I hope the war will close soon, and we will get time to sit down in peace...This war -- it will ruin a great many good people. They will not only lose all their property but a great many will lose their character, which is of more value than all their property...I am almost ashamed of my tribe...I want to see the end of this war and then I will be willing to give up the ghost.30
In late May of 1865, a Grand Council of the Southern Indians was held at Armstrong Academy in the western portion of the Indian Territory to establish a "United Nations of the Indian Territory."31 This "United Nations" was presided over by the leaders of the Five Nations (as well as some of the Plains Indians) that had fought on the side of the Confederacy. Present at the meeting were Freemasons Stand Watie, William Penn Adair, John Jumper, Samuel Checote, George Stidham, Robert Jones, Peter Pitchlyn, Chilly McIntosh, D.N. McIntosh, and Reverend J.S. Murrow. Originally planned to present a united front in dealing with an impending surrender to the Federal Government, the council quickly took on other meanings.32
Uniting under the principle that "An Indian shall not spill an Indian's blood,"33 the Council authorized the chiefs of the various Nations to "extend in the name of this confederation the hand of fellowship to all Nations of Indians." The delegates were further authorized to "communicate with the proper military authorities of the United States for the purposes of effecting a cessation of hostilities"34 and to encourage the Union Indians to "cooperate with this council in its efforts to renew friendly relations with the U.S. Government."35 Bloodied yet unbowed, the Confederate Indians made no mention of defeat, wrongdoing, or mistakes in judgment. They also required that any permanent treaty with the United States would require the national councils of each tribe to ratify the terms of surrender.36
On June 15, 1865, a second meeting of the "United Nations of the Indian Territory" ratified the positions put forward at the earlier meeting. In addition, Stand Watie appointed a commission of six delegates that would "forward the great work of establishing thorough harmony among all Indian tribes."37 Shortly after the council disbanded, Major General Francis Herron (Iowa Mosaic Lodge #125) sent Lieutenant Colonel Asa Matthews as Federal peace commissioner to Doaksville, in the Choctaw Nation to come to terms with members of the council. When he surrendered on June 19, Chief Peter Pitchlyn (Knights Templar Washington Commandery #1) expressed the sentiments of many of the Southern Indians, "Our late allies in war, the Confederate armies, have long since ceased to resist the national authorities; they have all been either captured or surrendered to the forces of the United States. It therefore becomes us as brave people to forget and lay aside our prejudices and prove ourselves equal to the occasion. Let reason obtain now the sway of our passions and let us meet in council with the proper spirit and resume our former relations with the United States." 38
On June 23, Stand Watie sent Knights William P. Adair and James Bell to meet with General Francis Herron to negotiate terms of surrender for the Confederate Cherokee.39 On June 28, 1865, Brigadier General Stand Watie of the Confederate States of America surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Asa Matthews of the United States Army at Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation.40 Watie's surrender came more than two months after the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox and more than a month after the surrender of E. Kirby Smith, Commander of troops west of the Mississippi.41 Brigadier General Watie was one of the last Confederate Generals to surrender and abandon what by now had clearly become the "lost cause."42
The war was now being over with the surrender of Watie, a new era had begun in the Cherokee Nation. A once beautiful and prosperous Nation had been reduced to charred ashes and barren fields. A proud people who had reunited following the disarray of removal were once again shattered by a violence that made their previous passions pale in comparison. The Civil War in the Indian Territory had laid the Five Nations to waste. Yet from the midst of darkness, a new Cherokee Nation would arise. The Keetoowah Society would be central to that rebirth.
30 Sarah Watie, in Dale and Lytton, 188. 31 Stand Watie to Sarah Watie in Dale and Litton, 228; Kenny Franks, Stand Watie (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 179; Charles Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians (Chicago: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975), 219. 32 Dale and Lytton, 229; Morris Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1838-1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1938), 179. 33 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XLVIII/2, 1104. 34 ibid. 35 ibid. 36 ibid. 37 Watie quoted in Wardell, 180. 38 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XLVIII/2, 1105. 39 Kenny Franks, Stand Watie (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 182. Francis Herron (Mosaic #125) was the delegated representative of Brigadier General James Veatch (Rockport #112) to meet with fellow Freemasons Bell and Adair. 40 Peter Pitchlyn, prominent Freemason and President of the Choctaw Nation, had signed the same treaty less than a week before Watie. (Annie Abel, The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 148). For information on Peter Pitchlyn, see Charles Lanman, "Peter Pitchlynn, Chief of the Choctaws" The Atlantic Monthly, (Vol. 25, No. 150): 486-497; W. David Baird, Peter Pitchlynn, Chief of the Choctaws (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). 41 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XLVIII/2, 1284. 42 Laurence Hauptman, Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1995), 42-43; Gayle Ann Brown, "Confederate Surrenders in Indian Territory" in LeRoy Henry Fischer, The Civil War Era in Indian Territory (Los Angeles: L. L. Morrison, 1974), 127-129.