Chapter 6
"The Most Sacred Obligations"
We boldly claim that we have done our duty, to the full extent of our power, as the friends and allies of the Federal Government. More than three fourths of the able bodied men of the loyal Cherokee, fought in the Federal army, which is a vastly larger proportion of men than any state in the Union has furnished for the war. We fought to the end of the war, and when the last rebel was whipped, we were honorably mustered out of the service. The graves of eight hundred Cherokee warriors, fallen by our side in your service, testify that we have done our duty. Now, having done our whole duty to the Government, all we ask is that the Government do its duty to us -- that it fulfill its treaty obligations to us -- that it fulfill its solemn, reiterated pledges. We ask no gifts, no charities, but simply our rights for which we have fought and bled in your armies, and for which so many of our noblest men have died.
We make our earnest appeal to the President of the United States and to Congress. We entreat you to regard sacredly your past treaties with us, and to enact no law that shall sweep out of existence those most sacred rights which you have guaranteed to us forever.
1866 Cherokee Delegation:
Smith Christie, James McDaniel, Thomas Pegg, White Catcher, Daniel Ross, John B. Jones, Samuel Benge
He went with the Indians down around Fort Gibson where they fought the Indians who stayed with the South. Uncle Jacob say he killed many a man during the war, and showed me the musket and sword he used to fight with; said he didn't shoot the women and children -- just whack their heads off with the sword, and I could almost see the blood dripping from the point. It made me scared at his stories.1
The Civil War in the Cherokee Nation began as it did throughout the United States. Proud armies arrayed against each other in magnificent pageants that so quickly become but fearsome reminders that ideals once so noble fall quickly before the brutal reality of war. The Civil War within the Cherokee Nation even more quickly disintegrated into an internecine conflict in which the lines between civilian and combatant were conspicuously blurred and the ferocity of war struck the innocent and the guilty alike. The Cherokee Nation, once so proud, was slowly reduced to ruins:
The events of the war brought to them more of the desolation and ruin than perhaps to any other community. Raided and sacked alternately, not only by Confederate and Union forces, but also by the vindictive ferocity and hate of their own factional divisions, their country became a blackened and desolate waste. Driven from comfortable homes, exposed to want, misery, and the elements, they perished like sheep in a snowstorm. Their houses, fences, and other improvements were burned, their orchards destroyed, their flocks and herds were slaughtered or driven off, their schools broken up, their schoolhouses given to the flames, and their churches and public buildings subjected to a similar fate; and that entire portion of their country which had been occupied by their settlements was distinguishable from the virgin prairie only by the scorched and blackened chimneys and the plowed but now neglected fields.2
Their houses, barns, fences and orchards, after two years of partial or total abandonment, look as hopeless as can be conceived. From being once so proud, intelligent, and wealthy tribe of Indians, the Cherokees are now stripped of nearly all...This is a sad picture, not overdrawn, and which no good man can see and not feel real sorry for their condition.3
The Civil War had disastrous consequences for the people of the Cherokee Nation. James Mooney, early ethnologist and historian of the Nation, summarized the Cherokee experience, "After five years of desolation the Cherokee emerged from the war with their numbers reduced from 21,000 to 14,000, and their whole country in ashes."4 Some 2,200 Cherokee fought on the Union side; as many as eight hundred lost their lives.5 Even as early as 1863, one-third of the adult women in the nation were widows and one-fourth of the children were orphans. A total of 3,530 men from the Indian Territory served in the Union Army, and 1,018 died during their enlistment. No state was to suffer greater losses than did the Indian Territory in the Civil War.6
These numbers, horrific as they may be, do little to detail the personal agony of the people caught in the winds of a bitter war. On August 21, 1863, Confederate renegade William Quantrill entered an unprotected Lawrence, Kansas with four hundred men and proceeded to burn the town to the ground. As it burned, Quantrill's men went from door to door killing every male citizen they found; within eight hours the town was destroyed and 187 persons were killed.7 In a letter to the Board, Reverend Evan Jones told of his personal losses, "My family also has been made to drink the cup of sorrow. In that sad and savage tragedy at Lawrence on the 21st of August, my eldest son fell victim. It was indeed a bitter affliction, and out only consolation was that we had not to sorrow as they that have no hope."8
A month later Jones recorded another drink from the cup of sorrow, "In addition to the loss of our son by the ruffian band at Lawrence, we have been called to mourn a daughter whose death was hastened by the shock of the carnage at Lawrence and intensified by finding her own brother among the victims. Although we have a good and comfortable hope that they have died in the Lord, yet it I a most painful stroke upon us all."9 During the coming winter, two more of Evan Jones's daughters died in Lawrence, "Our family afflictions, stroke after stroke, each entering deeply into our heart, have been repeated in rapid succession. But we would not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when rebuked by him. But I forbear at present to dwell on home sorrows and take the liberty of troubling you with a word of the bitter distresses which have come upon the poor Cherokee."10
In spite of his personal losses in Kansas, Evan Jones kept up his missionary efforts. In fact, as he could do little for the Cherokee from Kansas, he extended his outreach:
In the past few weeks, I have been preaching to the Colored People, of whom there are quite a number here, and in this vicinity. There is a good deal of religious interest among them, and I hope many of them are truly Christians. They have been keeping up meetings among themselves, but they need instruction very much, to rectify their crude and defective doctrinal notions, and to give them more accurate information in regard to scriptural facts.11
My plan is not just to preach to them, which to do intelligibly, is no easy task on account of the amazing ignorance of those who till recently, have been slaves, and the defective and erroneous instruction they have received... I am about to form a class of these and many others, who may choose to join them, for the purpose of giving them accurate and further instruction.12
Back in the Cherokee Nation, Stand Watie's soldiers moved with ferocity and operated a campaign of terror with impunity. Though never quite accustomed to the cowardly acts of Quantrill, Watie's men were often ruthless, "One day just as Daniel, Lewis, and Jim and others were making their way up from Gibson when a party of Watie's men followed on a couple of horses behind, found a Drew man sitting by the road, killed him, and then placing a rope around his neck hauled him about as children would a sleigh."13 Watie even wrote to his wife of their exploits, "Killed few pins in Tahlequah. They had been holding council. I had the old council house set on fire and burned down. Also John Ross's house. Poor Andy Nave [relative of Ross] was killed when he refused to surrender and was shot by Dick Fields. I felt sorry as he used to be quite friendly toward me before the war...They found some negro soldiers at Park Hill killed two and two white men. They brought in some of Ross's negroes...."14
Though Watie and his men were often cited for guerrilla campaigns, neither the "Pins" nor the Federal troops were without notoriety for their assaults upon civilians and Confederate supporters.15 Morris Sheppard, a slave from Webber's Falls, recalled the exploits of the "Pins," "Pretty soon all de young Cherokee Menfolks all gone off to de war, and de Pins was riding `round all de time, and it ain't safe to be in dat part around Webber's Falls."16 Patsy Perryman, a slave in the Flint district, also recollected her encounter with the "Pins," "Mammy said the patrollers and "Pin" Indians caused a lot of trouble after the war started. The master went to war and left my mistress to look after the place. The "Pins" came to the farm one day and broke down the doors, cut feather beds open and sent the feathers flying in the wind, stole the horses, killed the sheep and done lots of mean things.17 Hannah Hicks (daughter of Samuel Worcester), whose husband was murdered in the Civil War, also described the activities of the "Pins." 18 Reverend Stephen Foreman also reported on Cherokee losses to the "Pins," "The Pins are robbing the people of their negroes, horse, guns, etc.... Major Murrell, it was said, lost seven blacks and a number of horses and mules."19 Foreman, himself, was deprived of his "property" by the "pins," "They first took from before my eyes, my two black men, Joe and Charles, and one horse and a mule."20
William McLoughlin, in his After the Trail of Tears, stated that "whenever the Pins `stole' slaves, they claimed to be liberating them, but they may have sold some to slave traders from southern states."21 This may be true, but the historic record from the slave narratives speaks of other cases quite different. The slaves that were "stolen" from the slaveholding Cherokee were incorporated into the Indian Home Guards or sent back to the refugee camp at Neosho and then on to Kansas, "When he got away into Cherokee country some of them called the "Pins" helped to smuggle him on up into Missouri (Neosho) and over into Kansas, but he soon found that he couldn't get along and stay safe unless he went with the Army. He went with them until the war was over, and was around Fort Gibson a lot."22
Throughout the duration of the war, Chaplain John Jones of the Third Indian Home Guard maintained a mission for the refugees who had clustered in and around Fort Gibson for protection from the ravages of war.23 The mission attended to the sick and destitute and regularly held religious services for nearly two hundred worshipers in a makeshift church erected on the campgrounds. In addition to services from Jones, the native ministers performed "religious services" as well. The mission also operated a school for freedmen, the first in Indian Territory. It taught nearly eighty students, most of them refugees from the Indian Territory.24
Large numbers of African-Americans had returned to the Nation on the heels of Colonel Phillips, Colonel Williams, and the assembled forces of the United States Army. As many as six to eight thousand of the refugees clustered in and around Fort Gibson. Many African-Americans stayed with their families in the Federal army while others occupied abandoned property in and around the fort. In late October, Thomas Pegg and the Keetoowah Cherokee Council granted the ex-slaves independent status within the Cherokee Nation. Though blacks were not yet restored to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, laws were passed annulling prohibitions against teaching them to read and write, inhibiting them from engaging in labor or commerce, or preventing them from carrying firearms. Though the act was far from restoration of citizenship, it provided for the relief of the ex-slave and enabled the Baptist missionaries to openly operate the Freedmen's schools25
Late in the war, there was a second battle at Cabin Creek involving the First Kansas Colored Volunteers; this battle was to be one of the last significant battles in the Indian Territory. On September 16, 1864, General Richard Gano's Texas troops and Stand Watie's Confederate Indians came upon African-Americans cutting hay for the Federal cavalry within twelve miles of Fort Gibson. Lightly defended by the Federal troops, the haycutters were easy prey for the Confederate forces that operated under the "black flag":
Gano and Watie galloped their line to within rifle range, then unlimbered their cannon. A few grape shots scattered the Federal guard, and the exultant victors rode unopposed into the hay-cutters camp. With guns across their saddles, the ragged Confederate Indians jogged up and down through the uncut hay and tall weed patches, shooting hidden Negroes like jackrabbits. Some black men rose from the weeds calling, "O! Good master, save and spare me," but all were shot down. Some were found submerged in the water under the creek banks, only their noses above the surface. These were killed like the others and their bodies dragged out onto the pebble bars.26
When the larger battle was over, the First Kansas Colored Volunteers lost 117 men killed and 65 wounded; as the rebel forces shot and bayoneted wounded Federal troops, they called out to each other, "Where is the First Kansas Nigger now?"27
Though hardly a convincing victory over a determined opponent, Stand Watie's actions in the Second Battle of Cabin Creek earned him universal accolades throughout the Confederacy. General Douglas issued a proclamation highlighting his valor and courage, "The brilliancy and completeness of this expedition have not been excelled in the history of the war. Firm, brave and confident, the officers had but to order and the men cheerfully executed. The whole having been conducted with perfect harmony between the war-torn veteran Stand Watie, the chivalrous Gano, and their respective commands." 28 Yet, as Sarah Watie would so poignantly point out, there was a moral cost to this victory. General Watie reflected upon his actions, which some have since likened to Quantrill, but his resolve was firm:
Although these things have been heaped upon me, and it would be supposed that I have become hardened...it still hurts my feelings. I am not a murderer. Sometimes I examine myself thoroughly and I will always come to the conclusion that I am not such a bad man as I am looked upon. God will give me justice if I am to be punished for the opinions of other people. If I commit an error, I do it without bad intention....I call upon my God to judge me; he knows that I love my friends and above all others, my wife and children.29
The Cherokee Nation in 1865 was in ashes. Having been built anew following the disastrous consequences of removal, it stood now as if it had never been. Yet, even greater than the desolation of the land was the pain within the hearts of a people who had once again been divided by the forces that had reined terror throughout their recent history. If the Cherokee Nation were to be rebuilt, then the hearts of the people must be healed. If the hearts were to be healed, then "the great work of establishing thorough harmony" must go forward. If it was to go forward, it must be done together as one people, "as if they had been raised from one family."
1 Phoebe Banks in T. Lindsey Baker and Julie P. Baker, The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 30. 2 Charles Royce, "Cherokee Nation," Fifth Annual Report (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, n.d.), 376. 3 Justin Harlan to William Coffin, September 2, 1863, in Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Washington, D.C., 1863), 179. 4 James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 150; Russell Thornton, The Cherokees: A Population History (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990), 94. 5 Cherokee Nation, Memorial of the Delegates of the Cherokee Nation to the President of the United States and the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress, (Washington, D.C.: Washington Chronicle Print, 1866), 7. 6 Craig Gaines, The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew's Regiment of Mounted Rifles (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 124. 7 For background on Quantrill, see Carl W. Breihan, The Killer Legions of Quantrill (Seattle: Hangman Press, 1971); Albert E. Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: his Life and Times (New York: F. Fell, 1962); Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: the True Story of William Clark Quantrill and his Confederate Raiders (New York: Random House, 1996). 8 Evan Jones to F.A. Smith, September 22, 1863, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 9 Evan Jones to F.A. Smith,, October 29, 1863, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 10 Evan Jones to Herman Lincoln, March 2, 1864, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. John Ross also lost his eldest son to a Confederate prison camp. 11 Evan Jones to F.A. Smith, January 2, 1865, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 12 Evan Jones to F.A. Smith, July 31, 1865, "Correspondence of Missionaries to Native Americans, [microform], 1825-1865," American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y. 13 Grant Foreman, A History of Oklahoma, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1945), 116. 14 Stand Watie, quoted in Grace Steele Woodward, The Cherokees (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 287. It is worth noting that that although Watie burned much in Tahlequah including the Cherokee Council House, Cherokee Lodge #21 was not burned nor threatened and its charter and jewels were protected throughout the war. (Ballenger, History of Cherokee Lodge #10, Ballenger Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL., 11) 15 Grant Foreman, in his History of Oklahoma, notes that Phillips and the Third Indian Home Guard, "killed a good many Indians without more warrant in military necessity than Stand Watie had to justify his ruthless slaughter." (126). 16 Morris Sheppard in Baker, 379. 17 Patsy Perryman in Baker, 315. 18 Hannah Hicks, Diary of Hannah Hicks, (Tulsa, OK: Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, 1977), 11. 19 Stephen Foreman, "Diary," July 8, 1862, Western History Collection, University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma. 20 ibid. 21 William Gerald McLoughlin, After the Trail of Tears: the Cherokees' Struggle for Sovereignty, 1839-1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 413. 22 Mary Grayson, in Baker, 177. 23 It is worth noting that located at Fort Gibson was Fort Gibson Lodge #53 which had been formed with the assistance of members from Cherokee Lodge #21. It is also important to note that Fort Gibson was to become the city of Keetoowah in 1857. 24 William Gerald McLoughlin, Champions of the Cherokees: Evan and John B. Jones (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 412. The mission at Fort Gibson was located within a few miles of the old Ebenezer Church, which was the first Baptist Church in Indian Territory. It was also the point at which the Keetoowah mission to the Creek Nation was conducted. 25 Daniel Littlefield, The Cherokee Freedmen: from Emancipation to American Citizenship (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 16. 26 Jay Monaghan, Civil War on the Western Border (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1955), 308. 27 Wiley Britton, The Union Indian Brigade in the Civil War (Kansas City: Franklin Hudson Publishing Company, 1922), 373. See also Jess C. Epple, Battle of Cabin Creek, September 18,19, 1864 (Muskogee, Okla. : Hoffman Printing, 1964. 28 Ohland Morton, "Confederate Government Relations with the Five Civilized Tribes" in Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. XXXI, Nos. 2-3 (Autumn, 1933): 318. 29 Stand Watie, quoted in Edward E. Dale and Gaston Lytton, Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as told in the Correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), 128.