How We Know What We Know · Archeological Surveys & Interviews

Information about Honey Springs comes from battle reports, diaries, letters, newspapers, firsthand interviews, and published memoirs by people who participated in or were affected by the war. During the 1930s, the Oklahoma Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration interviewed American Indians and other pioneers who settled the territory and state, and these interviews and questionnaires were preserved in the Indian-Pioneer Papers in the Oklahoma Historical Society's archives. Archaeological surveys at Honey Springs provided tangible evidence of Federal and Confederate positions where the heaviest fighting occurred, as well as the locations of the Federal bivouac area and Confederate camps. In one Oklahoma Writers' Project interview, former enslaved person Lucinda Davis recalled sheltering in a cave near the wagon depot at Honey Springs, hearing the guns all day, seeing Confederate forces retreat past her location by evening, and then seeing Union forces continue into Honey Springs and burn the wagon depot and houses.

Rentiesville, Oklahoma · United States