraps up, in essence,
they start making their way back in Julyand all that stuff.
And he's talking about,
you know,one of the things that we

(01:01:37):
we failed to mention in a lot of theseis how long it takes them to get back,
because they get so spread out,
that by September, they're still rollingin, they're still trickling in.
And he talks about from his hospital bedevery single day,
he has to listen to the drums and fifesas they play, as they go bury
somebody else from this thing.
And, you know, therethey are still burying

(01:02:00):
people from this expeditionas late as October and November.
(THOMPSON) You know, Catlin estimatesthat as many as 150 soldiers die,
four to five soldiersa day, as a result of this expedition.
So this was costly for sure.
And in fact, Colonel Dodge wrote,"perhaps there has never been in America

(01:02:21):
a campaign that operatedmore severely on man and horse."
(TWILLEY) That's exactly it.(BLACKBURN) You know, Trait.
One thing, we might encourage peopleto learn more about this, and
Correy mentioned Dr. Agnew earlier.That’s Dr. Brad Agnew.
Brad earned his
PhD with Arrell Gibsonat OSU in the 1960s.

(01:02:42):
He's a little older than me, but not much.
But he became a professorat Northeastern State College,
later university, in Tahlequah,
and Brad wrote the history of Fort Gibson.
OU Press published it, still kind of the seminal work,
and a lot of people have writtenabout these expeditions.
But if people want to look up a book,look up Brad Agnew

(01:03:02):
and the history of Fort Gibson.
(THOMPSON) Well and I will say also,I haven't had the pleasure
of meeting him yet,but much of my research for this podcast
came from that book that he wrote on Fort Gibson.
I mean, it's really, really fantastic stuff.
And I'll mention this, and this is likemany of our podcasts that we do,
but we only scratched the surface
in these things. There are so many more detailsthat we don't get to

(01:03:24):
because we only have an houror so to talk to you.
So there's a lotthat we have to leave out.
So I would always encourage our listenersto go
and research these topics on their own,because there's so much detail
that we just have to gloss over becausewe only have a certain amount of time.
But my hope is that what we do hereinspires you to go learn more.

(01:03:45):
And that's kind of why weexist at the OHS.
(BLACKBURN) And then to get out.
And I would encourage peopleto go to the Wichita Mountains.
That's where I got married in 1978.
Just had a wedding anniversary last week.
Number 47. (THOMPSON) Congratulations.
(BLACKBURN) Thank you.
And, when I was asked once
during the centennial in 2007,what's my favorite place in Oklahoma?

(01:04:06):
Of course, I can offend a lot of peopleby choosing one,
but I said it has to be Fort Sill standingin that that old quadrangle
with the original fort, you can't seemany manmade improvements from there.
There are certain places
you can stand where you feel like you'rereally on the frontier between the
Wichita Mountains, a historical importance,cultural, environmental importance,

(01:04:28):
and then Fort Sill's placeand our history is really unique.
So I would encourage people to get out,
look aheadand how to get into the historical
places at Fort Sill, but then to go outand spend some time in the Wichitas
and camp and you I know you've campedat Camp Doris before.
I have to, it's just a magical placeon on the Southern Plains.

(01:04:51):
(THOMPSON) Yeah, it's it's one of my happyplaces in Oklahoma for sure as well.
I just love it out there.
Not so much when it's 110 out,but the fall and spring are nice.
(TWILLEY) Yeah, and I've taken both of my boys outCamp Doris as well, and, you know,
and then when you get done, you or,you know, when you wake up in the morning,
you go for, you know, quick little naturehike or whatever and there’s,

(01:05:12):
there's the buffalo out on the plainsright there.
It's as close
as you can get in some placesas what they experienced back then.
(THOMPSON) Yeah.
Well, Correy, I just want to thank you
for being a part of this podcastand sharing your expertise with us today.
(TWILLEY) Absolutely. It is my pleasure.
I love coming out and doing stufflike this, and I love
getting to share about the history ofnot just the Army, but Oklahoma history

(01:05:34):
as well.
(BLACKBURN) Well, over my career,I've known a lot of young people
come along, and,some people just want a job. But Correy, you’re
one of those that I call a lifer.
You're in this for life.
(TWILLEY) Absolutely.(BLACKBURN) You enjoyed it.
It's probably enriched your life.
And you served the communitywell, now through the military,
but at our civilian eventsand really educating people

(01:05:56):
on why history is important to all of us.
(TWILLEY) Well, thank you very much.
(THOMPSON) Well, that'll wrap us up for today.
And, folks, we appreciate you listening.
And we can't wait to come back
with you. We’ll be off in July,
so take that opportunity
to listen to some episodesyou might have missed along the way,
but we'll be backwith another great episode in August.
So thanks and have a great day.(upbeat music playing)

(01:06:20):
You've been listening to "A Very OK Podcast"
hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn.
The podcast is produced by the OklahomaHistorical Society.
Visit us at okhistory.org
and find us on social mediaby searching for @okhistory.
I encourage you to purchase a membershipto us to help us continue our mission

(01:06:42):
to collect, preserve, and shareOklahoma's unique and fascinating history.