The engagement at Honey Springs (by definition an engagement, rather than a battle) was the pivot point of the Civil War in Indian Territory and is the largest military clash ever to have occurred in Oklahoma. Also known as "the affair at Elk Creek," it happened on July 17, 1863, between United States units under Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt and Confederate States of America troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Cooper.  Federal reports place twenty-eight hundred Union troops and six thousand Confederates at Honey Springs. Later research estimates the Southern force between thirty-four hundred and fifty-one hundred, not all of whom were physically capable and equipped to fight. These consisted of the Twentieth and Twenty-ninth Texas Cavalry, the Fifth Texas Partisan Rangers, Lee's Light Battery of Texas Artillery, the First and Second Cherokee Mounted Rifles, the First and Second Creek Mounted Rifles, and the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment of Mounted Rifles.  Honey Springs, a well-known place to rest and get water along the Texas Road, was the location of a Confederate commissary depot. Cooper gathered his troops there following the first engagement at Cabin Creek (July 1 and 2). At Honey Springs Cooper awaited three thousand troops under Brig. Gen. James Cabell from Fort Smith, together with which he planned to attack the Union Indian Brigade at Fort Gibson.   Meanwhile, Fort Gibson was reinforced by Blunt and a division of his Army of the Frontier. Blunt decided to strike Cooper's force before Cabell arrived and, after crossing the rain-swollen Arkansas River, began his march at eleven o'clock on the night of July 16. Near Chimney Rock, a landmark west of present Summit, Oklahoma, the Union troops routed a Confederate picket. In the early morning they engaged a Southern reconnaissance party intending to block the Texas Road five miles north of Elk Creek. Finally, just before eight o'clock on the morning of July 17, Blunt ordered his men to halt and eat. He then rode to the top of a rise to scout the enemy line, which was hidden in trees north of Elk Creek.  After resting his men, Blunt formed his troops into two brigades under Col. William A. Phillips on the left and Col. William R. Judson on the right. Phillips's Brigade consisted of a battalion of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry, the First and Third Regiments of Indian Home Guards, a battalion of the Second Colorado Infantry, and Capt. Henry Hopkins's (four-gun) battery of Kansas Artillery, plus two guns of Capt. Edward A. Smith's battery attached to the cavalry. Judson's Brigade included a battalion of the Third Wisconsin Cavalry, the Second Regiment of Indian Home Guards, and the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and the remainder of Smith's battery of Kansas Artillery. They quick-marched a quarter-mile down the road, then spread out in front of the Confederate center. The fight began with an artillery duel. Each side lost one gun, but as the Confederates had started with only four, the advantage belonged to the Federals. Ordered to advance, the First Kansas Infantry marched to within sixty paces of the Confederate line, standing on open ground while the Southerners were hidden in the forest of trees and underbrush. When the regimental commander ordered his men to fire, both sides simultaneously responded. The Confederates withstood the fusillade and counterattacked, and in the action their flag-bearer was shot. As they retreated, they retrieved the fallen regimental banner, but a second counterattack also failed, again with the flag-bearer killed and the standard recovered. Then, as black-powder smoke filled the air, the Second Regiment of Indian Home Guards entered the First Kansas Infantry's line of fire. When Union commanders ordered the troops to pull back, the Confederates thought the enemy was retreating. The dismounted Texas cavalrymen charged into the reset Union line and met withering cross-fire from the front and side. One Confederate wrote, "We entered the battle with 360 men and came out with 105," and in the confusion the colors of the Twenty-ninth Texas Cavalry were lost. General Cooper reported afterward that he had sent a rider to Col. Daniel N. McIntosh's two Creek regiments, which were guarding Elk Creek's upper fords, to order them to support the Texans' left, but the messenger never got through.  Reforming battle lines several times in their retreat across Elk Creek, the Confederates stalled the Federal advance through hand-to-hand combat. Half a mile south of the creek the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment checked the Federal advance long enough for their wagon train to evacuate some supplies. They then set fire to what remained, keeping it out of enemy hands. The Confederates withdrew to North Fork Town. After a day's rest the Federal troops returned to Fort Gibson. As a result of the battle the Confederates no longer controlled Indian Territory north of the Arkansas River, and a route to Fort Smith, Arkansas, was opened to the Federal army. General Blunt reported seventeen Union troops killed and sixty wounded. His soldiers buried 150 Confederate dead and took seventy-seven prisoners. Four hundred Confederates were listed as wounded.  The Honey Springs Battlefield Historic Site, located east of U.S. Highway 69 between Oktaha and Rentiesville, is administered by the Oklahoma Historical Society. A battle reenactment is held every third year. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR 70000848) and has been nominated to become a National Historic Landmark. Efforts to have the battlefield designated a National Park continue.

CIVIL WAR REFUGEES

The impact of the Civil War on the civilian population of the Indian Territory was unparalleled in any other venue. Neither regular troops nor guerrilla bands on either side respected civilian property. Worse, bitter Removal-era hostilities within the Seminole, Cherokee, and Creek nations greatly escalated the level of violence aimed at perceived enemies, whether in uniform or not. To escape victimization, Indian Territory civilians on both sides fled their homes, creating a refugee problem not anticipated by Union or Confederate authorities.

Dislocation due to the war began in the summer of 1861 when the Creek Nation signed a treaty allying itself with the Confederacy. Opothleyahola, long-time foe of the pro-Confederate leaders, led dissident Creeks, with their movable wealth, slaves, and livestock, away to the western frontier. His followers included opponents of the Creek pro-Confederate faction, neutral Indians hoping to avoid war, and runaway slaves. When the dissidents' number reached about seven thousand, pro-Confederate leaders in the Indian nations became alarmed, fearing the loss of more slaves and that Opothleyahola and his "Loyalists" would join forces with Unionist troops to invade the Indian Territory.

As Opothleyahola led his followers toward the safety of Unionist Kansas, Confederate Indian and Texas troops launched a preemptive strike in November and December 1861. Opothleyahola's followers who survived the running fight to Kansas, now minus their belongings, found no preparations for their arrival. After a bitter winter of exposure and starvation, the able men enlisted in regiments of the Indian Home Guard. Federal authorities planned to use them in a summer invasion of the Indian Territory that they anticipated would allow the refugees to return home and provide for themselves. But the 1862 Indian Expedition failed, and one year after the war began, the Union agent reported that 5,487 refugees were still encamped at LeRoy, Kansas.

Meanwhile, federal employees, non-Indian residents, and missionaries who no longer felt safe in the Indian nations were leaving the Indian Territory in a more orderly fashion. Wealthy pro-Confederate Indians began a more substantial mass migration, taking their families, livestock, and male slaves to the Red River Valley of northern Texas, where they put land into production. Some, such as Creek Principal Chief Motey Kennard and Creek Judge George W. Stidham, then returned home to await events. But others, including Sarah Watie, wife of Confederate Cherokee commander Stand Watie, stayed, farming to support their children and slaves. With Opothleyahola in Kansas, early 1862 was relatively quiet for the pro-Confederate Indians, although "bushwhacking," or sporadic partisan attacks, took lives on both sides. The real fighting was generally far away in Missouri and Arkansas.

The calm lasted until the summer of 1862, when the Indian Expedition moved south from Kansas into the Cherokee Nation and set off a flight of pro-Confederate Cherokees. Some crossed the Arkansas River to settle temporarily in the Creek Nation and escape continuing violence in their own country, even after the invaders withdrew to Kansas. But in April 1863 a stronger, more determined Union advance began with the recapture of Fort Gibson. This time the invasion force included former slaves and Union Indians in federal uniforms, which particularly frightened pro-Confederate Cherokees and Creeks. More pro-Confederate Cherokees fled to the Red River Valley as these Union troops burned homes and harassed civilians as far south as Webbers Falls.

The final large-scale movement of refugees occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Honey Springs on July 18, 1863. Pro-Confederate Cherokee and Creek civilians understood that the Confederate defeat and subsequent withdrawal south to the Canadian River left them exposed and vulnerable. They scrambled out of the way of the Union advance in a flight they later wryly called "the Stampede," taking refuge in the Red River Valley camps in the southern Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. For the last two years of the war the Creek Nation was virtually deserted.

In the Red River Valley Confederate Brig. Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey, ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs, knew that the Indian families, many now destitute, must be cared for to ensure that their men would fight on in the Confederate Second Indian Cavalry Brigade. That unit was helping defend the Texas border. At various times Maxey supplied flour, beef, and soap to 4,823 Creeks in the Washita River camps, 2,906 Cherokees at Tishomingo, 574 Seminoles near Fort Washita, 241 Osages near Fort Arbuckle, 4,480 Choctaws, and 785 Chickasaws. However, the refugees helped themselves by growing abundant corn and vegetables. In 1864 they raised fifteen hundred bales of cotton to trade for textiles. Indian women carded cotton, spun yarn, and wove their own fabric to provide clothing for themselves and their men. Even so, there were chronic shortages of clothing and shoes. The capture of the million-dollar wagon train at the Second Battle of Cabin Creek on September 18, 1864, boosted morale by bringing welcome supplies of calico, candles, flour, bacon, coffee, canned goods, and shoes to the refugee camps.

By comparison, the Union refugees fared much worse. Although federal forces held Fort Gibson from April 1863 through 1865, the Confederate First Indian Cavalry Brigade raided the vicinity at will. Union Indian refugees, brought back from Kansas, dared not leave miserable, crowded camps protected by the fort's cannon. Federal troops rounded up slaves in the aftermath of Honey Springs and delivered them to the fort, adding further to the refugee problem. Feeding refugees who could not raise their own food was not a federal priority. Malnutrition then afflicted refugee camps already ravaged by smallpox, dysentery, pneumonia, diarrhea, and gastric disorders.

Refugees who survived four years of displacement, disease, and deprivation trickled home gratefully in late 1865 and 1866, but their number was drastically reduced. The toll of the dead or missing ranged from one of nine Chickasaws to one of every four Creeks. Once home, they faced the daunting task of rebuilding homes, farms, and public buildings that had been stripped, if not destroyed, in their absence.

SECOND INDIAN CAVALRY BRIGADE

As the Civil War progressed in Indian Territory, in late 1863 and early 1864 Maj. Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey, commander of the District of Indian Territory, recruited additional regiments, sought new sources of resupply, and reorganized his Confederate command into two brigades (a third was planned but never effected). The Second Indian Brigade, under Col. Tandy Walker, comprised primarily veteran soldiers drawn from numerous Choctaw and Chickasaw units. In late 1864, for example, it contained the Second Choctaw Regiment, led by Col. Simpson N. Folsom, the First Chickasaw Battalion, under Lt. Col. Lemuel N. Reynolds, the First Choctaw Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Jackson McCurtain, the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Battalion, under Lt. Col. James Riley, and Capt. George Washington's Reserve Squadron.

The brigade participated in the Camden campaign in Arkansas and was commended for its performance at the Battle of Poison Spring in April 1864. During that engagement about 680 members of the command spearheaded an assault against the Union escort of a large supply train. The Federal troops were routed, an artillery battery was overrun, and about two hundred wagons captured.

The assault began with shouting of the Indian rebel yell and an aggressive advance. Officers were concerned that the undersupplied and hungry Choctaw soldiers would halt to pillage the captured supplies, but they continued to fight until Texas units moved past them in pursuit of the fleeing Union forces. During the battle the Choctaws also visited retribution on black Union soldiers, whom they had faced with less success the previous summer at the Battle of Honey Springs.

After the return of the Second Brigade to Indian Territory and a furlough of its members, the Choctaw troops reaffirmed their loyalty to the Confederacy and reenlisted for the duration of the war on June 23 at Camp Green in the Choctaw Nation. The Confederate supreme commander at Trans-Mississippi Department headquarters had the reenlistment resolutions printed and circulated to inspire loyalty among other Indian peoples in the region.

In July the brigade participated in aggressive operations near Fort Smith and were present at the capture of a Union outpost at Massard Prairie on July 27. Offensive activity thereafter was limited until the early fall, when runners were dispatched to bring in all absentees and have them report to their regiments. Once mobilized, however, the command to some extent was still inadequately prepared to enter the field. An ordnance officer's report concluded that the troops were poorly armed and had few guns that were "entirely serviceable."

The First Choctaw Regiment was armed with an assortment of weapons, but most members carried Texas rifles. The report complained that these latter firearms "are nothing more than a cheat, badly put together and very unreliable, being liable, a great number, to burst." Other soldiers carried sporting rifles in ill repair, short-range, double-barreled shotguns, or antiquated muskets.

During the Second Battle of Cabin Creek in September 1864, Walker's brigade advanced to the Canadian River to cover the extraction of Watie's and Gano's commands from north of the Arkansas River after their successful expedition. Little activity occurred afterwards until the spring of the next year. Finally, in May 1865 the brigade was called one last time into camp. Scouting parties were dispatched to monitor river crossings, and other details spent time bringing in cattle from surrounding areas for use as subsistence for military personnel and for civilian refugees clustered in camps along the Red River. The Second Indian Brigade dissipated shortly thereafter, following the signing of a temporary treaty with U.S. officials by Choctaw principal chief Peter Pitchlynn.