General Stand Watie's Confederate Indians • Chapter 6

Colonel Stand Watie was scampering over the dirt roads of southwest Missouri. On April 26 Watie had fought the First Battalion of the First Missouri Cavalry at Neosho and on May 31, though Watie who had planned the attack was not present, his Cherokee Rifles had defeated a unit of the Missouri State Militia Cavalry through, reported one of the Federal officers, "screaming and whooping."

Watie raided through Missouri — Union officers feared this presaged a Confederate drive through northern Arkansas — and across into Indian Territory and fought again at Cowskin Prairie, June 8, near Grand River, when Colonel Charles Doubleday of the Second Ohio Cavalry with one thousand men and artillery sought to head him off. But Stand Watie eluded Doubleday under cover of darkness and soon was scouting in the Spavinaw Hills p68 and O. E. Russell, of Pike's staff was reporting to General Hindman, "Colonel Stand Watie has recently had a skirmish . . . in which, as always, he and his men fought gallantly and were successful."

With Watie's Cherokee Rifles charging down dirt roads, across the countryside and ringing the air with their mixed-blood Rebel yells, one can recall what Albert Pike wrote in Ariel:

Union commanders were growing weary of hearing tales of the iron hoofs and constant clang of Watie and his men. Too, the 6,000 refugee Indians, some of whom had fled with old Chief Opothleyoholo, having endured a miserable winter, pled to be returned to their homeland.

On June 25, the Federal expedition against the Indian Territory moved out from Baxter Springs, Kansas; the Second Ohio Cavalry, the Sixth Kansas Cavalry, the Ninth and Twelfth Regiments Wisconsin Infantry, the Tenth Kansas Infantry, Rabb's Second Indiana Battery, the First Kansas Battery and units of refugee Indians. Colonel William Weer, who had been a lawyer with a liking for liquor and who had stolen Missouri horses when he had been a Captain with the Kansas Jayhawkers, was in command.

A few miles out of Baxter Springs additional Indians joined the column. Wiley Britton described these Indian troops in his Civil War on the Border:

"It was quite amusing to the white soldiers to see the Indians dressed in the Federal uniform and equipped for the service. Every thing seemed out of just proportion. Nearly every warrior got a suit that, to critical tastes, lacked a good deal of fitting him. It was in a marked degree either too large or too small. In some cases the sleeves of a coat or a jacket were too short, coming down p69 about two thirds the distance from the elbows to the wrists. In other cases the sleeves were too long, coming down over the hands.

"At the time these Indian troops were organized the Government was furnishing the soldiers a high-crowned stiff wool hat for the service. When, therefore, fully equipped as a warrior, one might have seen an Indian soldier dressed as described, wearing a high-crowned stiff wool hat, with long black hair falling over his shoulders, and riding an Indian pony so small that his feet appeared almost to touch the ground, with a long squirrel rifle thrown across the pommel of his saddle. When starting out on the march every morning any one with this command might have seen this warrior in full war-paint, and he might have also heard the war whoop commence at the end of the column and run back to the rear, and recommence at the head of the column several times and run back to the rear."

Colonel Watie's men were at Spavinaw Creek when his scouts brought news of approaching Federal Cavalry. With some three or four hundred men, including Major Brokearm and his Confederate Osages, Watie fell back, well knowing he could not withstand Colonel L. R. Jewell and the Sixth Kansas Cavalry. In the early afternoon Watie stopped for a meal with an Indian family, sending his men on. After supper Watie was standing in front of the house when one of his guards rode in with the alarm that the Federal Cavalry was on his heels. Watie leaped on his horse and raced down the road as the Yankees came into sight!

With the Yankees firing on him, Watie rode hard to escape, finally overtook his retreating command. One of his men slid from his horse, shot by the pursuing Yankees. Watie had no time to attempt forming a defensive line but, as the darkness was approaching, he ordered his men to escape as best they could. Colonel Jewell reined up, the Indian Colonel having eluded him. But the chase had driven Watie's men off the road to Locust Grove where Colonel Clarkson, newly appointed northern Indian Territory commander was encamped with Texas troops as well as Watie's commissary and camp supplies.

Colonel Weer, advancing against Clarkson, reached the drowsing Confederate camp short before daybreak. The chase of Watie had been so close that his Cherokees were not able to get through to warn Clarkson. Astonished Clarkson, surrounded, soon surrendered, though some of his men were able to pierce the p70 Federal lines. While Weer captured only a few over a hundred able-bodied soldiers, he took sixty-four mule teams with the Confederate supply train. On July 4 the captured prisoners and supplies were exhibited as part of the Independence Day celebration.

State of the Cherokee country and efforts to combat the Rebel Indians were shown in the report of E. H. Carruth and H. W. Martin, Indian agents, written July 25 at Wolf Creek in the Cherokee Nation. This report, sent to Colonel R. W. Furnas, commanding the Indian Brigade said:

"The country bordering the Arkansas, Lee's Creek, and Sallison [Sallisaw] which is the best producing section of the nation, is ruined; and the families living there, whose fathers and husbands are in our army, are gathering at Park Hill, and are even now in a suffering condition.

". . . A regiment of Cherokees has already been raised, another is fast forming at Park Hill, and this will, we believe, give you force sufficient to hold the country until re-enforcements arrive; and we will call on you to protect the Cherokee people."

Mrs. Hannah Worcester Hicks, daughter of Reverend S. A. Worcester who had died in 1859 after living with the Cherokees over fifty years, in 1862 wrote in her diary:

"My house has been burned down, my horses taken . . . This is the ninth Sabbath that I have been a widow . . . left a widow at twenty-eight, with five children growing up around me, and oh! most dreadful of all, my dear husband murdered . . . [Abijah Hicks was murdered by a political enemy when returning from Van Buren with boots, shoes, tobacco and a barrel of sugar for his store at Park Hill. He was found hanging over the dashboard of his spring wagon and buried about forty miles from Park Hill and Mrs. Hicks was never able to locate his grave.] . . . This weary, weary time of War! Will the time of suspense never end? I know not what is to become of us: famine and pestilence seem to await us!"

Conditions at Park Hill became so unbearable that Mrs. Hicks left her home and took her children to Fort Gibson, some eighteen or twenty miles away. The Federals at the fort were operating grist mills, had built ferryboats and enclosed some sixteen acres with defensive works.

It must have seemed comforting to Hannah to be within the protecting stockades of the fort for here had been one of the liveliest p71 centers of social activity. Many West Pointers were assigned to the fort upon graduation from the Academy on the banks of the Hudson and the pretty Cherokee girls were active in the social life of the post. In the main room of the commissary building the soldiers and the Cherokee girls would stage plays and entertainments. Many of the soldiers were excellent singers. The Army Chaplain often sent the post ambulance for the Indian girls and saw to it that they were well chaperoned.

Some of the soldiers remembered Hannah's late sister, Sarah, widely known as one of the most beautiful women in the Indian Territory, and it is said that when she was in Cincinnati, people stopped on the street to gaze at her queenly beauty.

Despite distraught Hannah's lamentations over the agonizing conditions brought to the Cherokees by the war, she was to find a new romance at Fort Gibson and married Sarah's widower, Dr. Daniel Dwight Hitchcock, surgeon of the Third Regiment of Indian Home Guards, who headed the general hospital at Fort Gibson.

But Hannah's sister Mary Eleanor, in her early twenties, wanted no part of Fort Gibson and turned to Stand Watie's territory for she opposed the "Feds" and gave her time and devotion to the Secesh cause.

After the defeat of Clarkson, Stand Watie's military hold on the Cherokee Nation was loosened. The Federals knew that Chief John Ross would tender them little trouble and in August 1862, Captain H. S. Greeno and a party of one hundred-fifty white cavalry and Indians were riding on the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah.

But when the Yankees rode up to Park Hill, four miles south of Tahlequah, a large troop of Confederate Indians was encamped around Chief Ross' expansive home. Colonel Greeno's cavalry slowed up, wondering if somehow Watie's men had lured them into a trap. But as the cautious Federals rode toward Rose Cottage no hostile fire greeted them. What was the situation?

Soon the Federals were aware that the Confederates wanted to surrender. And then it became clear as to exactly who were these Confederate troops. These were men from Colonel Drew's command — men who had failed the Confederacy at practically every chance except the early fighting at Pea Ridge — who awaited Greeno so that they could join up with him and help hunt down p72 the malignant Colonel Stand Watie! Soon some two hundred of Drew's command were in Colonel Phillips' Third Indian Regiment. Colonel Phillips, a former anti-slavery reporter for the New York Tribune, had been offered $10,000 a year to be a war correspondent with the Army of the Potomac.

Colonel Watie and the remainder of Clarkson's command were now south of the Arkansas River and the segment of the Indian Territory north of the river was practically free from Rebel command. Chief Ross, though seventy-two years old, a prisoner of war on parole, had walked the beautiful grounds of Rose Cottage convinced that finally he had eliminated his old enemy, the despised half-breed Watie.

Wisely, Chief Ross felt it not prudent to remain within riding distance — and possibly shooting distance — of the mixed-bloods, contemptuous of the surrendered Indians. Before long, Mrs. Ross and her sister, household treasures and archives of the Cherokee Nation were in Washington and Chief John was paying his respects to President Abraham Lincoln. Later Ross was to establish a Cherokee "government-in‑exile" of sorts in Philadelphia in an old Colonial house, inherited by Mrs. Ross on the South side of Washington Square. The actual Cherokee government was far from the City of Brotherly Love. It was held by a gallant band of durable fighters who rode under the wind-tossed flag of the Confederacy. For as soon as Ross fled the Indian Territory, the Southern Cherokee put in a new Chief. There could be only one man — intrepid, valorous and gallant — to rule the Cherokee Nation — Stand Watie!

A letter dated September 15, appearing in the Confederate Records, stated, "In the meantime the serious feud existing between the Cherokees had terminated in the expulsion of Ross and the unsound faction and in the election of our tried friend, Stand Watie, as their chief."

Colonel Watie was to get unintended succor from an unanticipated source. Difficulties split Colonel Weer and his second in command, Colonel Frederick Salomon, who charged that Weer was either insane or plotting treason and placed him under arrest. Colonel Weer, like his soldiers, had suffered a morale breakdown because of the intense summer heat and the long periods of inactivity. Too often he had stayed drunk in his tent while his command slipped out of control. Colonel Salomon ordered p73 the white troops back to Missouri leaving the three Indian regiments without any plan of campaign.

The three Northern Indian regiments were commanded by Colonel R. W. Furnas, Phillips — soon to become the Indians' commander at Fort Gibson — and Corwin. When Colonel Furnas marched the Indians, with the exception of some two hundred left at Fort Gibson — Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1828: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1828: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Jefferson Davis had served there under General Zachary Taylor — as an outpost, to the Verdigris River, several hundred Osages, members of the Second Indian Regiment, deserted and went buffalo hunting; and, if that were not bad enough, part of the First Indian Regiment became unmanageable. Some Indians complained they'd received no pay and were ill-armed. The reputation of Watie's fighting command may have had some part in disquieting the malcontent, loyal Indians.

Units of Watie's command had recrossed the Arkansas River as soon as news had been transmitted of the withdrawal of the white troops. They raided turncoat Cherokees and on July 27 at Bayou Bernard, near Park Hill, clashed with Phillips' column. The Confederates were repulsed, Colonel Taylor and Captain Hicks of Watie's command and two Choctaw captains being among the Confederate dead.

Colonel Phillips, the ex-reporter turned Indian fighter, Major Elias Boudinot with his Cherokees and Colonel McIntosh with his Creeks sparred and did a little in-fighting, but Colonel Douglas Cooper, commanding the Confederate forces at Fort Davis, ordered all Confederate Indian Territory forces again back south of the Arkansas River.

With the Confederates withdrawing, Colonel Phillips found he'd have to extricate himself from a dangerous position as his troops were out of rations and the Rebels had fallen back beyond his immediate reach. His horses were in poor shape as, indeed, were those of the white regiments which had withdrawn earlier. The hard marching and the lack of corn and oats had brought this about. Top cavalry horses could not stay in shape on wild prairie grass. Colonel Phillips ordered a retreat and distraught Indians flocked to the retiring Federal column for protection even as loyal Indians had clung to Chief Yo-ho-la, as it reached Wolf Springs and then withdrew back to Baxter Springs, the main camp and the original jumping off point for the arduous campaign.

p74 Colonel Douglas Cooper poured himself a couple of stiff drinks, then called out his Choctaws and Chickasaws and pointed the way northward over the Arkansas River. The Cherokee Nation must resume its place under the military forces of the Confederacy.

Confederate fortunes along the border were brighter. On August 11, Confederate raiders, mounted on the best horses in the country, and acting under Brigadier General John B. Hughes and Colonel Upton Hays, with support by Quantrill, rode into Independence, Missouri, Jackson county seat, occupied by the Federals since the fall of 1861. In fighting that raged from building to building, Hughes died, but Lieutenant Colonel James T. Buell and many of his defenders surrendered on the promise that the prisoners would not be murdered by Quantrill. Shortly after the battle, Quantrill — he of the broad smile but grim and deadly determination — had a Confederate Captain's commission.

Five days later at Lone Jack, twenty-five miles below Independence, Colonel Hays and Quantrill, with other Rebel officers, took on Major Emory S. Foster, Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry, who had won a bit of regional renown fighting the Secesh guerrillas in Central and Western Missouri. The Union soldiers were considerably roughed up as nearly every officer of Major Foster's command was killed or wounded. Major Foster, himself, led sixty of his men to recover abandoned Yankee artillery. Eleven of the sixty reached the guns and, as they were dragging them away, Major Foster was shot down and the new commander retreated to Lexington.

General Hindman, having harassed Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1831: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Curtis after Pea Ridge, on August 24 became official commander of the District of Arkansas. His energy was boundless. He had manufactured his own military and medical supplies when the eastern source was cut off and even aroused the Negroes at Van Buren to give a ball at fifty cents a head for the support of his Confederate program.

Since his new command encompassed Missouri and Indian Territory, Hindman, encouraged by the Rebel success at Independence and Lone Jack, soon, leaving Jo Shelby's men reorganized into the Iron Brigade, sent orders down to Fort McCulloch for General Albert Pike to pay him a visit with his Indians.

Still recalling how his troops hadn't received their uniforms prior to Pea Ridge and understandably smarting over the Indian p75 losses there, Pike sent word back to Hindman that he planned to hold his troops for defense of the Indian Territory. There were threats of arrest for insubordination, but Pike, rather than order his command out of the Territory, resigned, saying, in part:

"I have resigned the command of the Indian Territory, and am relieved of that command. I have done this because I received . . . an order to go out of your country to Fort Smith and Northwestern Arkansas, there to remain and organize troops and defend the country; a duty which could have kept me out of the country [Indian Territory] for months . . .

"Remain true I earnestly advise you, to the Confederate states and yourselves. Do not listen to any men who tell you that the Southern states will abandon you. They will not do it."

So the brilliant diplomat to the Indians, the strong link between the Southern Indian leaders and the Confederacy — and who was arrested November 14, 1862 at Tishomingo, taken to Little Rock by a detachment of Shelby's men but quickly freed — retired from his command to take no more active part in the war although near the end General

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1845: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

E. Kirby-Smith sought to employ him for service among the Plains red men.

After peace, Pike edited the Memphis Appeal for a short time. He then moved to Washington where he practiced law, edited The Patriot and, before his death in 1891, became the highest Masonic dignitary in the United States.

Unlike Pike, Douglas Cooper would fight the Yankees anywhere and he applied for Pike's post as Indian Commissioner and Brigadier General. Appointed acting commander, he moved his Chickasaws and Choctaws in support of Hindman. Working in unison with Cooper was Colonel Stand Watie who wasn't particular on what grounds he killed Yankees and Pins. Hadn't he whipped the foe in his stirring raids into their territory?

Stand Watie and Douglas Cooper moved north with Hindman's command in early September for the invasion of Southwest Missouri. Among those coming up to oppose them were Frederick Salomon, now a Brigadier General since his return from the Indian expedition and his old commander, Colonel Weer, back in official good graces after his unmilitary conduct following the capture of Tahlequah. Colonel Phillips' Third Indian Regiment was ready to cross swords with Watie and Cooper after Rebel cavalrymen had peppered Phillips' rear p76 guard. Colonel Richie's Second Indian Regiment was encamped near Shirley's Ford so as to protect the right flank of Salomon and Weer. Some fifteen hundred members of families of the Indian soldiers made up a clumsy and ill-controlled camp following.

With Watie and Cooper prepared to strike, Jo Shelby and Captain Ben Elliot on September 14 against a body of Pins and runaway Negroes encamped in the timber near Carthage. Elliot's men surrounded the camp and then charged in from all sides towards the center. The cowed Indians and Negroes made little resistance as they were ridden over and trampled down. Some even bared their breasts to the revolvers of the Confederate cavalrymen who silently and grimly exterminated the gathering. Few men escaped and only one prisoner was taken. In two hours of killing almost the entire craven band of two hundred-fifty Pins and Negroes was wiped out. The vengeance of the Confederates was not without merit. On the dead were found the scalps of a dozen or more white victims, at least one of whom was a woman, as the long, soft hair had still its silken gloss which shone despite the clotted drops of blood amidst the curls.

It was later in the war that the Confederates were able to repeat such a sanguinary victory over the Pins. Lieutenant Arthur McCoy rode out of the great blue hills of Cane Hill and surprised one hundred Pins rolled up asleep along a heavy rail fence. Only two Pins escaped. McCoy alone killed seven.

Some six days after Elliot's successful raid, units from Stand Watie's Cherokees, Colonel Hawpt's Texas Regiment and Major Tom Livingston's Rangers surprised Colonel Richie's pickets at Shirley's Ford and the Union Indian camp-followers romped, panic-stricken, into the main part of the camp. Although the Confederate retirement was preceded by an hour's fighting, Richie with no more stomach for the fray, permitted five civilian prisoners to be shot, ordered his regiment to fall back in the morning. Colonel Weer, wearied and out of patience with Richie, ordered his arrest and recommended dismissal from the service. Richie's Indians, often out of control, had plundered homes of Weer's command, burned country places indiscriminately and, to point up Richie's inadequacy, two of the civilians executed on the day of Shirley's Ford were Unionists!

There was fighting sporadically around Newtonia, Jo Shelby's p77 Highlanders or Iron Brigade routed Union Missouri Cavalry, chasing them some ten miles northeast of Newtonia. But the Rebel horsemen suffered a serious loss in the death of bold fighter Colonel Upton Hays.

On September 28, the 7,000 Confederates moved up from Indian Creek to Newtonia, a little college town of four or five hundred population. The Federals were only fourteen miles away at Shoal Creek.

Union forces, unaware that the main Confederate force was at Newtonia, the next day marched openly over a ridge onto the town and landed in a Confederate trap. Soon the Southern cavalry and the Choctaw Indians were pursuing the fleeing Yankees. Behind the fast riding cavalry, among the several hundred Federal soldiers killed, wounded or captured, lay seven infantrymen of the Seventh Wisconsin, naked in death, stripped by the Choctaws.

This Confederate victory led off a series of small engagements which was climaxed October 4 when the heavily reinforced Union troops assaulted Newtonia — General Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1853: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1853: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

John M. Schofield, commander of the Army of the Frontier, took charge of the offensive — and, on the heels of a heavy artillery bombardment, stormed against Cooper's men posted behind stone fences. Although these fences had been welcome protection in the earlier fighting, Cooper felt that his defenses were vulnerable. He looked over to where Lieutenant Colonel R. C. Parks was commanding the Cherokee Rifles in Stand Watie's absence, ordered a general scattering fire. Then he signalled for a retreat and the Confederate forces melted from Newtonia, marched down Indian Creek, reached Pineville and then crossed into Northwest Arkansas. That invasion of Missouri was at an end.

General Cooper rallied his troops once they were back in Indian Territory and shortly had orders from General James Rains, in or near Huntsville, to attempt another invasion; this time against Kansas and Fort Scott. Cooper was ready to act when word was received that General Blunt's expedition against the Confederates was in Indian Territory. The two forces clashed at Old Fort Wayne, four miles south of Maysville. Cooper and Watie had 3,000 men and four guns. The Yankees charged the Rebel line vigorously and, after hand-to‑hand fighting, the Southerners fell back in confusion. Once again General Cooper was south of p78 the Arkansas River and the Federals in control of the northern part of the Indian Territory.

Stroking his stiff black moustache and with victory in his deep-set eyes, General Blunt sent word to the refugee Indians to come home. But he wasn't satisfied that Watie and Cooper wouldn't strike back for Blunt's warning to the Union Indians was to report immediately any activity by the Confederate Indians.

In a matter of a couple of weeks or so, General Blunt had his report from the Union Indians. Colonel Stand Watie and his Cherokee Rifles had crossed over the Arkansas between Fort Gibson and Fort Smith. Blunt ordered Colonel Phillips to take the Federal Indian Brigade and harass him until he was forced across the river. Watie, leading Phillips a merry chase, was soon out of Indian Territory and back with Hindman, who was confident he could defeat Blunt in the Boston Mountains.

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