Tragic historic story of the destruction of Native American peoples as a result of the Civil War, including their own service in both the Union and Confederate armies.
Annie Heloise Abel describes the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, a bloody disaster for the Confederates but a glorious moment for Colonel Stand Watie and his Cherokee Mounted Rifles. The Indians were soon enough swept by the war into a vortex of confusion and chaos. Abel makes clear that their participation in the conflict brought only devastation to Indian Territory. Born in England and educated in Kansas, Annie Heloise Abel (1873?1947) was a historical editor and writer of books dealing mainly with the trans-Mississippi West. They include The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist (1915), also reprinted as a Bison Book. Abel's distinguished career is noted in an introduction by Theda Perdue, the author of Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society (1979), and Michael D. Green, whose Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (1982) was published by the University of Nebraska Press.
When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s. By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to fight alongside Confederate forces. In Choctaw Confederates, Fay A. Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states' rights mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery also determined the Nation's support of the Confederacy. Mining service records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace traditional masculine roles that were disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between Native populations and slavery.
The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War is one of the first historical accounts dealing with the participations of Native American in the American Civil War. Native Americans took active participation in the conflict. 28,693 Native Americans served during the war, mostly in the Confederate military. They participated in battles such as Pea Ridge, Second Manassas, Antietam, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in Federal assaults on Petersburg._x000D_ Contents_x000D_ The Battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn and Its More Immediate Effects_x000D_ Lane's Brigade and the Inception of the Indian_x000D_ The Indian Refugees in Southern Kansas_x000D_ The Organization of the First Indian Expedition_x000D_ The March to Tahlequah and the Retrograde Movement of the "White Auxiliary"_x000D_ General Pike in Controversy With General Hindman_x000D_ Organization of the Arkansas and Red River Superintendency_x000D_ The Retirement of General Pike_x000D_ The Removal of the Refugees to the Sac and Fox Agency_x000D_ Negotiations With Union Indians_x000D_ Indian Territory in 1863, January to June Inclusive_x000D_ Indian Territory in 1863, July to December Inclusive_x000D_ Aspects, Chiefly Military, 1864-1865
Book Excerpt: ...ii, supplement, 767, 774.][Footnote 27: Van Dora's protection, if given, was given to little purpose; for the mines were soon abandoned [Britton, Memoirs of the Rebellion on the Border, 1863, 120].][Footnote 28: Official Records, vol. viii, 734.][Footnote 29: --Ibid., 745.][Footnote 30: --Ibid., 690.]superseded by that which later clothed Van Dorn and yet his department was now to be absorbed by a military district, which was itself merely a section of another department. The name and organization of the Department of Indian Territory remained to breed confusion, disorder, and serious discontent at a slightly subsequent time. Of course, since the ratification of the treaties of alliance with the tribes, there was no question to be raised concerning the status of Indian Territory as definitely a possession of the Southern Confederacy. Indeed, it had, in a way, been counted as such, actual and prospective, ever since the enactment of the marque and reprisa