The U.S. Army was instrumental in the slaughter of bison to destroy the Plains tribes.

Sophia Suttenfield Aughinbaugh Coffee Butt Porter was one of the more colorful characters to inhabit the Red River Valley.

The life of Polly Ann Colbert, a Chickasaw Free Woman, is a history lesson of Indian Territory.

In a description of his travels to Texas, Olmsted and his party pushed on to Gaines Ferry on the Sabine River.

The people in Southwestern Arkansas before the Civil War were much more populist and had a strong free-soil expansionist base.

The bones of the Natchez warriorss could be seen there years afterwards at Lake Sang pour Sang — "Blood for Blood."

Top o' Hill Terrace was one the biggest gambling halls, bordellos, and speakeasies in the Southwest.

Comanches received rations of food as well as monies to offset the loss of territory at Fort Supply.

Fort Sill represents the Old West and flourishes as the last remaining, active military post that was built during the Indian wars.

More than any other fort at or near the Red River Valley, Fort Richardson embodies American Indian reservation policy.

Fort Griffin marked the boundary line ("the frontier") between Native American lands and white settlement ("civilization").

Fort Phantom Hill centered a small town of the same name in the 1880s, where the main source of income derived from buffalo slaughter.

Fort Belknap became an important trading hub for Anglo settlement into the Comanceria.

Fort Washita's main purpose was to protect Chickasaw and Choctaw settlers from the Plains Indians and Anglo "land smugglers."

Fort Arbuckle was founded by Randolph B. Marcy in 1851 as a Chickasaw Nation garrison.

Randolph B. Marcy, who knew Texas and Indian Territory well, was tasked to lead an expedition to document the Red River in 1852.

Stephen F. Austin traced a Mexican map of the Province of Texas from 1818 and painted it with water colors.

De la Harpe and his men built a wooden trading post at the "abandoned village of the Nassonite chief."

Fort Jesup, erected in 1822 along the Camino de Real (Spanish Road) replaced Fort Claiborne of 1804.

While at the Ouachita River, Bernard de la Harpe claimed to have eaten a unicorn.