Fort McCulloch

Fort McCulloch was an impressive physical memorial to Confederate General Albert Pike. Both were more than a bit controversial. In a letter dated June 2, 1862, a member of Pike's Brigade put it this way:

There is some sickness here though not more than could be expected considering the number of men and the water they have to drink - General Pike's fortification (or entrenchments more properly) are getting along slowly - He has commenced here as though he intended to spend the remainder of his days here - The Gen'l. is not very highly esteemed by his soldiers.

Some of his fellow officers esteemed him no more highly. Colonel (later General) Douglas H, Cooper considered him deranged in August of 1862. Later that your General T.C. Hindman ordered him arrested with all "the force necessary for tho purpose." (Charges were later dropped.) This sad state of affairs had evolved largely because General Pike, then in command of all the forces of the Confederacy in the Department of the Indian Territory was, in the words of one historian, "a very unusual old man with unorthodox ideas about fighting war." Having constructed and then (for complicated reasons) virtually abandoned a strong military post on the Arkansas River (Fort Davis, for which National Register status is also being sought), he pulled the bulk of his troops south almost to Texas and set about building a now defense post. As one of his contemporary critics put it:

He came 250 miles to the southward only halting at the Little Blue, an unknown thread of . stream twenty miles from Rod River, when he constructed fortifications in the open prairie, erected a saw-mill remote from any timber, and devoted himself to gastronomy and poetic meditation with elegant accommodations.

Fort McCulloch was indeed well removed from the scene of Civil War action. Federal troops advanced no farther than the Canadian River, about 100 miles to the northeast. "If I can prevent the Indian country from being occupied," General Pike wrote, "I will be content." Yet he set up his headquarters so far to the southwest that virtually all of Indian Territory lay between him and federal forces in Arkansas, Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma. Here ho had a complement of at least 1500 white troops, in addition to considerable Indian forces. And the magnificent system of eastern redoubts and bastions he threw up also boasted two companies of artillery. It tells much about Fort McCulloch to note that the 14 field pieces, including two two powerful Parrott guns, wore never fired but twice: once at dawn, presumably to give the soldiers and horses an idea of how much racket an actual firing could make (considerable excitement and confusion ensued), and on another occasion, to impress visiting (and friendly) Plains Indians.

But Fort McCulloch, irrelevant as it may soon in retrospect, was conceived and constructed as the major Confederate stronghold in southern Indian Territory. As such it is an important part of the over-all war picture. That it played no decisive roll in the final outcome is beside the point. For it had nothing to do with creating the peculiarly tragic conditions under which the war was fought in what is now Oklahoma and little to do with shaping them significantly. Yet it does reflect dramatically the discord,* dissension, and insubordination that hampered much of the Confederate (and to some extent oven the Federal) effort in the West throughout much of the war.