Fort Sill is a major United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, approximately 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Oklahoma City, established in 1869 during the Indian Wars. It covers almost in southwestern Oklahoma and serves as headquarters of the U.S. Army Fires Center of Excellence. The installation is a Basic Combat Training facility, training over 20,000 personnel annually in field artillery, air defense artillery, and electronic warfare.
Fort Sill has participated in every major U.S. conflict since its founding, evolving from a frontier cavalry outpost to a modern training hub. It houses key units including the United States Army Field Artillery School, 75th Field Artillery Brigade (United States), and the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade (United States). The post also supports a United States Marine Corps detachment for joint artillery training.
History The site of Fort Sill was staked out on January 8, 1869, by Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who led a campaign into Indian Territory to stop tribes from raiding border settlements in Texas and Kansas.Wilbur Nye, Carbine, and Lance; The Story of Old Fort Sill, 1969, Norman, OK: University of OK Press, p. 85 The primary tribes who at the time inhabited the area were the Kiowa, Plains Apache, and Comanche. These tribes of Plains Indians hunted bison and traded with neighboring groups in what is now western Oklahoma and neighboring states.
Sheridan's massive winter campaign involved six cavalry regiments accompanied by frontier scouts such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, Ben Clark and Jack Stilwell. Troops camped at the location of the new fort included the 7th Cavalry, the 19th Kansas Volunteers and the 10th Cavalry, a distinguished group of African American "buffalo soldiers" who constructed many of the stone buildings still surrounding the old post quadrangle.
At first, the garrison was called "Camp Wichita" and was referred to by the Indians as "the Soldier House at Medicine Bluffs." Sheridan later named it in honor of his West Point classmate and friend, Brigadier General Joshua W. Sill, who was killed during the American Civil War. The first post commander was Brevet Maj. Gen. Benjamin Grierson and the first Indian agent was Colonel Albert Gallatin Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone.
Other forts in the frontier fort system were Forts Griffin, Concho, Belknap, Chadbourne, Stockton, Davis, Bliss, McKavett, Clark, McIntosh, Inge, Phantom Hill, and Richardson in Texas.Carter, R.G., On the Border with Mackenzie, 1935, Washington, D.C.: Enyon Printing Co., p. 48 There were "sub posts or intermediate stations" including Bothwick's Station on Salt Creek between Fort Richardson and Fort Belknap, Camp Wichita near Buffalo Springs between Fort Richardson and Red River Station, and Mountain Pass between Fort Concho and Fort Griffin.Carter, R.G., On the Border with Mackenzie, 1935, Washington, D.C.: Enyon Printing Co., p. 49
Peace policy
Several months after Fort Sill's establishment, President Ulysses Grant implemented a "peace policy" assigning Quaker agents to oversee Southwest tribes, with Lawrie Tatum. Fort Sill soldiers were restricted from taking punitive action against the Indians, who interpreted this as a sign of weakness."Carbine and Lance", Nye The Indians resumed raiding the Texas frontier and used Fort Sill as a sanctuary.
In 1871, during a tour of posts, Gen. General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman arrived at Fort Sill from Fort Richardson, Texas, while on a tour of Army posts throughout the country. Sherman was at Fort Richardson when they became aware of the Warren Wagon Train Raid, in which seven muleskinners were killed by Indians when their wagon train was ambushed. Soon after Sherman arrived at Fort Sill, the Indian Agent brought several Kiowa chiefs to tell their story about attacking the wagon train. When Sherman ordered their arrest during a meeting on Grierson's porch, two of the Indians attempted to assassinate him. The Commanding General's quarters were dubbed Sherman House in memory of the event.
The Army arrested three chiefs during the porch skirmish: Satank, Satanta and Addo-ete. Sherman ordered them to Texas for a civil trial for the alleged crimes. When the three were put into a wagon and taken under cavalry escort to Fort Richardson, Satank began his death song. A mile down the trail, he grabbed the carbine of one of the troopers in the wagon. Before he could cock and fire it, he was hit by several shots fired by the escort. Satank was left against a tree, and the column continued its mission. A marker on Berry Road near the curve marks where Satank, an honored warrior, fell. His grave is in Chiefs Knoll in the post cemetery.
Texas courts tried Satanta and Addo-etta on July 5 and 6, the first time Indians had been tried in civil courts. They were sentenced to death by hanging. Supporters of the Quaker peace policy convinced Governor Edmund J. Davis to commute the Indians' sentences to life imprisonment. Then, in October 1873, they were paroled.
Red River War In June 1874, the US Army launched the Red River War against the non-reservation Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Cheyennes. The year-long struggle was a war of attrition that involved relentless pursuit by converging military columns.
General Phillip Sheridan ordered five army columns to converge on the general area of the Texas Panhandle and specifically upon the upper tributaries of the Red River. The strategy was to deny the Indians any safe haven by attacking, pursuing, and destroying their reservations and forcing them surrender.
Three of the five columns were under the command of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. The Tenth Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel John W. Davidson, came due west from Fort Sill. The Eleventh Infantry, under Lieutenant Colonel George P. Buell, moved northwest from Fort Griffin. Mackenzie himself led the Fourth Cavalry north from Fort Concho.
Colonel Nelson A. Miles led the Fourth Column, which came south from Fort Dodge and included the Fifth Infantry and Sixth Cavalry. Originating from Fort Union , the fifth column, the Eighth Cavalry under the command of Major William R. Price, consisted of 225 officers and soldiers along with two guides and six Indian scouts. They marched east via Fort Bascom in New Mexico. According to the plan, the converging columns were to continue their offensive until the Indians had been decisively defeated.
As many as twenty engagements took place across the Texas Panhandle. The Army, consisting entirely of soldiers and scouts, sought to engage the Indians at any opportunity. The Indians, traveling with women, children, and the elderly, mostly attempted to avoid them. When the two did encounter one another, the Indians usually tried to escape before the Army could force them to surrender. However, even a successful escape could be disastrously costly if horses, food, and equipment had to be left behind. By contrast, the Army and its Indian scouts had access to essentially limitless supplies and equipment; they frequently burned anything they captured from retreating Indians and were capable of continuing operations indefinitely. The war continued throughout the fall of 1874, but increasing numbers of Indians were forced to give up and head for Fort Sill to enter the reservation system.
Without a chance to graze their livestock and faced with the disappearance of the great buffalo herds, the tribes eventually surrendered. Quanah Parker and his Kwahadi Comanches were the last to abandon the struggle, and their arrival at Fort Sill in June 1875 marked the end of Indian warfare on the South Plains.
In 1877, the first African-American to graduate from West Point, Henry O. Flipper, was assigned to the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the famous Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Sill. In addition to his leadership duties in the cavalry, he directed his men to dig a ditch to drain a swamp; this is still called Flipper's Ditch, and today, a landmark exists on Upton Road by the Fort Sill Golf Course.
Unlike other U.S. territories, Indian Territory had no organized government. Hence, Army posts like Fort Reno, Fort Supply and Fort Sill found themselves the most significant federal and legal presence in a vast territory. They provided protection to Indians and civilians alike, sometimes dealt as mediators between the Indians and the Indian agents, and protected the various Indian tribes against intrusion by the Sooners.
At one point in the 1880s, the post was nearly deserted when gold was rumored to have been found in the nearby Wichita Mountains, and officers and soldiers alike rushed to stake claims.
Geronimo
In 1894, Geronimo and 341 other Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war were brought to Fort Sill, where they lived in villages scattered around the post. After a couple of years, Geronimo was granted permission to travel with Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show, and he joined the Indian contingent at several annual World Expositions and Indian Expositions in the 1890s and early 1900s. Geronimo and other Indian leaders rode in the inaugural parade of President Theodore Roosevelt and met the president himself during that trip. Geronimo and the other Apache prisoners had free range of Fort Sill. He was a member of Fort Sill's Native Scouts. Still, he did make at least one documented attempt to escape from the fort, though not in the dramatic fashion of jumping off the steep Medicine Bluffs on his horse in a hail of bullets as popularized in the 1939 movie, Geronimo (which was the inspiration for parachutists of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment to yell his name when they jumped out of aircraftGerard Devlin: Paratrooper p.70, 1979 St Martins Press). Once, after visiting the off-post home of chief Quanah Parker, Geronimo decided to escape to his homeland in Arizona late one night rather than return to Fort Sill. He was captured the next day. He died of pneumonia in 1909 and is buried at Fort Sill.Carbine & Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill
The rest of the Apaches remained on Fort Sill until 1913. The US government promised the Chiricahua the lands surrounding the fort; however, local non-Indians resisted their settlement. In 1914, two-thirds of the tribe moved onto the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and the remaining third settled on allotments around Fletcher and Apache, Oklahoma. They became what is known today as the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.Clifford P. Coppersmith, "Apache, Fort Sill," Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture Accessed 1 Feb 2009
Lt. Hugh L. Scott commanded Troop L of the 7th Cavalry, consisting entirely of Indians and considered one of the best in the West. Lt. Hugh L. Scott was a high supporter of the Native Americans and their use of sign language. Kiowa scout I-See-O and other members of the troop are credited with helping tribes on the South Plains avert the Bloody Ghost Dance uprising of the 1890s in which the US Army killed many Indians on the North Plains at Wounded Knee Creek, which created the name Battle of Wounded Knee.
Fort Sill Post-Allotment
The federal government allotted the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation in 1901, opening much of the land to non-Native settlement. During July, 29,000 homesteaders registered at Fort Sill for the land lottery. On August 6, the town of Lawton sprang up and quickly grew to become the third-largest city in Oklahoma.