Blockhouse on Signal Mountain | |
Blockhouse on Signal Mountain | |
Nearest city | Lawton, Oklahoma [1] |
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Coordinates | 34°40′28″N98°29′26″W / 34.67433°N 98.49058°W |
Area | 15 acres (6.1 ha) |
Built | 1871 |
Part of | Fort Sill, Oklahoma (ID66000629) |
NRHP reference No. | 78002228 |
Added to NRHP | November 29, 1978 |
Blockhouse on Signal Mountain is within the Fort Sill Military Reservation, north of Lawton, Oklahoma. [2] The rock architecture is located along Mackenzie Hill Road within the Fort Sill West Range being the Oklahoma administrative division of Comanche County.
In May 1868, the United States Cavalry reservation was entitled Camp Wichita as situated within the mixed grass prairie meadow of Medicine Bluffs. [3] [4] [5] The blockhouse was established in 1871 pursuant to the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 cordially looming over the course of time as the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Opening of 1901. [6] [7] [8]
The stone structure was constructed on the summit of Wichita Mountain's Signal Mountain encompassing a terrestrial elevation of 1,750 feet (530 m). [9] The shelter has a dimension of 14 feet (4.3 m) by 16 feet (4.9 m) with a structural exterior consisting of native stone collected within the vicinity of the Wichita Mountains. The four wall dwelling was erected as some of the first limestone architecture as part of Fort Sill's Old Post Corral or United States Army Quartermaster Corps fortification foraged during the American Indian Wars on the American frontier. [10]
The observation post was settled as a meteorological observatory and signal station. [11] The elevated station provided support for military communications between Signal Mountain, Medicine Bluffs, Mountain Scott, and Fort Reno geographically positioned north of the Canadian River within the Great Plains. [12] [13] The Fort Sill, Indian Territory signal station officially commenced atmospheric observations and telegraphic communications on June 23, 1875 with meteorological reports beginning on September 9, 1875. [14] [15]
The Army Signal Corps employed flag semaphore, heliograph, and signal lamp before implementing the signal field wire lines enabling electric telegraphic communications. The optical communication applied visible light along a visual topographical line of sight for distant information exchange. The semaphore communications served as an intelligence assessment of the Wichita Mountains cadastre while safeguarding the transcontinental railroad and territorial prairie trails as an integration of the Westward Expansion Trails. [16] [17]
The mountainous altitude served as an observation of the Plains Indians equine flights disrupting the manifest destiny of westbound wagon trains ostracizing the Reconstruction era at the crest of the progressive Gilded Age. The high ground outpost continually anticipated the spontaneous mobilization of the Old Post Redoubt troops into the rugged terrain of southwestern Indian Territory. [18] [19] [20]
The geology of Oklahoma elevation features an area reconnaissance potentially revealing the disturbance of the prairie by American Indian horse herds and bison hunting. [21] [22] The disquietude of the plains territory is reciprocative to the Oklahoma red beds and the shortgrass prairie of the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa lands within Southwestern Oklahoma. [23] [24]
The stone lookout station was decisively undisputed at the Fort Sill outpost after Sheridan's campaign during the winter of 1868 to 1869 and the realization of cultural assimilation of Native Americans. [25] [26]
The 1870s were seasons of significant transformation in light of the Buffalo Hunters' War and Red River War. The native disaccord developed as the United States American Indian laws and policy bewildered the Plains Indians way of life. The transgressions waged in opposition to the American Indian frontier culture culminated into a 1875 United States Supreme Court case known as Lobenstein v. United States, 91 U.S. 324. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]
During the commencement of 1870s, the Southern Plains tribes organized native raids on Indian Territory forts and military supply trains exemplifying the prairie plains as treacherous grounds for American frontier expeditions. [32] [33] [34] [35] The Army on the Frontier chartered a defense line of forts throughout Indian Territory and Texas as a deterrence for the safeguard of American pioneer, homesteading, and Territorial evolution of the United States. [36] [37] [38]
Comanche and Kiowa conduct a skirmish at Camp Supply on June 11, 1870 in the Indian Territory often referred to as the Cherokee Outlet. [39] [40] [41]
Comanche and Kiowa conduct a skirmish known as the Warren Wagon Train raid occurring on May 18, 1871 in Young County, Texas. [42] The Texas native raids cultivated into what is known today as the Comanche Wars and Texas–Indian wars. [43]
During September 1874, Captain Wyllys Lyman guided a provisions train grouped as thirty-six empty wagons to Camp Supply for the replenishment of supply provisions. [44] [45] The wagon train was to collect provisions at Camp Supply and return to Nelson Miles Headquarters Dugout. [46] [47] The frontier range was located near the Washita River with the North Fork Red River situated approximately 25 miles (40 km) south of the headquarters dugout encampment. [48] On September 9, 1874, Lyman's wagon train commenced the return by prairie trail when the double column train with sixty soldiers encountered a skirmish with tribal bands of Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa consequently regressing into a battle from September 9 to September 14, 1874. [49]
The five day siege is often referred to as the Battle of the Upper Washita River transpiring in the Texas Panhandle within the proximity of Fort Elliott and the east coordinate of Roger Mills County, Oklahoma. [50] [51] The Plains Indians conflict was the third major battle of the Red River War occurring along the Historic Trails of the Southern Great Plains. [52] [53] [54]
The Bison antiquus was a big game species pursued by the Paleo-Indians during the Common Era or to a greater extent the folsom tradition and Upper Paleolithic period. [55] [56] During the 1990s, the Oklahoma Archeological Survey conducted a field survey within the northwest sector of the state of Oklahoma factually substantiating by radiocarbon dating the perception of the great bison belt, Peopling of the Americas, and precontact Oklahoma. [57] The archaeological site located near the vicinity of Fort Supply, Oklahoma became known as the Cooper Bison Kill Site. [58]
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the North American bison was aggressively hunted by frontiersmen and ridgerunners destructively devastating the population of the North American bison. The decimation of the Great Plains bison and the westward expansion of the American railroad propelled the lucrative economics of the buffalo bone business. The accretion, commerce, and trade of the bison remains flourished from 1870 to 1937. [59] [60]
The Buffalo rifle, including the Remington Rolling Block rifle, Springfield model 1873, Sharps rifle, and Winchester model 1876, was a prized provision on the Great Plains from 1870 to 1890. [61] [62]
By Acts of Congress and Department of War appropriations in 1894, the Fort Sill military reservation was pledged as a resettlement dominion for the American Indian prisoners of war confined at Mount Vernon Barracks within the vicinity of Mount Vernon, Alabama. [64] [65] [66]
U.S. Statutes for Relief of American Indian Prisoners of War | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Fort Sill's Post Guardhouse was established from 1872 to 1873 as Cavalry barracks subsequently provisioned for a military stockade. [67] The limestone structure is illustrative of the late 19th century confinement and relief formalities for hostile tribal leaders and Indian prisoners of war at the Fort Sill military camp. [68] [69] The domestic stone framework serves with historical significance considering the calendar span of the American Indian assimilation commencing in the late nineteenth century. [70]
Blockhouse on Signal Mountain was listed on the National Register of Historic Places with the National Park Service on November 29, 1978. [71] [72]
The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ is a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Kiowa or CáuigúIPA:[kɔ́j-gʷú]) people are a Native American tribe and an Indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries, and eventually into the Southern Plains by the early 19th century. In 1867, the Kiowa were moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.
Quanah Parker was a war leader of the Kwahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was likely born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band of Tabby-nocca and grew up among the Kwahadis, the son of Kwahadi Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American who had been abducted as an eight-year-old child during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 and assimilated into the Nokoni tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into near extinction, Quanah Parker eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Kwahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.
The First Battle of Adobe Walls took place between the United States Army and Native Americans. The Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache tribes drove from the battlefield a United States Expeditionary Force that was reacting to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides but was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874 to displace the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes from the Southern Plains, and forcibly relocate the tribes to reservations in Indian Territory. The war had several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass, and capture nomadic Native American bands. Most of the engagements were small skirmishes with few casualties on either side. The war wound down over the last few months of 1874, as fewer and fewer Indian bands had the strength and supplies to remain in the field. Though the last significantly sized group did not surrender until mid-1875, the war marked the end of free-roaming Indian populations on the southern Great Plains.
Fort Sill is a United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. It covers almost 94,000 acres (38,000 ha).
The Plains Apache are a small Southern Athabaskan tribe who live on the Southern Plains of North America, in close association with the linguistically unrelated Kiowa Tribe. Today, they are headquartered in Southwestern Oklahoma and are federally recognized as the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. They mostly live in Comanche and Caddo County, Oklahoma.
Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
The Warren Wagon Train raid, also known as the Salt Creek massacre, occurred on May 18, 1871. Henry Warren was contracted to haul supplies to forts in the west of Texas, including Fort Richardson, Fort Griffin, and Fort Concho. Traveling down the Jacksboro-Belknap road heading towards Salt Creek Crossing, they encountered William Tecumseh Sherman. Less than an hour after encountering the famous General, they spotted a rather large group of riders ahead. They quickly realized that these were Native American warriors, probably Kiowa and/or Comanche.
Fort Griffin, now a Texas state historic site as Fort Griffin State Historic Site, was a US Cavalry fort established 31 July 1867 by four companies of the Sixth Cavalry, U.S. Army under the command of Lt. Col. S. D. Sturgis, in the western part of North Texas, specifically northwestern Shackelford County, to give settlers protection from early Comanche and Kiowa raids. Originally called Camp Wilson after Henry Hamilton Wilson, a recently deceased lieutenant and son of Republican senator and later vice president, Henry Wilson, it was later named for Charles Griffin, a former Civil War Union general who had commanded, as de facto military governor, the Department of Texas during the early years of Reconstruction.
Fort Richardson was a United States Army installation located in present-day Jacksboro, Texas. Named in honor of Union General Israel B. Richardson, who died in the Battle of Antietam during the American Civil War, it was active from 1867 to 1878. Today, the site, with a few surviving buildings, is called Fort Richardson State Park, Historic Site and Lost Creek Reservoir State Trailway. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 for its role in securing the state's northern frontier in the post-Civil War era.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
The trial of Satanta and Big Tree occurred in May 1871 in the town of Jacksboro in Jack County, Texas, United States. This historic trial of Native American war chiefs of the Kiowa Indians Satanta and Big Tree for the murder of seven teamsters during a raid on Salt Creek Prairie near Jacksboro, Texas, marked the first time the United States had tried Native American chiefs in a state court. The trial attracted national and international attention. The two Kiowa leaders, with Satank, a legendary third War Chief, were formally indicted on July 1, 1871, and tried shortly thereafter, for acts arising out of the Warren Wagon Train Raid.
White Horse was a chief of the Kiowa. White Horse attended the council between southern plains tribes and the United States at Medicine Lodge in southern Kansas which resulted in the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Despite his attendance at the treaty signing he conducted frequent raids upon other tribes and white settlers. Follower of such elders as Guipago, Satanta and old Satank, he was often associated with Big Tree.
Big Bow was a Kiowa war leader during the 19th century, an associate of Guipago and Satanta.
Navajoe is a ghost town in Jackson County, Oklahoma, United States, located eight miles east and four miles north of Altus at the base of the Navajo Mountains.
Big Red Meat was a Nokoni Comanche chief and a leader of Native American resistance against White invasion during the second half of the 19th century.
Comanche Springs was an aquifer of six artesian springs geographically located between the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos regions of West Texas. The military fortification Camp Stockton was built around the springs, eventually growing become the city of Fort Stockton.
Ketch Ranch House or Ketch Ranch was private property located in the Wichita Mountains of Southwestern Oklahoma. During the early 1920s, the forest reserve residence was established as a working ranch and vacation home for Ada May Ketch and Frank Levant Ketch who served as mayor of Ringling, Oklahoma.
Further reading about American Frontier and Plains Prairies |
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American Indians of Southwestern Oklahoma
American Bison and Preservation of Great Plains Species