Fort Cobb History
Fort Cobb Fair History (by Ronda Weaver)
STATE OF OKLAHOMA
Famous Old Fort
(Taken from the Woodward Bulletin, December 6, 1901)
Fort Cobb, noted in the annals of the southwestern country will soon be nothing more than a memory. The land upon which the fort and the adjacent buildings stood, writes a Wichita (Kan) correspondent, has been purchased by a colonization company and will soon be cut up Into farms.
Some famous battles have been fought around Fort Cobb and some desperate chances have been taken there by white men in settling up the country surrounding the historic old spot. In 1861, Fort Cobb, Arbuckle, and Washita were the principal trading posts and government forts west of the Mississippi river. The headquarters of the military department of the Texas were located at Fort Cobb and its soldiers did duty along the entire Mexican frontier as well as guarding against Indian uprisings along the Washita and Little Missouri rivers. Fort Cobb attained Its greatest fame because of the surrender of Gen David E Twiggs there at the outbreak of the civil war.
Gen Twiggs was, at the time, the commander of the United States forces In the department of the Texas and on Feb 16, 1861, he surrendered his entire command to Gen McCullough, a United States officer who had gone over to the cause of the south, with his command and who was at that time stationed at Indlanola. It was one of the earliest defections from the Union forces of the civil war and was solely due to the leaning that Gen. Twiggs had to the cause of the south and not because he was outclassed by a superior force. Gen Twiggs was dismissed from the Union army in disgrace. He afterward joined the southern forces and was given a commission in its army.
Fort Cobb had not been long in the possession of the Confederates before it was recaptured by the Union forces and placed in th charge of Maj. S. D. Sturgis of the Fourth United States cavalry. This was in the early part of 1862. Some of the men under his command were disaffected and they had formed a plan to turn the fort and all its supplies over to the Confederate forces again. The latter were to approach under the guise of hostile Comanches. and make a feint at attack when the post would be surrendered to them without resistance. When Maj. Sturgis learned of this he resolved upon the burning of the ammunition and supplies to prevent their falling into Confederate possession. He succeeded in carrying out his plan, but barely escaped with his life.
In October 1862 Fort Cobb again came Into notice, because of a fight between the Cherokee as southerners and the Seminoles as loyal Indians. Several hundred were killed in battle; the Seminoles finally winning.
The Cherokees soon afterward freed their slaves of their own accord and gave them the right of citizenship. The battle determined the status of the Indians — they nearly all became Unionists. Up to that time the Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians had been strong sympathizers with the south and a great many fights had taken place between them and the Seminoles and Creeks.
In 1870 the old fort was abandoned but has since then been used as a rendezvous for travelers and Indian agents. It has been the place where artists and writer centered upon their arrival in the land of the southern Indian to study his traits. The old buildings afforded plenty of room, and were the scene of many brilliant social entertainments. Here It was that Sam Houston In an early day wooed and won his Cherokee bride, here it was that John Howard Payne wrote his soul-stirring song, “Home Sweet Home" and it is the place where Remington drew some of the Indian pictures that have since made him famous.