Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865 253
their six cannon joined in, most of the Union teamsters and wagon masters mounted
mules and made off toward Fort Scott. This left the wagon train with incomplete
teams and made it hard for the defenders to change position. At daybreak, the Confederates
brought their cannon within one hundred yards of the Union line. “Soon the
confusion became great in his ranks,” General Watie reported, “and a general stampede
ensued.” The federal commander admitted that his men “were compelled to fall
back in disorder.” They did not stop soon. Two days later, the officer commanding
the Union outpost at the Osage Catholic Mission in Kansas, more than eighty miles
north of Cabin Creek, reported the fugitives’ account of the fight: “The entire train
. . . has been captured and all the escort killed, as they took no prisoners.” Later in the
day, he counted eleven officers of the escort who had made their way to safety accompanied
by small numbers of enlisted men. There had been no general massacre,
it turned out, but the supply train was firmly in the Confederates’ grasp. They shot the
wounded mules and used the remaining seven hundred forty to haul away one hundred
thirty wagons that were still sufficiently sound to move. The rest they burned. 62
Meanwhile, the scattered regiments of Colonel Williams’ brigade had been
hurrying to meet the train. On 14 September, companies of the 11th USCI left
the hayfields they had been guarding north of Fort Smith and marched thirty-five
miles to Fort Gibson in two days. From there, they set out again on 17 September,
heading north on the road to Fort Scott. They made forty miles to the crossing of
Pryor’s Creek before meeting Williams late in the morning of the second day’s
march. With Williams was a collection of companies from the 54th USCI and
the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Some of the men had been stationed near Van
Buren, Arkansas, others near Fort Gibson; those who came from Arkansas had
marched nearly eighty miles in a little more than two days. When the Confederates
appeared early that afternoon, traveling at a great rate—they had covered
twenty miles, a good day’s journey, since they captured the train that morning—
the two sides exchanged shots all afternoon in an inconclusive engagement that
both claimed to have won. Williams’ men stopped the Confederates’ march for
a few hours but were too tired to recapture the train. Gano’s and Watie’s cavalry
slipped around them in the night and continued south with the wagons. On 20
September, Williams’ brigade turned around and headed back to Fort Gibson. 63
The second fight at Cabin Creek was the last engagement in which black soldiers
faced Confederates in the Indian Territory, and very nearly the end of their
service there. Although they continued to escort supply trains during the autumn
of 1864 and the early winter of 1865, their presence at Forts Smith and Gibson
was about to end. Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, in charge of Union armies west
of the Mississippi River since the disastrous Red River Campaign that spring, was
dissatisfied with General Steele’s recent attempts to supply the garrison at Fort
Smith. Two courses of action occurred to Canby: to relieve Steele as commander
of the Department of Arkansas and to abandon the post. He accomplished the
first on 25 November, replacing Steele with Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, and
62 OR, ser. 1, vol. 41, pt. 1, pp. 768 (“were compelled”), 770, 774–75 (“The entire train,” p. 774),
787 (“Soon the confusion”), 789–90.
63 Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 765, 787, 791, and pt. 3, p. 609; NA M594, roll 206, 11th USCI; roll 211, 54th
USCI; roll 213, 79th USCI.