I googled Ft. Gibson + Freed slaves and can find nothing about that. There was a mention of Cherrokee (many of them black slaves) dying 30 years earlier during the Trail of Tears while heading for Ft. Gibson.
Here's the only mentions I could find of a slave at Ft. Gibson after the war. There is no mention of starvation.
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/cow_tom.htm
You’ll have to do years of reading to understand this. I’ve just finished writing a book about it all. What do you suppose happened to those thousands of slaves after they left their homes during the constant battles of the Civil War?
There was simply no arrangement made for their ‘freedom’. Many of the men joined the Union Army leaving the women and children with no where to go but the forts. Many joined the Confederacy. The whites and Indians in those areas became refugees, so did the slaves. Thousands of Cherokee refugees died.
I have letters written by my grgrgrandparents describing the situation. There’s plenty on the net. Here’s some more reading:
Richard B. Harwell, The Confederate Reader: How the South Saw the Way.
(New York: N\Metro Book, 2002).
Alvin M. Josephy, jr., The Civil War in the American West. (New York:
Alfred E. Knopf, 1991).
Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondence
of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family by Edward Everett Dale, Gaston Litton
Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondence
of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family by Edward Everett Dale, Gaston Litton
Western History Collection, “Chronicles of Oklahoma”, University of Oklahoma
Keep reading.
“Here’s the only mentions I could find of a slave at Ft. Gibson after the war. There is no mention of starvation.”
I’m going to give you a snip from a book that will show you just one of the reasons why they indeed starved at Ft. Gibson. It wasn’t just slaves, it was union sympathetic refugees as well. Union and Confederate refugee citizens couldn’t feed themselves, much less ‘freed’ slaves.
” Even as the Union Sixth Cavalry marched to Cabin Creek, Watie and Gano raced to intersect the supply train. On the way thJim Bell could often be heard lamenting various forms of the same theme during this time and many years later as well. “ I would like to ask Mr. Lincoln what his plan is for his ‘emancipated’ slaves. What is he freeing them to do but be homeless, defenseless, hungry beggars driven to thievry. Bah!”ey burned tons of hay and killed a party of forty Federal blacks engaged in the harvest. They continued on the Texas Road to Cabin Creek, where they captured the Federal supply train holding clothing, food and a million and half dollars worth of provisions meant for refugees and Federal troops holding up at Fort Gibson.”(That’s in 1864 dollars!-believe me, they starved at Ft. Gibson that winter)
From a letter:
“I am satisfied that you have already heard rumors that we are ruined beyond remedy. How does it happen that you always hear everything from the common in it’s worst aspect. It is bad enough to tell the truth or well enough to do so, but to go beyond that is criminal. It can do no good, but a great deal of harm to exaggerate things as many of our people do.
But it is true out of five thousand , one thousand are without arms and many have not clothing to change, without shoes and what any one in their right senses would say was
in a deplorable condition looking more like Siberian exiles than soldiers.
Still I am constrained to say that they are never called on to make a stand against the enemy but they do so cheerfully and with a determination that no one would expect.
We are neglected. The Confederacy certainly does not know our condition. Good soldiers, but without the means of resistance, but we are neither discouraged or whipped and God forbid we ever shall be. Times are hard. No one starved yet though. (1863 -— they soon starved !) I have been in an almost nude condition. I have still got an old gray shirt and pants on. They are thread bear. “
Another letter:
In the summer of 1864 at Camp Jumper, ten miles north of Perryville, Stand Watie wrote to his wife the only news of the war the family was likely to obtain other than the usual persistent rumors.
“The Pins are now near the river opposite to Fort Smith. Creeks and few other troops about 1200 at Gibson. Lieut. Col. James Bell took a scout with a hundred men to near Fort Smith, killed one notorious Captain by the name of Gibbons who was a terror to the southern people and brought in three Federal prisoners. Arkansas river is very high, a portion of the cavalry force of my command is on the other side of the Canadian. Cooper with the Choctaws, Gans Brigade, is at Johnsons Station. Maxey is at Doaksville. There are some four thousand men at Fort Smith. The main army of the Federals at Little Rock. It cannot be long before a general move is made in the direction of Arkansas river. The union citizens of Washington and Benton Counties are moving out north.”
My grgrgrandfather:
Jim Bell could often be heard lamenting various forms of the same theme during this time and many years later as well. “ I would like to ask Mr. Lincoln what his plan is for his ‘emancipated’ slaves. What is he freeing them to do but be homeless, defenseless, hungry beggars driven to thievery.”