Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Indian Territory, 1862 Part III: Battle of Old Fort Wayne

 

Newtonia Taken

Newtonia was a big battle in terms of the Trans-Mississippi and the victors were enthused. A history of Shelby’s cavalry claimed that their victory “was decisive.”[1] This was hardly the case. While Salomon had been roundly beaten, his defeat did nothing to halt Union operations. He had simply gotten far ahead of thousands of other troops under his superior blunt and under Totten. The next day, October 1, General Blunt arrived with reinforcements. Schofield also departed Springfield and caught up with Totten’s division. Schofield took charge and ordered Blunt and Totten’s divisions to converge on Newtonia with their 12,000 men. An attack was projected at dawn on October 4. Colonel Douglas Cooper, aware of the oncoming Federals, called on General Rains for reinforcements. Rains said none could arrive. On October 3 part of Shelby’s brigade rode out and captured a few pickets, only to learn that Totten’s division was bearing down on them. On the same day Rains ordered Cooper to withdraw from Newtonia.

Nearby at Granby, Major Buster, who had barely made it in time to participate in the battle of September 30, also encountered advance elements of the Union and put up a short fight before retreating to Newtonia. Buster could not find any superior officer and took command himself, ordering Howell to deploy. Shelby showed up and prepared a defense. The civilians who had found themselves in the center of the last fight heard what was coming and fled into the prairie with their valuables. As it turned out Shelby wisely decided to retreat and he and the others headed south. Thus the Confederates abandoned the town that they had fought so long and hard to keep just a few days earlier.[2] These events also undid the Confederate concentration in southwest Missouri. General Hindman now planned to collect his forces in Northern Arkansas and then return to its northern neighbor. In the meantime Blunt had his eyes on the Arkansas-Indian Territory border.

 

Old Fort Wayne

As a Kansan, Blunt had long wanted to conquer Indian Territory for some time. Earlier designs on an invasion of north Texas were no longer present. His goals now had a more humanitarian slant. Indian refugees in Kansas continued to suffer from a wide array of deprivations and sickness. Despite resolutions in far-away Washington DC, relief was scarce and mismanaged. Blunt suspected that the contractors and others in Kansas had turned relief efforts into an opportunity to commit fraud and enrich themselves, at the expense of the Indians of course. If he could get them back onto their homelands with adequate military protection, their lot could improve.[3]

The First Division left Pea Ridge at 7 PM on October 20th. Blunt brought his Second and Third Brigades. The regiments in these included the 1st and 3rd Indian Home Guards, the 2nd, 6th, 10th, and 11th Kansas, the 1st and 2nd Kansas Batteries, and 4 additional mountain howitzers. Colonel Salomon stayed in the rear to protect his line of supply. Blunt’s men met with General Herron’s force. This delayed him and he did not reach Bentonville, Arkansas, until dawn on the 21st. The First Division remained there until 5 PM, when scouts reported the location of the enemy force. They estimated the Confederate force, under Stand Watie and Douglas Cooper, as anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 men.[4]

While Blunt invaded Indian Territory, Cooper planned to do the same to Kansas. On October 15th he had received orders to march against Fort Scott. Though he had thousands of men, he was frustrated because General James Rains to the east had taken four of his regiments. These included all of his white troops except a battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel William Buster. The following campaign would have to be conducted primarily by Indian soldiers. Cooper planned to launch his invasion from Old Fort Wayne, a post founded by US Dragoons in 1838 (and named after Revolutionary War hero Mad Anthony Wayne). This was in Indian Territory, but straddled its northeastern border with Arkansas. The closest town, Maysville, was 3 and a half miles off in Arkansas. The encampment was protected on the north and south by ravines, and the ground opened up in the direction of Maysville. Several Confederate leaders had used the location because it enabled them to move into Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri.

When he arrived he only found part of Watie’s regiment. Captain Sampson Folsom had taken his Choctaws to the Osage Mills, while the Creeks and Chickasaws were off on their own expedition. Cooper had to wait until the rest of the Confederate allies arrived. Folsom, who had been terrible at following directions for the past couple months, failed to appear. The Indians were reluctant to attack Kansas at this time of year. Cold weather was approaching, and they lacked an adequate amount of clothing and healthy ponies. Cooper also knew that the Indians were always reluctant to leave their home territory. Earlier in the year General Albert Pike had to shower them with extra payments to march them to the Battle of Pea Ridge. A move into Kansas could see mass desertions. This was why Cooper wanted white (or rather Confederate) troops, who were more willing to march hundreds of miles from home out of devotion to the cause of a new southern nation.[5]

At 2 in the morning of October 22, Colonel Cloud, commander of one of Blunt’s brigades, ordered his regiments to halt so that the rest of the column could catch up. The exhausted men dropped into the brush on the roadside and immediately fell asleep. Unfortunately for them Blunt did not appreciate this stop and ordered them up and back on the road. Blunt recorded a “severe night march of 30 miles.”[6] Blunt rode ahead with Captain Russell and two men of his 2nd Kansas. They stopped “at a large, fine house at the edge of the prairie.” Blunt disguised himself as a Confederate soldier who had just escaped Federal captivity. The woman at the house, whose husband was in Watie and Cooper’s encampment, readily gave him information as to the enemy’s dispositions and strength.[7]

Blunt ordered Companies B and I of the 2nd Kansas to slip around to the road between Maysville and the camp. From there they were to capture the enemy pickets from the rear and block off the main escape route. The pickets heard the Kansans approach and ran into the town to alert the inhabitants. All the males exited the town and went into the Confederate camp.[8]

It was now 5 AM and Blunt was ready to prepare his attack. To his alarm, however, he learned he only had 3 companies of the 2nd Kansas. Lieutenant-Colonel Owen Bassett believed that his regiment was so worn out from days of scouting that most of it had failed to wake up when ordered. Bassett sent a Major Fisk to retrieve the rest of his unit. The rest of the column was 7 miles back. Blunt feared that the Confederates would withdraw, so he commanded Colonel Cloud to hurry up his brigade as fast as possible. Then, to the surprise and concern of the Kansans, he pulled out his pistol and told them to follow without any reinforcements. With the partial 2nd Kansas Blunt hoped to hold the enemy in combat so reinforcements could arrive. They came upon the slave of a Confederate and easily enlisted his aid as a guide. The guide led him and the Kansans from Maysville towards the timber near the camp.[9]

 

Battle Near the Old Fort


The 2nd Kansas Volunteers, aided by two mountain howitzers, prepared to attack. Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett managed the Kansan cavalry and formed a skirmish line in the woods. More of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry had finally come up. Basset put his strength at 362 men, with a further 24 managing the howitzers. The woods projected into Beattie Prairie in the shape of “an equilateral triangle.”[10] Blunt’s bodyguard captured 10 Confederates. Bassett was unable to find the enemy so he withdrew the Kansans and they remounted. Two more companies, 100 men, arrived to bolster Bassett’s fighting strength to 462. The riders advanced in a column four abreast.[11]

Due to the fleeing pickets of Maysville, as well as sympathetic civilians, the Confederates were aware that Federals were in the area, but were not certain of their numbers or exact location. Cooper made preparations to withdraw towards Tahlequah, but was slow in doing it. Colonel Watie was marching his men towards Cooper’s headquarters when he received word of Federal movements near the encampment. Indeed he saw the 6th Kansas assembling in the woods. If he continued on his path, he would expose the Confederate flank. “Without waiting for orders,” he reversed his movement and took a line on the Tahlequah Road. In the main camp itself Cooper left in an ambulance and put Lieutenant-Colonel Buster in charge of covering the retreat.[12]

The Kansans dismounted and finally caught sight of their foe. From the woods they passed over a fence and poured “volley after volley into the ranks of the enemy.” The Confederates fell back and the Kansans stopped along another fence. The Confederates had a line about half a mile in length. Stand Watie’s Cherokees remained on the left on the Tahlequah Road. In the center Howell’s Battery of four guns, supported by the 1st Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment, shelled the Kansans for 15 minutes. The Federals believed that the enemy was attempting to flank them on the left and right. Bassett sent ordered Companies F and G to focus on the attempt on his left while one of the howitzers turned towards the right. In fact Buster, sticking to Cooper’s instructions to protect the train or unaware of how easily he could wreck his foe, made no such attempt.[13]

It looked like they would succeed when the 6th Kansas Cavalry and 3rd Indian Home Guard arrived. The 6th Kansas went onto the right and the Cherokees on the left. Watie, who was moving on the Union right, saw the heavier numbers of Federals and ordered his men to fall back to their horses. The supposed flankers on the Union left also withdrew.[14] Captain S.J. Crawford of the 2nd Kansas led Companies B, D, E, H, and K in a charge on the enemy center. At the fence they “halted, loaded, and capped their pieces, bounded over the fence with loud cheers,” and sped forward at the opposing battery. One of the participants wrote, “The enemy shot over us or else we would have been mowed down like grass.” This charge broke the Confederate line and overran their artillery.[15]

The 2nd Indiana Battery under Lieutenant Rabb arrived right at the end of battle, just “in time to pay its respects to the rear of the fleeing rebels.”[16] Colonel Daniel McIntosh and the 1st Creek also arrived just at the end of the battle. They covered the wagon train, rescuing many of the goods-laden vehicles from capture.[17] Blunt set all his cavalry and four howitzers in pursuit. The mounted soldiers skirmished with the rear of the Confederates until their horses could not go on any further.[18] It was a small, short battle that had large ramifications for both Indian Territory and North Arkansas.


Confederate Despair in Indian Territory

General Blunt initially put his casualties at 4 killed and 15 wounded for a total of 19. In a more extensive report he lowered this number to 1 killed and 9 wounded, 4 of the latter mortally. The 2nd Kansas, the most engaged, naturally suffered more with 4 killed or mortally wounded and 3 less severely wounded. The 6th Kansas lost 1 man killed.[19]

Of the enemy Blunt counted about 50 dead and 30 prisoners. The Federals found a few more dead in houses miles from the battlefield. Cooper provided a more detailed table of his casualties, which differs much from Blunt’s though many of the missing could have been dead or missing. The 1st Cherokee Regiment suffered 1 killed, 6 wounded, and 30 missing. The 2nd Creek had 2 killed and 2 wounded. Howell’s Battery counted 17 wounded and 5 missing. Cooper reported, “scarcely a man of the artillery company escaped without a wound or bullet-holes through his clothing.” In total the Confederate general counted 3 killed, 25 wounded, and 35 missing for a total of 63.[20] Not named in the casualty figures were the Choctaw Confederates, 3 of who were killed in the fight.[21]

The victors of this “brief and spirited engagement” acquired “a battery of 6-pounders, a large number of horses, and a portion of their transportation and camp and garrison equipage.” Blunt also reported the captured of a 12-pounder howitzer. The loss of an entire battery showed the extent of the Confederate defeat.[22] One officer summed up the general appraisal of Blunt by his men. “The General is proving himself one of the ablest military men in the field. He pitches into the enemy where ever he finds them.” Blunt had also, by driving the Confederates away from the border, given himself and the other Federals in northern Arkansas a secure line of communications. This would be helpful in the coming Battle of Prairie Grove.[23] Blunt urged his superior, General John Schofield, “to permit me to move forward with my division. Schofield instead ordered him to fall back around Pea Ridge so he could participate in an expected major confrontation in northern Arkansas.[24]

The Confederates retreated across Long Prairie to a Moravian Mission, then to Tahlequah, and finally to Fort Gibson near the Arkansas River.[25] The loss of the artillery was a severe blow to Cooper and the Confederates. He blamed General Rains for the defeat, as Rains had taken 4 of this Texas regiments. He wrote that his “operations will unfortunately be delayed some time.” He further reported that too many of his Indian troops were “bare footed and nearly naked.” The loss of white regiments to Rains also undermined their confidence in the Confederacy. They felt “abandoned by their white brethren.”[26] One article in the Missouri Daily Democrat punned that the Confederates in the territory found “their sensibilities and zeal in the Southern cause considerably Blunted. Forgive the expression.”[27]

Another disaster struck Confederate aligned Indians in the territory, but this time the Federals were not the culprits. The Tonkawas were among the smaller groups in the territory, with 300 living near Fort Cobb and a Confederate agency building. Since most Confederate forces were further east, an alliance of various Indian groups raided the territory with the intention of massacring one of their long-running rivals. The makeup of this force is not certain. A couple sources labeled it as a Comanche led force, others an alliance of pro-Union Indians, or at least members of groups that had aligned with the Federal government. Some Confederate Indians actually put aside the war to pitch in. They were so angry at the Confederacy’s failures to meet its obligations that they were willing to raid and take supplies from one of its agencies. On October 23-24 they assaulted the agency and destroyed it, along with all present Tonkawas. A portion of the targeted people had been off hunting, so they were able to escape to north Texas and prevent a complete genocide.[28]

Watie and his Indians took up position at Briartown at the head of the Canadian River. For the rest of the year he would assist in operations in Arkansas as General Hindman schemed an invasion into Missouri. This would result in a defeat at Cane Hill and a much larger one at Prairie Grove. Watie did not participate in these battles, instead playing an ancillary role. Still, the effect of the defeats, which crushed hopes for a Confederate revival in the Trans-Mississippi, combined with harsh winter conditions to disintegrate the Indian regiments. When the weather got warmer in 1863, Watie would ride again.[29]

Back in Missouri, General Samuel R. Curtis declared in an overarching report, “We will now enter the Indian Territory, and restore the refugee Indians to their homes.”[30] The Battle of Old Fort Wayne as well as events in Arkansas had indeed cleared out Indian Territory north of Arkansas River. Pro-Union Cherokees followed Blunt’s army and tried to resume their lives in now ruined homes. It was a somewhat hollow return. There was always the possibility that pro-Confederate Indians would make raids when the weather warmed up, if not sooner.[31] Not until summer of the following year would the Federals establish a true strong presence in Indian Territory. The battles that accomplished this are covered here.

 

Complete Series Bibliography

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

“Battle of Locust Grove.” https://web.archive.org/web/20150923204423/http://www.civilwar-album.com/indian/locustgrove1.htm.

Bearss, Edwin C. “The Army of the Frontier’s First Campaign: The Confederates Win at Newtonia.” Missouri Historical Review 60 (April 1966): 283-319.

Britton, Wiley. The Union Indian Brigade in the Civil War. Kansas City: F. Hudson Publishing Co., 1922.

Cottrell, Steve. Civil War in the Indian Territory. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1995.

Duncan, Robert. Reluctant General: The Life and Times of Albert Pike. New York: Dutton, 1961.

Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines: Dyer Publishing Company, 1908.

Edwards, John N. Shelby and His Men or, The War in the West. Cincinnati: Miami and Publishing Co., 1867.

Gass, W.T. “Two Close Calls.” Confederate Veteran 12 (1904): 38-39.

“General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences.” Kansas Historical Society Vol. 1 No. 3 (May 1932): 211-265.

John Brown to Hannah Brown, October 3, 1862, MHS.

Josephy, Alvin M. The Civil War in the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

Knight, Wilfred. Red Fox: Stand Watie’s Civil War Years in Indian Territory. Glendale: A.H. Clark Co., 1988.

Monaghan, Jay. The Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865. Boston: First Bison Book Publishing, 1955.

Shea, William L. Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Vol. XIII. Washington D.C. 1898.

Wood, Larry. The Two Civil War Battles of Newtonia. Hoopla Edition, History Press, 2010.

Yarbrough, Fay A. Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country. Hoopla Edition, University of North Carolina Press, 2021.



[1] Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 89.

[2] Wood, Newtonia, hoopla, 54-56.

[3] Abel, American Indian, 208-211, 215.

[4] OR XIII, 325.

[5] OR XIII, 331-332, 33; William L. Shea, Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign, (Chapel Hill: University of North  Carolina Press, 2009), 38; Britton, Indian Brigade, 103-104.

[6] OR XIII, 325-326.

[7] OR XIII, 326.

[8] OR XIII, 326, 329.

[9] OR XIII, 326, 329; Shea, Fields of Blood, 37.

[10] OR XIII, 325, 327, 329.

[11] OR XIII, 327, 330.

[12] OR XIII, 337; Shea, Fields of Blood, 37; Knight, Red Fox, 135.

[13] OR XIII, 327, 330, 335; Shea, Fields of Blood, 39.

[14] OR XIII, 327.

[15] OR XIII, 327, 330; Shea, Fields of Blood, 40.

[16] OR XIII, 327.

[17] OR XIII, 335.

[18] OR XIII, 325, 327.

[19] OR XIII, 324, 331.

[20] OR XIII, 325, 327, 336.

[21] Yarborough, Choctaw Confederates, hoopla, 105.

[22] OR XIII, 324-325, 328; “General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences,” Kansas Historical Society Vol. 1 No. 3 (May 1932), 228.

[23] Shea, Fields of Blood, 42.

[24] “General Blunt’s Account of His Civil War Experiences,” Kansas Historical Society Vol. 1 No. 3 (May 1932), 228.

[25] OR XIII, 335.

[26] OR XIII, 331-332.

[27] Shea, Fields of Blood, 43.

[28] Cottrell, Indian Territory, 60-61; Yarborough, Choctaw Confederates, hoopla, 106.

[29] Knight, Red Fox, 136-140.

[30] OR XIII, 324-325.

[31] Britton, Indian Brigade, 104.

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