Fort Gibson was created in 1824. At its inception, it was the westernmost outpost for the U.S. Army, meant to guard the border of the Louisiana Purchase from incursion by Spain and later Mexico. The harsh conditions of garrison life on the Plains, including fevers and arduous marches in the heat and dust were viewed by many officers and men to be almost a death sentence. What is now Oklahoma and Kansas was designated Indian Territory and the garrison at Fort Gibson had a new assignment, to keep the peace between the various tribes assigned to live there. This was no easy task. Policy makers in Washington seemed oblivious to the fact that Oklahoma at the time was already home to various Plains tribes, notably the Osage, who weren't ready to welcome thousands of other Natives onto land they needed to feed their own families. As soon as they arrived in Oklahoma, many Southeastern Natives often ran into conflict with bands of nomadic Plains warriors trying to defend their hunting range, too. The garrison was spread thin trying to protect the new arrivals from raids by already existing tribes.
Natives who were deported west had been promised rations. These would be provided by government contractors at government expense. The contractors were almost always corrupt and rations were always short. Many Natives who had already suffered the deaths of family members and friends along the trail now faced famine, disease and death themselves. They congregated at Fort Gibson until they could move on to their assigned land and the garrison didn't have the resources to house and feed so many displaced people. The situation became so bad that in 1841, Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock was sent by the Army to investigate. As outspoken as his famous grandfather, Hitchcock wrote several blistering reports to his superiors in Washington. They were shelved and the situation unimproved. Ironically, people who had been successful farmers for generations weren't given seed or other implements to begin their own food production. Neither did the schools or other services outlined in the treaty materialize. With traditional lines of community and tribal leadership disrupted, and unable to hunt or farm for themselves, families and individuals sank further into despair. The Trail of Tears was not over.
There were deep fissures within each tribe, arising from disputes about whether to remove to Oklahoma willingly, or try to fight the inevitable as long as possible. The Muscogee/Creeks had fought an internal civil war in 1813-14 over the issue of land concessions and cooperation with White settlers. After William McIntosh and other leaders ceded the last of Creek land in Georgia in 1825, the old resentments flared again. McIntosh's family fled the vengeance of their fellow Creeks and removed to Oklahoma. As other Muscogee began arriving in 1836, matters came to a head between the two factions, those who supported the leadership of William's son Chilli and those who adamantly did not. Fort Gibson's commander, Col. William Arbuckle, convened a counsel of both sides and the McIntosh faction maintained control.
Cherokee had already begun settling in Oklahoma since the opening decades of the 19th century. The Old Settlers had formed their own government. They did not want to live under newcomers from back east. Once again, factions developed. Old Settlers versus the leadership of John Ross, who had masterminded the Cherokees final exodus from their homeland in 1838. Once again, Arbuckle intervened and Ross' side won out. Anger simmered into open blood feuds between the various Cherokee groups, often stemming from incidents that had happened long before Removal. In both cases, Arbuckle was careful to favor the faction seen by Washington as being most amenable to White interests.
Then there was the matter of blacks who were either held as property by Native families, or where were mixed-race Native themselves. Oklahoma was a slave territory, meaning that owning slaves was legal. Many blacks took the opportunity of the displacement of the Trail of Tears to escape enslavement. Some tribes, such as the Seminole, had large numbers of freed blacks and mixed-race blacks among their ranks. Slave catchers did a lucrative business in Oklahoma, retrieving blacks who fled there hoping for a no-man's land and freedom. The Seminoles suspected, in some cases correctly, that Creeks were assisting the slave catchers or doing slave raiding themselves. Animosity between the Creeks and Seminoles, who had been assigned the same land, added to the tension.
As the Five Southeastern Tribes began to find their own footing in Oklahoma, the need for any protection or assistance from Fort Gibson declined. Arbuckle departed in 1841, believing that he had done a good job in pacifying the various tribes in Oklahoma. The reality was much different. Along with the government contractors and shoddy rations came unscrupulous traders who sold liquor to the tribes despite the fact that it was illegal to do so. Fort Gibson, like other military outposts, generated its own town with the resulting saloons, gambling dens, and brothels. Cherokee leaders petitioned Washington to close down the Fort, which it did in 1857. Then the Civil War happened. Union troops reoccupied Fort Gibson, which fell into Confederates hands in 1862, before being recaptured in 1863 and remaining Union throughout the War. The majority of Creeks and Seminoles supported the Union. The majority of Cherokee supported the Confederacy, though not all. Violence flared between the two groups in the winter of 1861, when Creek leader Opothleyahola led Creek and Seminole warriors and their families from Oklahoma to Fort Row, Kansas in the Trail of Blood on Ice.
After the War, Fort Gibson became a post for units of the 9th and 10th Cavalry, the Buffalo soldiers, fighting a variety of Plains tribes. The black troopers had no choice but to accept an assignment that many white soldiers were lucky they did not have to take. Fort Gibson was finally abandoned in 1890, though the surrounding town of Fort Gibson had become a prosperous cattle town. Beginning in the 1930's, some of the old buildings were reconstructed and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960, later added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
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