Old Fort Wayne

Fought on October 22, 1862, the engagement at Old Fort Wayne carried several alternate names, including Maysville, Beattie's Prairie, and Beaty's Prairie. The clash took place in Delaware County, a location now situated in the eastern portion of Oklahoma, and formed part of the wider conflict of the American Civil War.

Confederate forces under Major General Thomas C. Hindman, who led the Trans-Mississippi Department, had received orders to suppress bushwhacker activity across southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. Around this same period, Colonel Douglas H. Cooper's Indian Brigade held a position near Newtonia, Missouri, with plans underway to advance toward Springfield. Hindman directed Cooper to maintain control of Newtonia while additional Confederate troops moved into place to encircle Springfield. Between September 30 and October 3, Union and Confederate forces clashed in a series of skirmishes. Then, on October 4, Blunt's men closed in around Newtonia from three directions, prompting Cooper's Indian forces to abandon the area and retreat quickly toward Indian Territory.

Weeks later, at seven o'clock in the morning on October 22, Brigadier General James G. Blunt led Cherokee, Indiana, and Kansas soldiers of the First Division, Army of the Frontier, in an assault against Cooper's Confederate command stationed on Beatties Prairie near Old Fort Wayne. For roughly thirty minutes, the Confederate defenders fought back fiercely, yet the sheer size of the opposing force eventually compelled them to flee the battlefield in disarray, abandoning cannon and supplies in their wake. The defeat dealt a blow to the broader Confederate campaign of 1862, an offensive that stretched all the way from the Tidewater region in the east to the Indian Territory plains in the west.

Battle

By mid-July of 1862, Confederate forces began gathering at Fayetteville, Arkansas, in preparation for an incursion into Missouri. At the same time, Douglas Cooper received orders to strike into Kansas at the head of a body of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Lower Creeks. Following a period of recruiting meant to swell his ranks, Cooper marched his men across Indian Territory to Old Fort Wayne, a Federal garrison that had stood abandoned since before the war on the southern rim of the vast Beatties Prairie. Four miles north, in the small village of Maysville, sitting right on the line between Arkansas and Indian Territory and some 23 miles west of Bentonville, he stationed pickets. His location kept him close enough to support John S. Marmaduke, whose modest force of about 4,000 men, mostly Texans, held Cross Hollows near Lowell, Arkansas.

The closest Union troops belonged to John Schofield's Army of the Frontier, camped at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Reports had reached Federal commanders that Cooper, joined by Stand Watie's two Cherokee regiments, was posted at Maysville, and scouting estimates placed his strength near 7,000. James Blunt commanded the First Division, a comparatively modest force of 3,500, though its training and equipment surpassed that of many newly formed Confederate units. On October 20 at seven in the evening, Blunt set out from camp with his Second and Third Brigades. Leading the column rode the 2nd Kansas Cavalry, trailed by the 6th Kansas Cavalry, the 10th and 11th Kansas Infantry, the 1st and 3rd Cherokee Regiments, the 1st Kansas Battery, the 2nd Indiana Battery, and a set of four mountain howitzers. Marching through the night toward the south, Blunt reached Bentonville just after daybreak and held his men there until five in the afternoon, waiting on the slow-moving supply wagons to catch up. Eager to catch the enemy off guard, since the Confederates had no idea he was approaching, he pushed his column another 25 miles west late on October 21 in a forced march, finally halting at two in the morning to let most of the troops rest.

Even so, he sent the 2nd Kansas Cavalry ahead, and at five that morning it fell upon the Confederates at Maysville while the rest of the division still slept nearly seven miles behind. The pickets at Maysville were driven back, and Union horsemen chased them roughly a mile and a half into Indian Territory, where they ran into Cooper's main line, arranged along a road running east to west, facing north with heavy timber at its rear. Although early Union estimates had inflated Cooper's numbers to as many as 7,000, he actually commanded only about 1,500 men, with four cannons of Howell's Texas Battery anchoring the middle of a line stretched across three-quarters of a mile. Blunt answered by setting his howitzers to engage the Confederate guns and sending forward the 2nd Kansas, which soon cleared Confederate skirmishers off a ridge in front of the main line. As the rest of his division came up, Blunt launched his attack, throwing the weight of his men against the weakly held Confederate center. His artillery silenced the lone Southern battery, and the Kansas troops together with the Cherokees tore open a gap in Cooper's line. Inside of thirty minutes, most of Cooper's poorly trained command was fleeing the field, leaving its guns behind, and Blunt chased the retreating Confederates for close to seven miles before calling off pursuit. Union losses stood at 14 men, while Cooper's casualties numbered around 150, among them an estimated 50 killed who were laid to rest on the battlefield itself.

Cooper's shattered force withdrew nearly 70 miles to Fort Gibson. Once again the Union held uncontested control over Indian Territory above the Arkansas River. In recognition of this clear-cut win, Blunt received promotion to major general of volunteers.

Arkansas later placed a marker commemorating the engagement in Benton County, at the northwest corner where state routes 43 and 72 meet in Maysville.