INDIAN TERRITORY PARTICIPATION CIVIL WAR

NOTE:  For the purpose of this blog entry, I will speak to the participation in the area of the Indian Territory.  This is not meant to take away from the valiant efforts put forth by other tribes in the east, southeast, southwest, and north. Geographical locations generally dictated loyalties. Tribes such as the Catawba of South Carolina and the eastern band of the Cherokee in North Carolina were Confederate allies.  Others were geographically located to side with the Union. Two Seneca brothers served with the north.  Isaac Newton Parker was a non-commissioned officer in the 132nd New York State Volunteer Infantry, while his brother, Ely Samuel Parker, was a colonel on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant. 

A particularly sad chapter during the war took place in the southwest and involved the removal of the Mescalero Apache and Navajo peoples from the District of Arizona. In October 1862, Colonel of Volunteers Christopher "Kit" Carson was ordered to round up and relocate the Mescalero Apache and Navajo to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in eastern New Mexico territory. The forced removal left as many as 3,000 Navajo dead of starvation, disease, and abuse along the way, and another 2,000 were dead within 2 years on the reservation.  Throughout most of 1863, Carson employed brutal tactics to subdue the Navajo, including the destruction of most of their villages and crops.

     Flag of the 1st Cherokee Mounted Regiment

During the Civil War, the Indian Territory was the scene of numerous skirmishes and 7 battles involving Indian units allied with either the Confederate States or with the Union.

It is estimated that as many as 20,000 Indians played an active role in the Civil War. They participated in conventional battles and guerrilla actions.  There is documentation that 7,860 Indians from various tribes participated in the Confederate Army, as both officers and enlisted.  The majority were from the Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. The Union organized several regiments of Indian Home Guard to serve in the Territory and adjacent areas of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas.  Many more participated without officially being “signed up” and many served, not identified, in guerrilla and marauding bands.  Others provided transportation services, served as river pilots, and guarded vital lines of communications and the railways.

On the eve of the war, the US government relocated soldiers from the Indian Territory to other potentially troublesome areas, leaving the Indian Territory unprotected from Texas and Arkansas, both already aligned with the Confederacy.  Confederate forces took possession of the vacated forts and, in June and July 1861, they negotiated with the tribes for combat support.  The Confederacy took a serious interest in the Indian Territory in the event the Union set a blockade.  The territory would be a valuable source of food; it would serve as a connection to western territories, and as a buffer area between Texas and the Union-held Kansas.

Although they chose different sides, the reasons were basically the same. Poverty was high and their dependence on the US government for protection and survival encouraged their entry into the conflict, either to fight against the US government for their treatment or fight for the US government in hopes of bettering their circumstances.  Tribes that had been assimilated into the white population in the area usually supported the same cause as their neighbors.

Many Cherokee followed Stand Watie, a tribal leader and eventually a Confederate General, hoping to avenge old grievances.  There had been a long-standing tribal division since the minority faction of the tribe signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that removed them from their ancestral lands and the forced removal to the Indian Territory.  Also, a number of Cherokee were slaveholders and supported the south. 

 Distrusting the Federal Government, leaders from each of the Five Civilized Tribes, often acting without the approval of their councils, signed treaties with the Confederacy agreeing to support the Confederate actions in return for protection and recognition of current tribal lands. These tribes came from the South and southeast and were culturally aligned to the Confederacy. And as an additional tie, some owned Negro slaves.

Many of the tribal members, however, did not support the Confederacy.  Whether joining with the Union or the Confederacy, friction within the tribes, some advocating for the north, some for the south, lead to inter-tribal turmoil.

Many volunteered for Union duty in hopes of regaining control of their lands from the Confederacy. Opothleyahola, Principal Chief of the Creek nation and loyal to the Union, refused to allow his tribal lands to join the Confederacy and took his people to Kansas.  
 
Opotheyehala, Creek chief painted by Charles Bird King




As the Indian tribes chose sides, tensions mounted. Confederate Indians that allied with Texas regiments came to battle against the Indian regiments of Union loyalists. Despite fierce resistance, Confederate troops prevailed and expelled the Union loyalists from the territory. This was the first of many battles that tore the Indian Territory into warring factions, with Indian tribes divided and fighting each other.

Union loyalists lacked organization and found themselves driven from Territory. Most fled to Kansas and Missouri on what became known as "the Trail of Blood on the Ice". They left behind nearly everything: food, clothing and medicine. Severe winter weather set in bringing suffering and death. Arriving in Kansas, they were forced to live in ‘refugee camps’ along the rivers without shelters.  Minimal supplies of food and clothing came to the camps.  Many died during that winter.

A surgeon who visited the camps stated, “It is impossible for me to depict the wretchedness of their condition. Their only protection from the snow upon which they lie is prairie grass and from the wind and weather scraps and rags stretched upon switches. Some of them had some personal clothing; most had but shreds and rags which did not conceal their nakedness, and I saw seven varying in age from three to fifteen years without one thread upon their bodies. … They greatly need medical assistance. Many have their toes frozen off; others have feet wounded by sharp ice or branches of trees lying on the snow. But few have shoes or moccasins. They suffer with inflammatory diseases of the chest, throat and eyes. Those who come in last get sick as soon as they eat. Means should be taken at once to have the horses which lie dead in every direction through the camp and on the side of the river removed and burned, lest the first few warm days breed a pestilence amongst them. .”

Driven to Kansas in 1861 by Confederate forces, the refugees came to the attention of agencies in Kansas and the Union Army.  Needing manpower, the commanders of the Union Army made the decision to recruit and train Indian soldiers from the refugees. Their efforts were opposed by many who felt that Indian soldiers would be inferior. Referring to the Indian soldiers, the Fort Scott Bulletin stated "their principal use is to devour Uncle Sam's hard-bread and beef, and spend his money. They will be as valuable as a flock of sheep in time of action. They ought to be disbanded immediately." Others feared that Indians, once armed, would turn against the white population. Some pointed to the reported behavior of Confederate Cherokees at Pea Ridge, who were thought to be responsible for scalping and mutilating Iowa troops.

Opothleyahola, along with members from the other tribes, formed 3 volunteer regiments known as the Indian Home Guard. These regiments fought primarily in Indian Territory and Arkansas.

The Union Army, planned to retake the Indian Territory and reduce the risk of a Confederate invasion of Kansas. Recruited to be part of the expedition to Indian Territory, the First and Second Indian Regiments accompanied several units of white soldiers in a quest to return the Indian refugees to their homes and to reestablish a Union presence in the Indian Territory. Their first taste of war as Union soldiers came in the summer of 1862. Marginally successful, the expedition did have one significant impact. A large number of the captured Cherokee, once free from Confederate influence, ended up joining the Union Army.

The refugees were anxious to return to their lands, fight off their brothers in the Confederacy and reclaim their lands.  With the condition that they would only fight in Indian Territory, the recruitment of the Indians continued. The Union Army formed two regiments-the First and Second Indian Home Guards. When first organized, white officers had overall command of the regiments, but leadership of individual companies fell to the Indians. Not being familiar with Army discipline or tactics, the Indian regiments, initially, were far from an effective fighting force. The Osage of the Second Regiment never did adjust to Army regulations and procedures. Many were mustered out after a series of mass desertions.  In spring of 1863, brigade commander William Phillips remarked that he was satisfied that all 3 regiments had become effective fighting units.

Organized and supplied at Fort Scott in the summer of 1862, they experienced initial success. Union victories near the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah routed the Confederate troops and captured several of their Cherokee allies. Fearing loss of their supply lines, the Union forces fell back.

The Union Army with Indian regiments returned to the Indian Territory and fought in a series of battles that would prove the ability of the Home Guards.  Some of their major efforts include:

               In October 1862, the Third Indian Home Guard halted the flanking operation and captured 4 artillery pieces of the Confederate forces at Old Fort Wayne (eastern OK).

               The Union loyal Indian Guard routed Confederate Warriors stationed at Fort Davis (Muskogee OK) and the fort burned in December 1862.

               Second Indian Home Guard captured Fort Gibson, driving the Confederate defenders in to the Grand River in April 1863.

               At Cabin Creek, soldiers of the Indian Home Guard saved a Union supply train from being captured by the Cherokee forces of General Stand Watie in July 1863.

               In July 1863, Honey Springs was one of the most important sites of the Confederacy in the Indian Territory. Indian regiments, along with white soldiers and Colored troops from Kansas, combined in a battle often referred to as “the Gettysburg of Indian Territory.” Union forces combined to drive the Confederates from the area, liberated valuable stores of supplies, and most importantly, secured the Union Army a firm foothold in Indian Territory.

The actions of the Union Home Guards made it possible for their families to begin returning home, some of them doing so as early as spring of 1863. But the war was not over, fierce and determined opposition brought about two more years of fighting.

From 1864 until summer of 1865, guerilla activity continued.  Confederate Colonel William Quantrill and his gang committed raids throughout the Indian Territory.  Armed gangs stole horses and cattle, and burned the communities.  The Confederate Army unit led by General Stand Watie roamed as marauders but attacked only objectives with a value to the military; they destroyed houses and barns used by Union troops as quarters or for supply storage. Watie also targeted federal military supply trains, depriving the Union forces of supplies, while providing significant supplies, food, forage and ammunition for the Confederacy.

In early 1864, the Indian Home Guards went on a march through the southern part of the territory, engaging in Sherman like destruction, laying waste wherever they marched. Houses and other structures belonging to backers of the Confederacy, again many left homeless, as tribes continued fighting within and with each other. Tensions continued until the very end of the war.

Throughout the war, Confederates formed 4 infantry regiments from among the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. The loyalties of the Cherokee Nation were particularly divided, as many of the original Confederate Cherokees eventually deserted to join the Union cause.

The determination of the Indian Home Guards contributed to ultimate Union victory; they were driven out of their lands in rags but came home in Union Blue. It was mainly due to these Loyal Indians that the Five Civilized Tribes retained any of their lands following the end of the Civil War.

For the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, treaties signed after the war provided for huge territorial concessions, and erosion of tribal authority.  Even though many Cherokees had fought for the Union, the provisions of a July 19, 1866, treaty with the federal government required the tribe to cede parcels of land as railroad right of ways, relinquish a four-mile-wide strip of land that ran the entire length of that nation's border with Kansas, and to allow the Government to settle "friendly Indians" west of 96 degrees longitude.  Permission from the Cherokee Council would not be needed. Other tribes signed treaties with similar provisions that eventually led to a growing dependence on the federal government. With the war concluded, the Army put great effort in de-tribalization and assimilation policies in regard to all tribes. .