In the nineteenth century it was literally a fort, the last outpost before Indian territory. Even now, leaving Fort Smith means leaving the United States and entering the Cherokee nation, which encompasses much of Oklahoma. Here they revere Chief Sequoia not George Washington as the father of the nation and have a system of government based on laws that long preceded the US Constitution. An amalgam of the South and the Mid-West poised on the borders of Indian territory, Fort Smith's natural beauty and quiet Norman Rockwell ambience coexists with evidence of its frontier past. The gallows, where outlaws and gun fighters were executed, stands in the town square.
Place names mark their passing.
His Fort Smith upbringing would inform Darby's life, and perhaps explain why this young, inexperienced officer was able to create one of the most celebrated units of the Second World War. The idea of the Rangers was unconventional for the US Army. The very name chosen harks back to an earlier time in American history. The Rangers were American colonists who fought in pre-Revolutionary Indian wars. The American Indian did not conceive of war as a long campaign of manoeuvere, and he despised pitched battles.