ranged in condition from fair to good.

These buildings fell into private ownership and most of them were razed for the material that was in them. Four of the stone buildings are standing. The barracks was originally 23 by 154 feet in size, containing ten rooms for the accommodation of two companies of Infantry. The north half of this building was torn down and the material used in the construction of a house.

The Oklahoma Historical Society purchased the remaining south half of the barracks building, the stone ammunition building, and the great brick oven, together with the land on which they stand. Considerable money was expended in the restoration of these buildings, and the barracks building is now occupied by a custodian and his family who will show the place to visitors. The most picturesque exhibit at Fort Gibson is the reconstructed log stockade built on the site of the first log fort. This work was directed by a commission created by the State of Oklahoma.

The best-preserved relic of the old fort is the commanding officer’s residence, facing what was the parade ground of the fort. Colonel William Babcock Hazen came to command the fort in January 1871. He brought there his bride who, as his widow, was later to become the wife of the Spanish-American hero, Admiral George Dewey. Lieutenant Colonel John Joseph Coppinger, commandant of the fort, occupied the building in 1886 with his family. James G. Blaine, father of Mrs. Coppinger, visited his daughter in this residence and was confined there at one time by illness. The cornerstone of the building bears the inscription: “Erected A. D. 1867, A. S. Kimball, Capt. A. Q. M. U. S.”

The story of Fort Gibson is an epic of the prairies; a tale of the winning of the great Southwest; an account of the conquest of the fleet warriors of the plains; a narrative of the security of trade and contact with old Santa Fe and California. Fort Gibson saw the beginning and the end of the keelboat and the whole career of the river steamboat.

Unknown to the present generation, the old fort and the few relics of that venerable establishment that have escaped the hand of the vandal should still have a claim on our consideration. Around them cluster associations with the past and reminders of early attempts at the civilization of this western country. The activities of this frontier post, the toil and hardship, sickness and death endured there, the picturesqueness of its population, the pageantry of its activities and functions—all these are calculated to stir the imagination of the beholder and stimulate in him an interest in the fascinating history of this country.

APPENDIX I
National Cemetery

There were several small cemeteries around Fort Gibson in which the dead were buried from the earliest days of the fort. The number of interments was increased to such an extent during the Civil War that more space was required, and in 1869 the National Cemetery was established on land that was originally part of the military reservation of Fort Gibson. After the abandonment of the fort, the reservation was transferred to the Department of the Interior on February 11, 1891, a parcel of seven acres being reserved for cemeterial purposes.

On August 6, 1872, William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, gave instructions to have the remains of his father, General William Goldsmith Belknap, removed from Fort Washita, where they were interred in 1851, to the cemetery at Keokuk, Iowa, the home of the Secretary. At the same time he directed the quartermaster general to arrange for the removal of the remains of other soldiers and their families found at Fort Washita, Fort Towson and Fort Arbuckle, to the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson. Bids were advertised for, and a contract was let to P. J. Byrne of Fort Gibson, who succeeded in removing the remains of forty-six persons in 1872; only two of them, however, were definitely known to be soldiers. Owing to the careless manner in which the men who served at these remote posts had been buried, and the fact that fires had been permitted to run through the cemeteries and burn off all wooden headboards, and the difficulty of finding other marks of identification in the graves, or indeed, of finding the remains and the boxes containing them in such condition that they could be removed at all, instructions were given to abandon further removal. However, information was later acquired of forty-six additional graves at Fort Washita: fifty-four at Fort Arbuckle, and eighteen at Big Sandy Creek on the Fort Smith and Fort Arbuckle road. Efforts were then renewed, and another contractor undertook to remove the remains to the Fort Gibson National Cemetery but this effort proved abortive also.

In 1873 it was reported to the office of the Adjutant General at Washington that the bodies of one hundred and twenty-five soldiers killed in the Battle of the Washita were buried on that battlefield. This again stimulated interest in the subject of removal, and the visitor will see in the Officers’ Circle in the National Cemetery the grave of Major Joel H. Elliott of the Seventh Infantry, killed on November 27, 1868, at the Battle of the Washita.

The removal of remains from all these burial places was attended with much difficulty because of the lack of identifying marks. It was impossible to determine whether they were removing soldiers or civilians, and the whole undertaking was attended with much confusion. It appeared that during the Civil War a large number of Confederates died and were buried near Fort Washita. The correspondence relating to the subject would indicate that removal of the dead from this cemetery was limited to those known to have been in the service of the Union Army, and the Confederate dead were probably not disturbed.

The result was summarized in a report of December 31, 1893, which accounted for graves in the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson, of 231 known to be soldiers and 2,212 whose identity and service were unknown. Of the comparatively few who are identified by inscriptions on monuments, the greatest number are to be seen within what is known as the Officers’ Circle. Among these is Flora, the young Cherokee wife of Lieutenant Daniel H. Rucker, who died at Fort Gibson June 26, 1845. Her husband survived her to become in later years Quartermaster General of the United States Army. John Decatur, brother of Stephen Decatur, died on November 12, 1832, while a sutler at Fort Gibson. Lieutenant John W. Murray of the West Point Class of 1830, of the Seventh Infantry, was killed on February 14, 1831, by being thrown from his horse. Murray’s classmate, Lieutenant James West, died at Fort Gibson on September 28, 1834.

On May 27, 1831, Lieutenant Frederick Thomas of the Seventh Infantry, a West Point graduate of 1825, was drowned in the Arkansas River. His classmate, Lieutenant Benjamin W. Kinsman, also of the Seventh Infantry, died May 14, 1832. Lieutenant Thomas C. Brockway, a graduate of West Point of the class of 1828, died at Fort Gibson, September 28, 1831. Among those removed from Fort Towson were West Point graduates of the class of 1826, Lieutenants Charles L. C. Minor and Alexander G. Baldwin, both of the Fifth Infantry, who died at Fort Towson in 1833 and 1835 respectively, and Lieutenant James H. Taylor of the Third Infantry, who was drowned near Fort Towson in the Cositot River, in 1835. Also in the Officers’ Circle is the monument of Captain Billy Bowlegs, the celebrated Seminole warrior, who served in the Union Army and died during the Civil War, and who is buried in another part of the cemetery.

General John Nicks (also buried in this cemetery) acquired his title from the appointment, by the Governor of Arkansas Territory, as commanding general of the Arkansas militia. He was later sutler at