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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT BELKNAP
Texas
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Location: Young County, at the terminus of Tex.
251, about 3 miles south of Newcastle.
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Founded in 1851 to safeguard settlers and emigrants
in the Red River area, Fort Belknap was both a base for military
operations against the Indians and a peacemaking center, but did not
excel in the latter role.
Following the U.S. annexation of Texas (1845) and the
Mexican War (1846-48), Texas frontier settlers began to demand
protection against Kiowa and Comanche raids from the north and west. The
Army set up a string of forts: Martin Scott, in 1848; and Worth, Gates,
Graham, Croghan, Duncan, and Lincoln, the following year. But the
rapidly advancing line of settlement soon brought new outcries from the
frontiersmen. Another system of forts came into being: Forts Belknap and
Phantom Hill, in 1851; and Forts Chadbourne, McKavett, and Clark, the
next year. The northern anchor, Belknap, on the Brazos River, was the
nearest to the dangerous Kiowa and Comanche country. Besides watching
out for settlers, Forts Belknap and Phantom Hill guarded the Fort
Smith-El Paso Road, a major link in the transcontinental route pioneered
in 1849 by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy.
In the early 1850's large numbers of Regulars, often
bolstered by Texas Rangers and State troops, did their best to deal with
Kiowa and Comanche raids. More successful was Col. Albert S. Johnston's
newly organized 2d Cavalry Regiment, which arrived in December 1855 in
Texas and dispersed among the forts in the chain.
The major offensive involving Fort Belknap troops was
Capt. Earl Van Dorn's 1858-59 Wichita Expedition, a march into Indian
Territory to retaliate for raids into Texas. Van Dorn led 250 of the
garrison's cavalrymen and infantrymen and 135 Indian allies northward;
founded Camp Radziminski, Okla., as an advance base; and won victories
against the Comanches in the Battles of Rush Springs, Okla. (October 1,
1858) and Crooked Creek, Kans. (May 13, 1859), near present Dodge City,
Kans. These aggressive measures caused the Comanches to divide into
smaller bands. Many fled to the Staked Plains of eastern New Mexico and
the Texas Panhandle, while those remaining near the more populated areas
of Texas curtailed their activities. The next year a regiment of State
troops organized at Fort Belknap and pushed north as far as Kansas, but
took part in no engagements.
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Restored Fort Belknap.
(National Park Service) |
Fort Belknap had also been the base of the expedition
of Captain Marcy and Lt. George B. McClellan in 1852. This was Marcy's
third. The first two had originated at Fort Smith, Ark. Marcy and
McClellan explored the Canadian River and discovered the headwaters of
the Red River, the last segment of the southern Plains to be
explored.
Marcy returned to Fort Belknap in 1854 to help Indian
Agent Robert S. Neighbors survey and establish two Indian reservations.
The State authorized them in response to Neighbors' humanitarian
efforts, which had begun as early as 1845 and included the negotiation
of peace treaties between Indians and whites. In 1854-55 he and Marcy
founded the Brazos Agency, a few miles south of Fort Belknap; and the
Comanche Reservation (Comanche Reserve), 45 miles to the west, guarded
by Camp Cooper. Within 3 years more than 1,100 peaceful Indians from
various small tribes had settled around the Brazos Agency, but only 400
Comanches moved onto the Comanche Reservation.
Under Neighbors' tutelage the reservation Indians
relinquished their nomadism and took up agriculture. Bitter area
settlers, however, blamed them for depredations committed by
nonreservation Indians. In July 1859, after Neighbors and Fort Belknap
troops had repulsed a mob of settlers intent on murdering the
reservation inhabitants, he realized the only solution was abandonment
of the two reservations. A squadron of cavalry moved a caravan of
Indians to a spot on the Washita River 12 miles west of the newly
established Wichita Agency, Okla., protected by Fort Cobb. Upon his
return, Neighbors was assassinated by a disgruntled settler in the town
of Belknap, founded in 1856 near the fort. Between 1858 and 1861 Belknap
was a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail.
Meantime, in 1859, because of lack of water, a
problem that in 1851 had necessitated a 2-mile move downriver from the
original location, Federal troops had abandoned Fort Belknap and
transferred to Camp Cooper. During the Civil War, Confederates of the
Texas Frontier Regiment used it for a base against hostile Indians and
for the protection of settlers, but the inexperienced troops could not
stop Indian raids. For a short time in 1867, U.S. troops returned to the
fort and even began to restore its buildings, but abandoned it because
of the poor water supply and because the frontier had moved westward.
Forts Richardson, to the northeast, and Griffin, to the southwest,
replaced Belknap in the frontier defense system. Detachments were
occasionally stationed there to watch over the mail road or to control
Indian uprisings, but after the subjugation of the southern Plains
tribes in the Red River War (1874-75) the fort fell into ruins and
settlers dismantled it.
In 1936 the State of Texas, using supplemental
Federal funds, began to restore the fort. At that time only the magazine
and part of the cornhouse were standing. The State restored these
structures and reconstructed the commissary, a kitchen, two two-story
barracks, and the well. All of these are on the original foundations
except the kitchen, constructed between the barracks. The buildings are
of stone construction and have shingled roofs. The 20-acre site is a
county park. The Fort Belknap Society administers museums in the
commissary and cornhouse; and, jointly with Texas Wesleyan College, the
Fort Belknap Archives of Western America, located in one of the
barracks. In the town of Belknap is a monument to Indian Agent
Neighbors.
NHL Designation: 12/19/60
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/siteb31.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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