The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe indigenous to present-day Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate.
Comanche history is the story of the Native American (Indian) tribe which lived on the Great Plains of the present-day United States. In the 17th century the Eastern Shoshone people who became known as the Comanche migrated southward from Wyoming. 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 Camp Napoleon Council was a meeting of Native American tribes in today's Oklahoma that resulted in an intertribal compact. The council took place at Cottonwood Camp on May 24, 1865 near present-day Verden in Grady County.
The Tawakoni are a Southern Plains Native American tribe, closely related to the Wichitas. They historically spoke a Wichita language of the Caddoan language family. Currently, they are enrolled in the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, a federally recognized tribe.
The Department of the Missouri was a command echelon of the United States Army in the 19th century and a sub division of the Military Division of the Missouri that functioned through the Indian Wars.
Fort Chadbourne was a fort established by the United States Army on October 28, 1852, in what is now Coke County, Texas, to protect the western frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail route. It was named after Lt. T.L. Chadbourne, who was killed in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. It was defended by Companies A and K of the 8th U.S. Infantry. During the early days of the American Civil War, the fort surrendered to the Confederates on February 28, 1861, even before the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, but was reoccupied by federal troops from 1865 to 1867.
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.
Fort Washita is the former United States military post and National Historic Landmark located in Durant, Oklahoma on SH 199. Established in 1842 by General Zachary Taylor to protect citizens of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations from the Plains Indians, it was later abandoned by Federal forces at the beginning of the American Civil War. Confederate troops held the post until the end of the war when they burned the remaining structures. It was never reoccupied by the United States military. After years in private hands the Oklahoma Historical Society bought the fort grounds in 1962 and restored the site. Today, the Fort Washita Historic Site and Museum is a tourist attraction and hosts several events throughout the year, and it is jointly managed by the Chickasaw Nation and the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Robert Simpson Neighbors was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered by a white man named Cornet, whose brother-in-law had been defamed by Neighobrs, accusing the brother-in-law a common horse theif, responsible for stealing horses from the reservation Indians. When Neighbors refused to recant the acusation in front of the two men, Cornet shot Neighobrs with a Shotgun. Cornet was murdered and Murphy acquitted as he did not pull the trigger. Cornet went on the run and was killed during his arrest.
Plácido was major Native American Chief of the Tonkawa Indians in Texas during the Spanish and Mexican rule, the Republic of Texas era, and with Texas as part of the United States.
Iron Jacket (Puhihwitsikwasʉ) was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the Comanche Indians.
Fort Arbuckle was constructed by the US Army in 1850 to counter raids by Plains Indian tribes on immigrant trains heading west to California and on the settlements of Choctaw and Chickasaw nations in Indian Territory.
Fort McCulloch was a Confederate military fort built by CSA Brigadier General Albert Pike in the Indian Territory during the American Civil War after the Battle of Pea Ridge.
The Tonkawa massacre occurred after an attack at the Confederate-held Wichita Agency, located at Fort Cobb near Anadarko in Oklahoma, when the Tonkawa's long-hated enemy detected weakness at Fort Cobb due to the Civil War and attacked the agency, home to 300 members of the Tonkawa, a tribe sympathetic to the Confederacy. During the attack on the Confederate-held agency, the Confederate Indian agent Matthew Leeper and several other whites were killed. In response to this attack the Tonkawa fled southward toward Confederate-held Fort Arbuckle. However, before they could reach the safety of the fort they were caught on October 24. In the resulting massacre, the estimates of Tonkawa dead were 137 men, women and children, among them Chief Ha-shu-ka-na. It was claimed that the Tonkawa were roasted alive and eaten by the Comanche. There are varying accounts of the tribes involved in the massacre with the Osage, Shawnee, Caddo, Comanche, Kiowa, Wichita and Seminole being named in some accounts.
Guipago or Lone Wolf [the Elder] was the last Principal Chief of the Kiowa tribe. He was a member of the Koitsenko, the Kiowa warrior elite, and was a signer of the Little Arkansas Treaty in 1865.
Black Beaver or Se-ket-tu-may-qua was a trapper and interpreter who worked for the American Fur Company. He served as a scout and guide as he was fluent in English, as well as several European and Native American languages. He is credited with establishing the California and Chisholm trails.
Horseback (1805/1810-1888) was a Nokoni Comanche chief.
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.
Pickens County was a political subdivision of the Chickasaw Nation in the Indian Territory from 1855, prior to Oklahoma being admitted as a state in 1907. The county was one of four that comprised the Chickasaw Nation. Following statehood, its territory was divided among several Oklahoma counties that have continued to the present.
