From Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, February, 1888, Volume XXV-No. 2, page 234.

I've not included a description of the national cemetery (one can view the article on
Google Books):
The Cherokee Nation was the running battlefield during the war;
the entire country was devastated, and not a footprint of an ox,
sheep or swine could be found in the whole Cherokee country
at its close. The bones of many beasts, whose flesh gave food
for the armies of North and South, are still seen in the woods,
by the roadside and on the prairie. My driver insisted on going
half a mile out of his way to show me a relic of the struggle-
the tie and the decaying hub of an army-wagon that, by
mutual consent of the people, remains undisturbed as a
memento of the past.
George E. Foster.
This echoes other post war account I have read, in that the area in and around
Fort Gibson, especially along the river, was one giant cemetery of men and animals.
The establishment of the NC in 1868 helped alleviate the problem.