Battle of Old Fort Wayne

Description: Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt and his troops attacked Col. Douglas H. Cooper and his Confederate command on Beatties Prairie near Old Fort Wayne at 7:00 am on October 22, 1862. The Confederates put up stiff resistance for a half hour, but overwhelming numbers forced them to retire from the field in haste, leaving artillery and equipage behind. This was a setback in the 1862 Confederate offensive that extended from the tidewater in the east to the plains of the Indian Territory of the west.

The Battle of Old Fort Wayne (also known as Maysville, Beattie's Prairie, or Beaty’s Prairie) was an American Civil War battle on October 22, 1862 in Delaware County in what is now eastern Oklahoma, a part of the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt and his Cherokee, Indiana, and Kansas troops from the First Division of the Army of the Frontier attacked Col. Douglas H. Cooper and his Confederate command on Beatties Prairie near Old Fort Wayne at 7:00 a.m. on October 22, 1862. The Confederates put up stiff resistance for a half hour, but overwhelming numbers forced them to retire from the field in haste, leaving artillery and equipage behind. This was a setback in the 1862 Confederate offensive that extended from the tidewater in the East to the plains of the Indian Territory of the West.

WBattle

In mid-July, the Confederates had started concentrating their forces at Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a planned raid into Missouri. Concurrently, Douglas Cooper was to raid Kansas with his force of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Lower Creeks. After weeks of recruiting to bolster their numbers, Cooper led his men through Indian Territory to Old Fort Wayne, an abandoned pre-war Federal military garrison on the southern edge of the sprawling Beatties Prairie. He positioned pickets four miles (6 km) to the north in Maysville, a small village directly on the Arkansas - Indian Territory boundary (23 miles (37 km) west of Bentonville). He was within supporting distance of John S. Marmaduke's small 4,000-man force of mostly Texans, which was positioned at Cross Hollows (near Lowell, Arkansas).

The nearest Federal troops were from John Schofield's Army of the Frontier, encamped at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Word had been received that Cooper, accompanied by Stand Watie's two Cherokee Indian Regiments, was at Maysville, and scouts reported his total force to be about 7,000 men. James Blunt's First Division was relatively small (3,500 men), but was better trained and ...