Massard Prairie, Part One

The summer of 1864 was a difficult time for the Union troops occupying Fort Smith. The Red River Campaign that spring had ended in disaster and the soldiers came back demoralized and worn down from the difficulties of the expedition.

By July, Confederate troops had swept back north through the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) and had carried out successful attacks on the steamboat J.R. Williams and a Union outpost at Roseville, Arkansas.


Commanded by Gen. Douglas H. Cooper, they hovered around Fort Smith, watching and waiting for an opportunity to strike. The opportunity presented itself when Gen. John Thayer, the Union commander at Fort Smith, was forced to send out detachments of soldiers to guard herds and hay cutting parties sent into the area prairies to bring desperately needed fodder into the defenses of Fort Smith.


Confederate scouts soon picked up on these movements and relayed the intelligence back to Gen. Cooper, who had established his headquarters near the old Choctaw Council House in the Sans Bois Mountains southwest of Fort Smith. Deciding to strike against a force of "Arkansas Federals" (Union soldiers from Arkansas) that was camped just south of Fort Smith, he ordered Brig. Gen. Richard M. Gano to prepare a force of roughly 1,000 men for the attack.


Gano was a hard-riding Texas cavalry officer who had served with the famed Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan earlier in the war and then under Nathan Bedford Forrest at the Battle of Chickamauga. Now commanding the Texas mounted troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department, Gano had fought and been wounded during the Red River Campaign but by July of 1864 was in the Choctaw Nation, ready for action.

The Confederates had carried out attacks above and below Fort Smith. Brig. Gen. Stand Watie captured the steamboat J.R. Williams on the Arkansas River and another force struck a Union outpost at Roseville, downstream from the fort.

Union troops had heavily fortified Fort Smith, encircling the town with a series of earthen redoubts and rifle pits. General Cooper knew that he lacked both the artillery and sufficient troops to storm the works, but he kept scouts hovering around the town looking for targets of opportunity. The Federals soon provided them with exactly the chance they were seeking.

The Battle of Massard Prairie series will continue in the next post. Until then, you can read more by visiting www.exploresouthernhistory.com/massardprairie.

Fort Smith - Confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau

This photograph shows the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers as seen from Fort Smith National Historic Site. A vital strategic point, the confluence was within easy range of the artillery of the fort.

During the late spring and summer of 1864, the water level in the rivers was much higher than normal. This allowed continued use of the Arkansas by Union steamboats during a time of the year when low water usually stopped the boats from running. Throughout the summer, the boats continued running up and down the river to Little Rock, as well as upstream to Fort Gibson (Fort Blount) in the Indian Territory (today's Oklahoma).

The continued operation of the boats created attack opportunities for Confederate troops as they surged north into the Arkansas River valley following the defeat of the Union army in the Arkansas phase of the Red River Campaign.

In mid-June, Confederate forces under Col. Stand Watie, who was promoted to become the South's only Native American brigadier general at about the same time, laid an artillery ambush upstream from Fort Smith and opened fire on the steamboat J.R. Williams. The boat was carrying provisions and other military supplies upstream from Fort Smith to Fort Gibson (Fort Blount). Watie's cannon disabled the vessel and his men succeeded in capturing it. Removing all the supplies they could, the Confederates fired the vessel and destroyed it.

Union soldiers at Fort Smith, including Private Henry Strong of the 12th Kansas Infantry, wrote of seeing barrels of flour and other debris from the attack float by on the river.

More posts on Fort Smith National Historic Site are on the way, but in the meantime you can read more about the fort by going to www.exploresouthernhistory.com and looking for the link under the "Arkansas" heading at the bottom of the page.