<P> Among the traders who operated at Fort Gibson was John Allan Mathews, who was the husband of the half - Osage Sarah Williams, daughter of William S. Williams . </P> <P> In the 1850s, the Cherokee complained about the liquor and brothels at Fort Gibson . They tried to prevent the sale of alcohol to their people, who could not tolerate it physically . The Cherokee ultimately urged Congress to close Fort Gibson, and the War Department heeded their request . In June 1857, the Army abandoned Fort Gibson for the first time . The Cherokee nation received the deed to the property and improvements, and established the village of Kee - too - wah on the site . It became a center of traditionalists and eventually an independently federally recognized tribe of Cherokee . </P> <P> During the American Civil War, Union troops occasionally occupied the post . During the summer of 1862, Union soldiers repulsed a Confederate invasion of Indian Territory . They left the fort and withdrew to Kansas . In April 1863, Colonel William A. Phillips of the Indian Home Guard (Union Indian Brigade) reoccupied Fort Gibson and kept it in Union hands throughout the remainder of the war . The Army briefly renamed the post Fort Blunt in honor of Brigadier General James G. Blunt, commander of the Department of Kansas . The fort dominated the junction between the Arkansas River and Texas Road, but Confederates never attacked the fort, though an attack on the fort's nearby livestock grew to a heavy encounter in the battle of Fort Gibson . Its troops under General Blunt marched southward in July 1863 and won the Battle of Honey Springs, the most important in Indian Territory . </P> <P> In the summer of 1864, a steamboat came up the Arkansas River with a thousand barrels of flour and 15 tons of bacon to resupply Union troops at Fort Gibson . Cherokee Gen. Stand Waite, largely cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, didn't want to sink the boat . He wanted to capture it, along with the food and other supplies on board . The ensuing battle is the only naval battle to have been fought in Oklahoma / Indian Territory History . </P>

Why was fort gibson so important to both sides during the civil war