Clint Crowe

My other reading on Native Americans in the Civil War (American Indians and the Civil War) covered a wider range: campaigns against the Navajo, Sioux, Shoshoni, Arapaho and Cheyenne that happened to take place during the Civil War period but weren’t directly related to the rest of the conflict; and participation by individual natives in the Union and Confederate armies. This one focuses on the campaigns in and around the “Indian Nations”; what’s now Oklahoma, where the “Five show more Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole) and other Native Americans were exiled after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Author Clint Crowe discusses this in his background chapters; it resulted in the infamous “Trail of Tears”. Crowe makes a comment I hadn’t heard before; Andrew Jackson was dealing with the Nullification Crisis in the South and may have felt Indian Removal would defuse that; the timing seems off, though, as the Indian Removal Act was signed before the Nullification Crisis came to a head.

Crowe’s focus is mostly on the Cherokee. Crowe also notes that “mixed blood” Cherokee generally supported removal, while “full blood” Cherokee did not. The “mixed bloods” had largely adopted the lifestyle of Southern whites, owning slaves and managing plantations and farms, while the “full bloods” maintained a more traditional lifestyle (Crowe doesn’t note this, but the Cherokee themselves didn’t seem to have a concept of “full blood” or “mixed blood”; you were a Cherokee if you were born of a Cherokee mother; otherwise you weren’t. This led to situations like that of John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokee during the Civil War. By modern “blood” standards Ross would be 1/8 Cherokee).

As the Civil War loomed, the Cherokee split again, with the full bloods supporting the Union and the mixed bloods supporting the Confederacy. The pro-Union Cherokee formed a secret group, the Keetoowah Society; members identified themselves by flashing a straight pin hidden under a coat lapel or shirt collar; hence the name “Pin Indians”. The Confederate supporters joined the Knights of the Golden Circle, originally a group supporting United States expansion into Mexico and the Caribbean but later morphing into a pro-succession secret society. Unfortunately the Confederates were much better organized; the Confederate envoy to the Indian Nations, Albert Pike, was generally sympathetic and had worked pre-war as a lawyer supporting native causes. The split led to yet another “Trail of Tears”; this time it was the pro-Union Cherokee under chief Opothleyohola driven out of their homes – in the dead of winter – by Confederate forces (including Cherokee colonel Stand Watie).

Both sides organized native military units; as the war ebbed and flowed the Union Indians pillaged Confederate Indians – and vice versa. Two of the characters who stand out are Union General James Blunt, who fought a series of successful battles in Indian Territory against superior Confederate numbers. Blunt was full of praise for his Indian and Black troops, while simultaneously engaged in systematic and massive fraud with US Army contracts. While leading a small detachment, Blunt later ran afoul of Confederate raider William Quantrill and barely escaped capture (it probably would have gone poorly for him; his second in command was captured and summarily executed with his own revolver). Blunt redeemed his military reputation (although not his ethics one) during Sterling Price’s raid into Missouri and Kansas.

On the Confederate side, Stand Watie comes across as another complicated character. Generally successful as a cavalry general – sometimes against his own people - he was implicated in the massacre of black Union troops at a battle variously known as the Battle of Flat Rock, the Second Battle of Cabin Creek, or the Fort Gibson Massacre. Watie came across a unit of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry guarding hay cutters near Fort Gibson and took no prisoners, “flushing them out as sportsmen do quails”. Watie was eventually promoted to Brigadier General, was the last Confederate general to surrender his command, in 1865. The Cherokee Nation has recently removed two monuments to Watie, noting that they had been erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy and not by the Cherokee.

The book was developed from Crowe’s dissertation, and has all the qualities of that genre; not a light read but thoroughly referenced and footnoted. There are excellent maps – some of the best I’ve seen for Civil War battles - and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. I want to read more about James Blunt and Stand Watie. show less