Darlington Agency

The Darlington Agency was an Indian agency on the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation in Canadian County, Oklahoma. The agency was established in 1870, when the agency established at Fort Supply the previous year was moved to a more accessible location for the tribes. Brinton Darlington, a Quaker for whom the agency was named, was the first agent at the agency, a position he held until his death in 1872. The agency gained a post office and an Indian school run by John Homer Seger, and it became a stop on the Chisholm Trail. By 1880, the agency had its own newspaper, the Cheyenne Transporter; it was the first in western Oklahoma. The Cheyenne left to form their own agency at Concho in 1897; when the Arapaho reunited with them, they both occupied the Concho agency, and the Darlington Agency became the property of the State of Oklahoma. The Masons used the site for a boarding school and retirement home until 1922; the state then briefly used the site as a drug rehabilitation center before making it the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation's main bird hatchery and research station.
Fort Reno had been established near the Darlington Agency in 1874, at the insistence of Agent John Miles to pacify the Arapahos and Cheyennes who had already settled there. At first, Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry were dispatched from Fort Sill to establish an installation tentatively called “Camp Near the Cheyenne Agency,” but these were diverted to the Wichita Agency, 30 miles south of Darlington because of Indian unrest in that area. Instead, troops of the 5th Infantry and 6th Cavalry from Forts Dodge and Leavenworth under Lt. Col. Thomas Neil were given the job at Darlington. Neil was authorized to select a site on the south side of the North Canadian River, build corrals and a wagon yard, dig wells, and set up a sawmill for the military post. In February, 1876, General Phil Sheridan named the new facility Fort Reno.

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