Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:36:05.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

28 - War in Indian Country

from Part II - Places

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Get access

Summary

Stand Watie outlasted them all. By the time the Cherokee chief and Confederate general finally laid down his arms on June 23, 1865, every other remnant of the rebellion had formally capitulated. Robert E. Lee surrendered the main Confederate army at Appomattox, Virginia in early April, while Joseph E. Johnston followed suit later that month at Bennet Place, North Carolina. Even Jefferson Davis, taking flight as president of a now nonexistent government, was finally captured by Union authorities in early May. By keeping his forces in the field for another month and a half, Watie had effectively become the very last Confederate general. Yet the story of Watie’s prolonged resistance belies a much more complicated history of Native American involvement in the Civil War. His Cherokee, Seminole, and Muscogee soldiers may have cleaved to the Confederacy until the very last days of the rebellion, but they were largely unrepresentative of the Indian experience during the war. Relatively few Native Americans professed an ideological commitment to either the Union or the Confederacy. The collective experience from centuries of dispossession at the hands of the federal government and individual settlers had imbued in Indian peoples a well-placed distrust of white Americans. If these Anglo-Americans were to destroy one another in a fratricidal bloodletting, let them do so – this was the grand strategy for much of Native America.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Key Works

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862–1865 (Cleveland, OH: A. H. Clark Co., 1919; reprint, Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Clampitt, Bradley R. (ed.). The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Cutrer, Thomas W. Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Downs, Gregory and Masur, Kate (eds.). The World the Civil War Made (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Gibson, Arrell Morgan. Oklahoma: A History of Five Centuries (2nd edition, Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Hahn, Steven. A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World, 1830–1910 (New York: Viking, 2016).Google Scholar
Hauptman, Laurence M. Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Josephy, Alvin M. The Civil War in the American West (New York: Vintage, 1993).Google Scholar
Kelman, Ari. A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Krauthammer, Barbara. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Masich, Andrew. Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Ostler, Jeffrey. The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Utley, Robert. The Indian Frontier, 1846–1890 (revised edition, Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Warde, Mary Jane. When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2013).Google Scholar
West, Elliott. The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×