The Civil War in Indian Territory was in reality two wars. It was a war between pro-Northern and pro-Southern factions among the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. Among the Creeks and the Cherokees, however, it was also a continuation of the conflict between those factions that had supported removal and those that had been opposed. It was this second element that made the war such a destructive and bloody conflict.
The Five Civilized Tribes had strong ties with the South. Transportation and trade linked them with the Southern states. Among all of the tribes, except the Seminoles, there was the presence of a large, politically important group of slave owners dependent upon plantation agriculture. At the outbreak of the Civil War, federal troops were withdrawn from Indian Territory, opening the way for Confederate agents. In the summer of 1861, treaties of alliance with the Confederacy were signed by the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Quapaws, Senecas, Caddos, Wichitas, Osages, and Shawnees. In October, Chief John Ross of the Cherokees abandoned his initial position of neutrality and also signed a treaty with the Confederacy. In these treaties the Confederacy promised to assume former federal obligations, to protect the tribes from invasion, and to invite Indian representation in the Confederate Congress. In turn the tribes were to provide troops for their own defense.
In compliance with these treaties, tribal governments organized three Indian regiments: (1) a Choctaw-Chickasaw regiment, (2) a Creek-Seminole regiment, and (3) a Cherokee regiment. The latter regiment, under Colonel John Drew, was composed primarily of supporters of Chief Ross. Independently, Cherokee colonel Stand Watie organized a second, anti-Ross regiment, which brought the total to four regiments comprising five thousand Indian troops. These forces were placed under the command of Colonel Douglas Cooper, a former Choctaw agent. At this time the smaller tribes were not asked to provide troops, but by the end of the war men from all tribes would be involved, with over ten thousand Indian troops under arms.
Although the Confederacy had treaties with the tribal governments, popular support for the Confederacy varied. Among the Five Civilized Tribes, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws were the most enthusiastic Secessionists, while the majority of full bloods among the Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles initially favored neutrality. In the late fall of 1861 the Creek leader Opothle Yoholo called on all of the Indians favoring neutrality to join him in his camp at Deep Fork. Fearing this movement, Confederate Indian forces, supported by a detachment of Texas cavalry, moved to disperse Opothle Yoholo's growing following. Moving slowly north toward Kansas, the Neutrals repulsed the attacking Confederate forces at the battles of Round Mountain and Chusto Talasah. At Chusto Talasah some of Drew's Cherokee troops deserted and joined Opothle Yoholo. However, the Neutrals were now low on ammunition, and on December 26 the Confederates defeated them and captured most of their wagons, supplies, and livestock at the Battle of Chustenahlah. With little more than the clothing on their backs, the survivors then fled on foot through the snow to Kansas, where they became refugees.
The Confederate defeat in March 1862 at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas ended the threat of a Southern invasion of Missouri and opened the way for a federal thrust into Indian Territory. Watie and Drew's Cherokee regiments returned home from Arkansas to prepare for the coming battle. In Kansas, Union officers had organized two Indian regiments from among the growing number of Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee refugees and deserters. In June 1862 the Indian Expedition—the two Union Indian regiments, together with several regiments of Kansas and Wisconsin volunteers invaded the Cherokee Nation, capturing both the capital at Tahlequah and Fort Gibson. Chief Ross declared his support for the Union, and most of Drew's regiment surrendered and joined the Union Army. However, fearing an attack by Watie, the expedition quickly withdrew to Kansas.
With the Indian Expedition's withdrawal, a chaotic period ensued in which the Confederate Cherokees attacked Ross's supporters in the Cherokee Nation and even raided as far north as Fort Scott, Kansas. Thousands of Union Cherokees fled to Kansas, where most of the men were recruited by Colonel William Phillips into the Indian regiments (there were now three) which formed the Indian Home Guard.
In 1863 the Union Cherokees held the Cowskin Prairie Council, in which they disavowed the treaty with the Confederacy, denounced Stand Watie, abolished slavery in the Cherokee Nation, and elected Thomas Pegg as acting chief. In the spring of 1863, Colonel Phillips, commanding the Indian Home Guard and supported by other federal troops, invaded Indian Territory again, recapturing Tahlequah and Fort Gibson and driving the Confederate Indian forces south and west of the Arkansas River.
In July the Confederates massed a force of almost five thousand Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee troops, together with some Texas cavalry, near Honey Springs, Creek Nation, in preparation for an attack on Fort Gibson. On July 17, they were attacked and defeated by an army of almost three thousand federal troops. In August, a force of forty-five hundred Union soldiers crossed the Canadian River and destroyed the important Confederate munitions depot at Perryville, Choctaw Nation, before recrossing the river. On September 1, Union troops captured Fort Smith, Arkansas, cutting off supplies flowing into the territory from the east. In February 1864, fifteen hundred troops made a quick strike down the Texas Road—the main trail to Texas from Missouri—through the Choctaw Nation almost to the Red River. Colonel Phillips had his men systematically destroy everything in their path, telling them, "I do not ask you to take prisoners."
The war now entered its final and most destructive phase. Union forces settled in north of the Arkansas and Canadian Rivers, in the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations. Sixteen thousand pro-Union Indian refugees moved south from Kansas to new camps near Fort Gibson, where they lived off rations issued by federal troops. At the same time, the Confederate forces were reorganized. The Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee units became the First Indian Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Stand Watie, now a brigadier general. The Chickasaw and Choctaw units became the Second Indian Cavalry Brigade.
In the region controlled by the Union, pro-Union Indians, supported by federal troops, began wreaking vengeance on Southern sympathizers. They burned homes, stole livestock, and murdered many who opposed them. Thousands of Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole families fled south. By the fall of 1864 almost eleven thousand pro-Confederate Indians were living in disease-ridden camps along or near the Red River, while thousands more had fled farther south into East Texas.
Poorly armed and short of supplies, Watie and his Confederate allies responded with highly effective guerrilla raids into Northern-held areas. Watie's main target was the long federal supply line from Kansas, which was critical not only for providing troops, but also for provisioning the large camps of Union refugees. Most of these raids were carried out by small cavalry units, but Watie would attack federal forces whenever he found a good opportunity. In June 1864 he captured the supply steamboat J. R. Williams on the Arkansas River. In September, he struck just south of the Kansas line, capturing a supply train of 240 wagons and 740 mules at Cabin Creek Crossing. Watie also ordered the burning of Tahlequah as well as the plantation home of John Ross at Park Hill. Many of his men took vengeance on pro-Union families whenever they encountered them.
As the war approached its end, anarchy prevailed throughout most of Indian Territory. Union and Confederate "deserters," Indians and non-Indians alike, formed outlaw gangs and roamed the countryside, indiscriminately killing, burning, and looting. In the last months of the war, some of the high-ranking Union officers joined in the lawlessness, stealing over three hundred thousand head of Indian-owned cattle and driving them to Kansas.
The Civil War in Indian Territory ended on July 14, 1865, when the Chickasaws and the Caddos surrendered. The war had been fought at an incredible cost. Estimates of those who were killed or died of war-related causes range as high as 25 percent for the Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees. Other estimates show that out of a total population in excess of sixty thousand for the Five Civilized Tribes, over six thousand and possibly as many as ten thousand died. The economy of Indian Territory was totally destroyed; almost every house, barn, store, and public building had been burned. The vast majority of Indian families had been reduced to impoverished, homeless refugees. Nevertheless, there was one more blow yet to fall. Even though as many members of the Five Civilized Tribes had served in the Union Army as had served in the Confederate Army, the federal government declared its treaties with the tribes to be void and forced the tribes to negotiate new treaties that ceded the western part of Indian Territory to the United States.
See also
Five Civilized Tribes;
Indian Territory;
Opothle Yoholo;
Ross, John;
Watie, Stand.
Annie Heloise Abel, The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1915); Annie Heloise Abel, The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1919); LeRoy H. Fischer, ed. and Garrick Bailey, The Civil War Era in Indian Territory (Los Angeles: Lorrin L. Morrison, 1974).
Roberta Glenn Bailey
Tulsa, Oklahoma
