Fort Sill, Oklahoma - Active Frontier Fort

OKLAHOMA LEGENDS

Fort Sill - Last Active Frontier Fort

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The only active Army installation of the many frontier forts built on the Southern Plains during the Indian Wars, Fort Sill today is designated as a National Historic Landmark and continues to serve as home of the U.S. Army Field Artillery and the United States Army Field Artillery School (FATC).

The historic fort was first staked out on January 8, 1869 by Major General Philip H. Sheridan who was leading a campaign into Indian Territory to stop hostile tribes from raiding border settlements in Texas and Kansas. Until the territory opened for settlement, Fort Sill's missions also included law enforcement and ironically, protecting the Indians from outlaws, squatters and cattle rustlers.

Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1889, Caleb Henry Carlton.

Sheridan's massive campaign that first winter involved six cavalry regiments accompanied by frontier scouts "Buffalo Bill" Cody, "Wild Bill" Hickok, Ben Clark, and Jack Stillwell. Troops from the 10th Cavalry, a distinguished unit of black "Buffalo Soldiers" who constructed many of the stone buildings still surrounding the Old Post Quadrangle, camped at the new fort.

At first the garrison was called "Camp Wichita" and referred to by the Indians as "the Soldier House at Medicine Bluffs." Sheridan later named it in honor of his West Point classmate and friend, Brigadier General Joshua W. Sill, who was killed during the Civil War. The first post commander was Brevet Major General Benjamin Grierson and the first Indian agent was Colonel Albert Gallatin Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone.

Several months after the establishment of Fort Sill, President Grant approved a peace policy placing responsibility for the Southwest tribes under Quaker Indian agents. Fort Sill soldiers were restricted from taking punitive action against the Indians who interpreted this as a sign of weakness and soon resumed raiding along the the Texas frontier. However, in 1871 General William Tecumseh Sherman arrived at Fort Sill to find several Kiowa chiefs boasting about a wagon train massacre. Sherman quickly ordered their arrest and two of the Indians attempted to assassinate him.

The raiding continued; however, and without a chance to graze their livestock and faced with the disappearance of the great buffalo herds, the Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne Indians went on full warpath in June, 1874. As the South Plains reverberated with the hoof beats of Indian raiders, the U.S. Army retaliated with the Red River Campaign, which lasted a year, and would end in the final relocation of the Southern Plains Indians to reservations. Quannah Parker and his Quahadi Comanches were the last to abandon the struggle, and their arrival at Fort Sill's Quartermaster Corral in June, 1875 marked the end of Plains Indian warfare on the Southern Plains.

However, that would not be the end of Fort Sill's history with the Indians. In 1892, Lieutenant Hugh L. Scott organized Troop L of the 7th Cavalry, composed of Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Indians, who were credited with helping tribes on the South Plains to avert the bloody Ghost Dance uprising of the 1890s in which many died on the North Plains. Troop L, considered one of the best in the west, was the last Indian Troop in the United States Army until it was mustered out in 1897.

In 1894 Geronimo and 341 other Apache prisoners of war, captured in Arizona, were brought to the fort where they lived in villages on the range. Geronimo was granted permission to travel for a while with Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show and he visited President Theodore Roosevelt before dying here of pneumonia in 1909. The rest of the Apaches remained on Fort Sill until 1913, where they were taught to build houses, raise crops and herd cattle.

Geronimo in 1887, photo by Ben Wittck.

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