Darlington Agency Site

Darlington began, strictly speaking, as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, this in 1869 at Fort Supply. The location proved awkward, as the bulk of the some 3,500 Cheyennes and Arapahos for whom the 4,300,000-acro reservo had been established lived farther to tho south. The move to present Darlington was made the following year.
Tho new location for the agency was the north bank of the North . Canadian River about six miles northwest of present El Reno. It was selected by Brinton Darlington, one of the first Quaker Indian agents appointed by President Grant. Darlington remained as agent until his death in 1872. Though his service was relatively brief, he won the Indians' respect and admiration to a remarkable degree and the agency's name was subsequently changed to honor him. Another Quaker, John D. Milos, succeeded Darlington and remained until 1884, continuing his enlightened program of sympathy and understanding - of working simultaneously to maintain peace and encourage the Indian to adjust himself to tho white man's agricultural economy.

Darlington aided in the establishment of Fort Reno in 1874 - on reservation land across the Canadian to the south. Meanwhile, the agency was developing into an important little settlement and a regular stop on the Chisholm (cattle) Trail and various stage and freighter trails that tied Indian Territory together. Darlington acquired a post office in 1873. Indian education received a notable boost the year before with the arrival of the sympathetic easterner, John H. Seger. (He later became the first white man over to be entrusted with many of the traditions of the Cheyennes.) Seger was in charge of the Indian school at Darlington for five years before moving westward to establish his own school at Seger Colony.

Important mission work was also carried on at Darlington. The Quakers began to work with both tribes in 1878. In 1880 they turned over work among the Arapahos to the Mennonites, who operated an Indian school a mile to the east of the agency until 1896. By the 1880s mail and stage service extended north from Darlington to Caldwell, Kansas, south to Fort Sill, west to Fort Elliot in Texas. The Cheyenne Transporter appeared in 1880, the first newspaper in the western half of Oklahoma.