When Evan Jones arrived in the new nation in January 1862, it was no longer the Cherokee Nation. It was Keetoowah; it was a nation of the "beloved community."7 According to reports from the camps, there were more than three thousand Creek, a thousand Seminole, a hundred Quapaws, and about fifty Cherokee and Chickasaw. Fewer than a hundred African Americans survived the flight to Kansas; 8 one can assume that the Southern troops would be merciless towards fleeing African-Americans. By the end of January, there were as many as ten thousand people living in the squalid refugee camps near Leroy, Kansas. Annie Abel described the camps as "concentration camps."9
Evan Jones immediately began working with the local religious and charitable organizations in order to organize assistance for the refugees. This was a difficult endeavor because the refugees, of necessity, had been situated on uninhabited lands along the Verdigris River. Though Jones could offer yet little to the emaciated refugees, his mere presence provided great hope and inspiration to those who had been his flock for so many years. He wrote home to his missionary board, requesting assistance for his congregation and expressing hope of their soon return to their homes.10
When Jones traveled among the more able-bodied, he found a resilient and inspired people who were eager to return to the homeland and reestablish their position in the political and social affairs of their respective Nations. If this meant joining the Federal Army and returning to Indian Territory to engage the rebel brigades of Watie, McIntosh, and Jumper, the loyal Keetoowah were eager to do so. Remembering how Stand Watie and his Knights of the Golden Circle had ruthlessly pursued them to the Kansas border, the loyal Keetoowah had strong resentment towards the Confederate Cherokee.11
There was also strong support within the state of Kansas for organizing a force of "colored" troops to protect Kansas from its enemies to the South.12 It was believed that "hordes of whites and half breeds in the Indian country are in arms driving out and killing Union men. They threaten to overrun Kansas and exterminate both whites and Indians."13 As early as August 1861, Senator James Lane of Kansas sought among the Native Americans of Kansas a brigade of Indians to use as "Jayhawkers" in Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory.14 Lane had written the Indian Agents of Kansas stating his request, "For the defence of Kansas I have determined to use the loyal Indians of the Tribes above named... If you have means within your control I would like to have you supply them when they march with a sufficient quantity of powder, lead & subsistence for their march to this place, where they will be fed by the government."15 Lane, the "Grim Chieftain" of the Republican Party and self-styled "King" of Kansas politics, was an unscrupulous political opportunist who used the struggle over slavery in Kansas to pursue his own political ambitions.16 He was supported in his "abolitionist" fervor by James Montgomery (a follower of John Brown), Charles Jennison, David Anthony (brother of Susan B.), and a loyal cadre of militant journalists, preachers, and politicians.
Lane was not the only one interested in assembling Federal Indian troops. Federal Agent Gorge Cutler, who had first met with Opothle Yahola's emissaries, wrote to Commissioner Dole to "see if possible that some measures are taken to rescue the Southern Indians from the rebels;" he requested "the formation of a brigade of friendly Indians" to rescue their abandoned families.17 Commissioner Dole responded to his agent's request, stating simply, "I am disinclined to encourage the Indians to engage in the war except in extreme cases, as guides."18
Senator Lane, however, was not to have his plan slowed by either Commissioner Dole or General David Hunter, Commander of the Western Department having military responsibility for the Western frontier. By late 1861, Lane had used his power and influence in Washington, and his friends and supporters in Kansas, to organize the "Kansas Brigade." The brigade swept across the border into Missouri, burning, looting, and distributing proclamations announcing the abolition of slavery on the frontier. Wherever Lane's Kansas Jayhawkers swept, they "liberated" hundreds of black slaves and allowed them to accompany the expedition as teamsters, cooks and even soldiers.19
Lane was not averse to using the black soldiers for whatever purpose he saw fit. At Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in early 1862, the wily Lane stated, "I do say that it would not pain me to see a Negro handling a gun and I believe the Negro may just as well become food for powder as my son."20 In late November of 1861, Lane's Jayhawkers had "liberated" six hundred ex-slaves and sent them back to the "Happy Land of Canaan" in a "Black Brigade" led by two Methodist chaplains. When they arrived in Kansas, the freed blacks cheered for "James Lane, the liberator;" the chaplains then distributed the "ex-slaves" as laborers among the farms and villages of southern Kansas.21
Because of Kansas's reputation as an abolitionist enclave -- especially in the areas around Lawrence, Leavenworth, Wyandotte, and Fort Scott -- large numbers of African-American refugees began to flee Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory for Kansas.22 In addition, the fear of Lane's Jayhawkers led many slaveholders in states surrounding Kansas to free their slaves as opposed to facing the scorched earth policy of the Jayhawkers. Some Missouri slaveholders took their slaves to Texas -- as did many Cherokee -- to safeguard them until the war was over. Many of those African Americans in Kansas were refugees who had fled Indian Territory and were now living in camps in the Southern part of the state.23 By 1863, there were nearly 8,000 former slaves in Kansas; by the end of the war the state's African-American population had grown from 816 in 1860 to nearly 13,000.24
Just as there was support in Kansas for the use of Indian troops to "protect" the state from the "hordes of whites and half breeds" lurking on their Southern border, there began a movement among the abolitionist forces to enlist African-Americans in the army. The Leavenworth Conservative echoed Lane's refrain by stressing the need for "colored" troops to protect Kansas's long border from Southern Indians and guerrillas. The Emporia News argued that if the South used "colored" troops "to shoot down our brave boys, ought we not retaliate by using them to subdue the enemies of the government?"25 If the image of black soldiers struck fear into the hearts of Southerners, what effect might this image have upon those Confederate Cherokee who had chased them from their own country, raining death upon them at every turn?
As the Kansas citizens, military, and political officials contemplated the use of "colored" soldiers, the refugees themselves considered a return home and the restoration of their once-powerful nation. If an army was needed, then this army was willing. A pervasive image in Cherokee society, that of the phoenix, remained ever present in the minds of those so beaten and so destitute. A new nation was to be reborn in the midst of the chaos. Out of the "nakedest of the naked," a new army was to rise.
7 In the late eighteen fifties, there had been a concerted effort on the part of the Cherokee to create a town called "Keetoowah" and make it the national capital. When Fort Gibson was abandoned by the Federal troops, the property was tuned over to the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee National Council created the town of "Keetoowah" on November 6, 1857. However, because of the remote location of the town and because people were so used to it being called Fort Gibson, it never became that which it was supposed to be. "When Fort Gibson Was Called Kee-too-wah," Clipping from Tulsa World, June 13, 1920, Grant Foreman Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK. 8 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. CXVII, 5. 9 Abel, The American Indian in the Civil War, 85. 10 Evan Jones letter to F. A. Smith, May 12, 1862, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 11 See Appendix C. John Harrison, United States Works Progress Administration, Oklahoma Writers Project, Appendix C. "Civil War" Section, Paragraph 1. 12 For a background on the situation in Kansas, see James A. Rawley, Race & Politics; "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969); James P. Barry, Bloody Kansas, 1854-65; Guerrilla Warfare Delays Peaceful American Settlement (New York, Watts, 1972); Albert E. Castel, A Frontier State at War: Kansas, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979). 13 Augustus Wattles to Major Farnsworth, August 25, 1861, in Annie Abel, The Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist, (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 229. 14 Morris Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1838-1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1938), 151. 15 James H. Lane to Indian Agents Sac and Foxes-Shawnees-Delawares-Kickapoos-Potawatomies- and Kaws, August 22, 1861 in Abel, The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist, 229. 16 Albert Castel, "Civil War Kansas and the Negro" in Journal of Negro History 51 (January 1966, No. 1): 127. Castel refers to Lane as "a master demagogue, hypnotic orator, and utterly unscrupulous." Many historians share Castel's assessment. 17 George Cutler quoted in David A. Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978), 34. 18 Dole to Captain Price, September 13, 1861, in Abel, The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist, 233. 19 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. III, 514. 20 Larry Rampp, "Negro Troop Activity in Indian Territory, 1863-1865" Chronicles of Oklahoma 47 (1969): 534. For background on the use of African American troops in the Civil War, see Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops In The Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: Longmans & Green, 1956); Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War. [1st ed.] ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953; George Washington Williams, A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865: Preceded by a Review of the Military Services of Negroes in Ancient and Modern times (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); Charles Harris Wesley and Patricia Romero, Negro Americans in the Civil War: from Slavery to Citizenship (New York, Publishers Company, 1969). 21 Castel, 127. 22 For information on early Black settlements, see Kansas State Historical Society: Historic Sites Survey, Black Historic Sites, a Beginning Point (Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society , 1977). There are many books on the "exoduster" period of Black migration of the latter half of the nineteenth century, but few focus on this early period of black history in Kansas. 23 Daniel Littlefield, Africans and Seminoles: from Removal to Emancipation. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), 184. 24 Castel, 128. 25 Emporia News, December 21, 1861. Albert Castel believes this reference concerns the widespread belief that the Confederacy was using slaves as soldiers. It could have just as easily been referring to the Confederate Cherokee.