Stand Watie was one of only two Native
Americans to rise to the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. The
other was Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca from New York, an attorney, engineer, and
tribal diplomat and military secretary on Gen. U.S. Grant’s personal
staff. At Appomattox, Parker copied the
terms of surrender given to Robert E. Lee.
Stand Watie (December 12, 1806 – September 9, 1871), also known as Standhope Uwatie, Degataga and Isaac
S. Watie, was a leader of the Cherokee Nation and in command of the Confederate
Indian Cavalry of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, made up of Cherokee,
Muskogee and Seminole. He was the last
Confederate general in the field to surrender at the end of the Civil War, June
23, 1865.
Born in Oothcaloga, Cherokee Nation
(Calhoun, GA), the son of Uwatie ("the ancient one"), a full-blood
Cherokee, and Susanna Reese, daughter of a white father and Cherokee mother, he
was named Degataga ("Stand Firm").
He had two brothers, Gallagina, who later took the name Elias Boudinot,
and Thomas Watie. By 1827, their father was a wealthy planter and held Negro
slaves.
Baptized into the Moravian Church, his
father took the name David Uwatie and changed his son’s name to Isaac S.
Uwatie. He also saw to it that his sons
and daughters learned to read and write English at the Moravian mission school.
As an adult, Isaac combined his Cherokee and Christian names and dropped the
"U" and became Stand Watie.
Stand Watie wrote several articles for
the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper. His brother, Elias, was editor from 1828-1832.
The Phoenix published articles in both Cherokee and English, many against
Indian Removal. In 1832 the state sent
militia to destroy the offices and press of the Cherokee Phoenix.
In 1829, gold was discovered in the
Cherokee territory and prospectors poured into the territory. With the discovery of gold and the passage of
the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Anglo settlers starting putting pressure on the
government and on the Cherokees to relocate to the west.
Watie, a clerk for the Cherokee Supreme
Court, believed removal to the Indian Territory was the only way for the tribe
to remain autonomous. Along with his
brother Elias, his uncle Major Ridge and cousin, John Ridge, he was among the minority
of tribe members who supported removal and signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, trading their traditional
homelands in Georgia for land in the Indian Territory. The majority of the Cherokee opposed removal,
and the Tribal Council and Chief John Ross, of the National Party, refused to
ratify the treaty. This was the
beginning of a serious rivalry between Watie and Ross.
Watie made the move west in 1837,
settling near Honey Creek, joining the one-third of the Cherokee that had moved
west in the 1820's - known as the "Old Settlers." In 1838, the military began forcing the
remaining Cherokees from Georgia; as many as 4,000 died out of the 15,000
Cherokee who made the journey over the Trail of Tears.
After removal to Indian Territory,
members of the Cherokee government carried out a sentence against the Treaty
Party (Ridge-Watie-Boudinot faction); under Cherokee law, alienating tribal
lands was a "blood offense" (capital offense). On June 22, 1839, Watie and the co-signers of
the New Echota treaty, his brother, Elias Boudinot; his uncle, Major Ridge, and
his cousin, John Ridge, were attacked in an assassination attempt, starting a
continuing cycle of violence that nearly brought the tribe to a civil war. Watie managed to escape and eventually became
a prominent figure in Cherokee politics as the surviving member of the
Ridge-Watie-Boudinot faction of the tribe.
In 1842, Watie killed James Foreman, one
of those that had attacked his uncle; in 1845 his brother Thomas Watie was
killed in retaliation. In the 1850s Stand Watie was tried in Arkansas for the
murder; he was acquitted on self-defense. His nephew Elias Cornelius Boudinot,
who had become a lawyer, defended him.
Watie established a successful plantation
in Indian Territory and was a slaveholder near Spavinaw Creek. He served on the
Cherokee Council from 1845 to 1861, and also served as Speaker.
Principal Chief John Ross had signed an
alliance with the Confederacy in 1861 in an attempt to avoid disunity within
his tribe and among the other tribes in the Indian Territory. Within less than a year, Ross and part of the
National Council concluded that the agreement was disastrous. In the summer of 1862, Ross removed the
tribal records to Union-held Kansas and then proceeded to Washington to meet
with President Lincoln.
A lifelong enemy of Principal Chief John
Ross, Watie was named Principal Chief, 1862-1866, when John Ross and his
followers announced their support for the Union and fled to Kansas in August
1862. Those members of the tribe supporting
the Union refused to ratify Watie's election. Many Cherokee fled north to
Kansas or south to Texas for safety, and the pro-Confederates took advantage of
the instability. Open warfare broke out
between Confederate and Union Cherokee within Indian Territory.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861,
fearful of the Federal Government and the threat to create a State (Oklahoma)
out of most of the semi-sovereign Indian Territory, Watie viewed the US
Government as the Cherokees' enemy, and joined the Confederacy. He raised the first Cherokee regiment of the
Confederate Army, the Cherokee Mounted Rifles, and worked to secure control of
the territory for the Confederacy.
October 1861 he was commissioned colonel in the 1st Cherokee Mounted
Rifles. The Confederate Army put Watie in command of the Indian Division of the
Indian Territory in February, 1865. The Cherokee and allied warriors became a
potent Confederate fighting force that kept Union troops out of southern Indian
Territory and large parts of north Texas throughout the war.
Since most Cherokee were Union
supporters, during the war, General Watie's family and other Confederate
Cherokee took refuge in Rusk and Smith counties of east Texas.
Although he fought Federal troops, he
also led his men in fighting between factions of the Cherokee and in attacks on
Cherokee civilians and farms, as well as against the Creek, Seminole and others
in Indian Territory who chose to support the Union. Though his troops were
based south of the Canadian River, periodically they crossed the river into
Union territory.
His troops fought in several battles and
skirmishes in the western Confederate states, the Indian Territory, Arkansas,
Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. Watie's force reportedly fought in more battles
west of the Mississippi River than any other unit. On September 19, 1864, his forces took part
in what is considered to be the greatest Confederate victory in Indian
Territory, the Second Battle of Cabin Creek. With General Richard Montgomery
Gano, he led a raid that captured a Federal wagon train that brought nearly $1
million worth of wagons, mules, commissary supplies, and other needed items to
the Confederacy.
While waiting to ambush the Union supply
train, Watie's forces encountered a detachment of black Union soldiers working in the hayfields
at Flat Rock, near Flat Rock Creek and the Grand River, about 15 miles
northwest of Fort Gibson. Capt E. A. Barker was leading a small group of
the 2nd Kansas Cavalry and a detachment from the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry,
and guarding the operation; they were surrounded and attacked from all sides by
Watie's forces. Barker ordered his men with horses to attempt a breakout, only
15 of the 65 men reached the Fort. The Union troops lost their hay-making
equipment, several hundred tons of hay and received over 100 casualties
(killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.) Union
reports said that Watie's Indian cavalry "killed all the Negroes they
could find", including wounded men.
Too far removed from the Civil War in the East, it took time
for Watie to learn of the defeat of the
Confederate Army. On June 23, 1865, at Doaksville,
Choctaw Nation, more than three months after Lee’s army surrendered
at Appomattox, Watie
became the last Confederate general to surrender.
During the war, Watie's most discussed victories
included the capture of a Federal steamboat, the J. R. Williams, in June 1864
and the capture of a Union wagon train at the Second Battle of Cabin Creek in
September 1864. Historians feel his most
infamous actions during the war were the burning of Chief John Ross' home, Rose
Cottage, and the Cherokee Council House in October 1863, and the massacre of
the First Kansas Colored Infantry and 2nd Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry at
the Hay Camp Action (Battle of Flat Rock) in September 1864.
In September 1865, Watie went to Texas to
see his wife Sallie and to mourn the death of their son, Comisky, who had died
at age 15. Stand Watie married and had 3 sons and 2 daughters. Apparently, he had 4 wives during his life-time.
After the Civil War, both factions of the
Cherokee Nation sent delegations to Washington, D.C. Watie pushed, without success, for
recognition of a separate "Southern Cherokee Nation." The US
government negotiated only with the leaders who had sided with the Union. As part of the new treaty, it required the
Cherokee free their slaves. The Southern Cherokee wanted the government to pay
to relocate the Cherokee Freedmen from their lands. Northern Cherokee suggested
adopting them into the tribe, but wanted the federal government to give the
Freedman their own piece of the territory. The federal government required that
the Cherokee Freedmen would receive full rights for citizenship, land, and
annuities as the Cherokee. It assigned them land in the Canadian River
addition. In the treaty of 1866, the government declared John Ross as the
rightful Principal Chief.
Again (or maybe still) the tribe was
strongly divided over the treaty issues and return of Ross as Principal
Chief. He died in 1867 and a new chief,
Lewis Downing, a full blood Cherokee, was elected. Downing proved to be shrewd and politically
astute, and brought reconiliation and reunification of the tribe.
After the treaty signing in 1866 that
named John Ross as the rightful leader, Watie went into exile in the Choctaw
Nation. Shortly after Downing's election, Watie returned to the nation. He
tried to stay out of politics and returned to Honey Creek to rebuild his
fortunes. He died on September 9, 1871 at Honey Creek. He was buried in the old
Ridge Cemetery, later called Polson's Cemetery, Delaware County, Oklahoma, on
September 9, 1871.
