Civil War trap at Fisher Ford thwarted by 10-year-old-boy

In a Works Progress Administration interview Feb. 28, 1938, Jim M. Smith recalls delivering a message to a Confederate general in order to disrupt a trap by Union troops at Fisher Ford.

Ethel B. Tackit interviewed Smith. At the time of the interview, Smith was 86 and living in Hobart, a small town in southwest Oklahoma. Smith was born in Benton County in December 1851.

Smith said he was 10 years old when he delivered a message to Gen. Sterling Price. The message was from the leader of the Confederate band in which Smith's father belonged. The band's leader, known as Quantrill, was under Buck Brown's command.

"I was among these men of Quantrill's and Buck Brown's all the time, for my father was there, and I had been well trained in the art of keeping my mouth shut," Smith said.

The message about the trap was sent to Price after the battle of Pea Ridge in 1862.

"The Federals had laid a trap to catch some of the Confederates at Fisher's Ford, and the plan was discovered by some of Quantrill's men, who reported the fact. The region was under heavy guard of the Union Army, and the country was full of Yanks. It seemed impossible for a message to get through to warn the Confederates of this trap."

After Smith's father approved of the plan to deliver the message, a patch was sewn on Smith's clothing, and the message was concealed under it. "I knew the danger to me and to my people, and I well understood what would happen to any of these men if they should happen to be caught by the Yankee Army, also I wanted the Confederate soldiers to get out."

The patch they placed on the hip of his homespun breeches was not the only patch on his clothes. "I was ragged and barefooted," he said.

He was given directions and told what to do when he reached the outpost.

"They also told me to make my way among the Yankee soldiers, if it came necessary, just like the Arkansas boy that I was," he said. "I was well acquainted with the rough country over which I had to go."

Smith walked 42 miles without being stopped or searched before reaching the outpost.

"Walking was not so bad, for I was accustomed to it, also to looking out for myself, but when I came across Yankee soldiers, and they bantered me like they would any local boy, I felt awfully small and said nothing but went on my way."

He said his hardest test came when he reached the outpost.

"I saw six men riding on horses toward me and I thought that they were Confederates, but I was so scared and frightened I was not sure, so I hid myself in the old brush pile."

The document that contains the interview becomes nearly impossible to read after this point, but Smith said he had the honor of seeing Price and carrying a message to him.

Further in the interview, Smith said his family moved to Texas, "where we lived until conditions become more settled."

They then moved to Indian Territory. Smith also talks about hauling apples on the Fort Gibson trail, and people standing watch by night because renegades might steal their mules.

Smith later said they took Texas longhorn cattle and drove them through Indian Territory. They would sell them at Fort Scott, Kan.

"I made 17 trips of this kind over this Old Fort Gibson trail up until the time I was married, after which I did not go so often," he said. "I have been over the present state of Oklahoma a good deal in these 86 years, and I believe that Abe Lincoln would have done more for the people than any other president if they had not killed him."

General News on 06/25/2014