An Island in a Sea of
Guerrilla War

Fort Smith developed as a port city at the head of navigation on the Arkansas River and as a fort on the edge of the area referred to as Indian Territory. The federal government established the Indian Territory (now the State of Oklahoma) to provide new homelands for the Cherokee, Muskogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes forcibly removed from the Southeast in the 1830s. Fort Smith was created in part to protect the Indians from white settlers, as well as to supply the territory.

The Fort Smith community attracted a variety of residents, roughly equal numbers of northerners and southerners. As the Civil War approached, this division translated into pro-Union and pro-Confederacy sympathies along the same lines. Local Confederate and Union forces agreed that whoever controlled Fort Smith would have substantial economic, political, and military benefits. Occupation of the fort had a symbolic significance as well, and raised the morale of political sympathizers. Further, access to the river meant ease in transportation of supplies, and some influence in Indian Territory.

The fort changed hands twice during the course of the war. The United States Army abandoned the fort to the Confederates on April 23, 1861, less than two weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter. Union forces seized the fort in September 1863, then withstood a Confederate assault in the summer of 1864 and remained in control throughout the rest of the war.

Both Union and Confederate forces found support among the local population. The fort and town of Fort Smith, because of its continual military presence, served as a refuge from the intense guerrilla warfare that ravaged the area beyond the fortifications. To a contemporary Indian observer, Western Arkansas and Indian Territory was a place of "burned-out chimneys."

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Fort Smith returned to its role as protector of the Indian Territory. In 1865, a council was held in Fort Smith to determine the terms of future treaties with the Indian tribes. Although many tribal members fought for the Union, others such as Stand Watie, the Cherokee Indian who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, fought with the rebels. The federal government treated the Indians as if all had sided with the Confederacy, reducing even more of their land in Indian Territory.