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previous: Chapter 6 This webpage reproduces a chapter of General Stand Watie's Confederate Indians by Frank Cunningham published by The Naylor Company San Antonio, Texas 1959 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 8

 p81  Chapter 7

The warmish fall-like weather of late November had changed and Watie's shivering men rode first in cold and ice and then in a pouring rain that drooped Jo Shelby's new black plume.

The Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation must have pondered the fortunes of war as his men jogged along in the wet weather. Colonel Jewell's Sixth Kansas Cavalry had come close to capturing or killing him when they chased him down the road on the Indian Territory invasion, their fire tumbling one of his nearby horsemen. On November 23 Jewell had scouted almost to Van Buren and reported to Blunt at Lindsay's Prairie, thirty miles north of Cane Hill where Marmaduke with 7,000 cavalry awaited reinforcements, that Hindman and Watie were preparing to leave Van Buren and move northward. In a few days Blunt  p82 was forcing Marmaduke back from Cane Hill, but charging down a valley, Colonel Jewell fell wounded and on the 29th his body was shipped back to his family at Fort Scott.

As Hindman advanced against him at Cane Hill, Blunt wired General Samuel Curtis for reinforcements as Blunt had only about 8,000 men to oppose the 15,000 or so under Hindman's command.

General Curtis forwarded Blunt's request to Brigadier General Frank J. Herron at camp on Wilson's Creek, 116 miles from Cane Hill. To save Blunt, Herron would have to reach him before Hindman covered some sixty miles to Cane Hill.

Wednesday morning, December 3, Watie received instructions from Hindman which, in the light of coming events, actually took him out of the center of action. Colonel Watie, with part of his men — the remainder continued on with the main column — was sent to around Evansville where they were to open a communication with the pickets of the Confederate Army on the line road, and, if possible, occupy Dutch Mills. Hindman, apparently sensing the probability of a Confederate victory, desired Watie to be in a position to capture Federal supply trains if they should be driven by the Rebels into vicinity of Dutch Mills.

On Thursday, with about 400 men, Watie reached Dwight's Mission and the following morning his scouts killed several Pin Indians. That night Colonel Watie reached Peyton's Spring about four miles from Evansville. The next morning Watie's scouts entered Evansville just as a Federal scout was leaving. Citizens informed the Confederates that no Rebel pickets had been there for nearly a week and they could give no information about the location of the main Confederate Army.

Watie remained in the vicinity until that evening when, as he felt the enemy was in force at Cane Hill and had pickets near Dutch Mills, he considered it wise to retire down Lee's Creek. On Sunday, his troops heard cannonading in the distance. He returned to Peyton's Spring.

Dutch Mills fell into Watie's possession on Monday morning and Captain Wells was dispatched to take this news to General Hindman. The difficulty in maintaining Confederate communications was evidenced by the fact that Watie had received no reliable information on the battle of Prairie Grove the day previous. Actually, he did not know the location of General Hindman,  p83 but supposed him to be somewhere near Cane Hill.

On the night of December 6 — Herron had been marching on his relief effort for three days — Hindman had called a conference of his top officers. In a switch of strategy the Confederates were to send their main forces against approaching Herron with General Marmaduke — the same officer who had commanded at Booneville when Governor Jackson was retreating — using the men of Shelby and Quantrill and those of Watie not with the Colonel. A small force of Arkansas Cavalry under Colonel Monroe would engage Blunt at Cane Hill until the main force, having defeated Herron, could turn against Blunt.

General Hindman ordered leaflets he had printed distributed to his soldiers. These were instructions as to "Do's and Don'ts" in the coming battle and also contained a statement of principles for which the Confederates were fighting.

Secesh fighting men read,

Shelby and the cavalry rode out in the early morning about five with Quantrill's men — commanded in his absence by Dave Pool with Frank James and fifteen-year-old Jesse in the ranks — in front. In quick order, Quantrill's riders attacked Lieutenant Bunner's unit of the Sixth and Seventh Missouri Cavalry and routed it while Colonel Emmett McDonald's Confederate Cavalry defeated the rest of the Sixth and Seventh Missouri, killing the commander, Major Eliphalet Bredett, as well as Captain William McKee. Then McDonald and Quantrill's guerrillas routed the First Arkansas Cavalry and captured over a score of commissary wagons headed for Blunt's camp; Shelby, riding in to take care of the captured wagons was surprised by a rallied company of the Seventh Missouri and he, his staff and two artillery pieces were captured; but Confederates Major David Shanks and Pool with his men and Colonels Young and Crump, of McDonald's Cavalry, who had been chasing back on Herron and the advancing First Missouri Cavalry the routed First Arkansas mountain men — newly conscripted gored with fear — returned up the road. Unexpectedly coming across the captured Shelby, the Confederate Cavalry, in turn, seized nearly four hundred of the Missouri cavalrymen and Shelby was free!

 p84  Such was the fast start the Confederates accomplished that morning. The Indian allies, meantime, were advancing with Hindman to the vicinity of Prairie Grove Church and there, much to their dismay, the unchallenged advance stopped. Eight thousand Confederates were placed in a two mile line along a high ridge covered with a heavy growth of young timber and underbrush to halt the forces of Herron on their way to General Blunt.

Had General Hindman continued his movement against the 6,000 almost exhausted soldiers in Herron's column, the odds for a Rebel victory would have been heavy as even the cutting up of the green Arkansas First Federals had almost thrown Herron's command off balance.

Herron's still weary men reached the Confederate line. General Herron in a display of courage even admired by the Confederates, with a sole staff member rode ahead to survey the land. Later his army, crossing Illinois Creek, doggedly charged the Confederate line time after time, but the gray troops — despite a two hour Yankee bombardment — held and shot down their foes advancing under the cover of fences and farmhouses. Shelby ambushed the Twenty-Fifth Illinois Regiment by abandoning four guns and when the Irish gathered around the "captured" artillery, Shelby opened up with concealed batteries and blew the Irishmen to pieces.

Cherokees, Marmaduke's cavalry and General D. M. Frost's — he was a West Pointer and former State Senator — and Monroe M. Parson's — he had started his career as a member of the Missouri militia in 1860 — Missourians impatiently waited to carry the battle forward. They sensed victory within reach.

General Hindman, sharing the feeling of confidence, started to give the anticipated command for a counter attack, even though he knew his whole strength was not available as he had detached General Parson's division of infantry to protect his rear guard and baggage from capture. Suddenly General Hindman halted in his command for something was wrong in the Confederate line. He discovered that Colonel Adams' Arkansas conscripted regiment, leaving only their officers on the field, had thrown down their arms and deserted! Hindman, instead of advancing, ordered the battle line held. Again and again the Union forces surged forward and were thrown back. Herron was becoming  p85 desperate, momentarily expecting an unblockable Confederate charge.

Meanwhile eight miles away at Cane Hill, Blunt, completely fooled, thought he was fa­cing the entire Confederate command as Colonel Monroe's skeleton cavalry force was deployed as infantrymen in a wide battle line. But in the late morning the firing of the guns at Prairie Grove alerted him to the decoy planted by the Southerners.

Shortly thereafter Herron noted artillery fire falling among his skirmishers. To Herron this meant the failure of his effort as he had been outflanked. Quickly Herron revised his estimate after the fire was corrected. Blunt, arriving helter-skelter with 3,000 cavalrymen, twenty guns and double-quicking infantrymen, and not knowing the layout of the battle, had mistakenly fired upon the Federal skirmishers.

The arrival of Blunt's command to save Herron — an ironic reversal of the original situation — wrote the end to a Confederate victory although Hindman fought back all afternoon. Other conscripted Arkansas troops refused to charge and when Marmaduke's cavalry rode at their backs and forced them forward against Blunt's batteries, the spiritless sally failed and the unwilling Arkansas soldiers piled up like laid out cordwood as they died alongside one another. After the battle burial details found the pockets of the dead Arkansans stuffed with unshot bullets — these had been bitten from the cartridges so that the conscripts were firing only blanks at the Federals — and the propaganda leaflets issued by Hindman.

As night fell, fighting ceased, although General Blunt's power­ful batteries continued to fire for some time, and the Confederate leaders held their lines against both Herron and Blunt; however, fresh Union troops under General Salomon were expected in the morning and additional artillery would throw grape and canister in deadly assault. Later Hindman said of the artillery fire, "There was no place of shelter upon any portion of the field . . . wounds were given and death inflicted by the Federal artillery in the ranks of the reserves as well as in the front rank."

Rebel Indians sternly watched as sweating Confederate gunners tore up blankets, wrapped them around artillery wheels. Then about midnight as silently as possible — but with the  p86 camp fires kindled to deceive the enemy — the fatigued Confederates slipped away.

Each side suffered battle casualties approaching thirteen hundred and the Federal dead and dying men were like wall-to‑wall carpeting on the floors of the hospitals, churches and schools in Fayetteville. The Confederate wounded were taken to Cane Hill in ambulances furnished by the Union commanders. For their actions in the battle, Blunt and Herron were rewarded with major general's stars, Herron becoming the youngest such general in blue.

Blunt was to get his comeuppance at Baxter Springs in the fall of 1863 when Quantrill surprised his column, cut it to pieces, killing his fourteen musicians, as well as James O'Neal, special artist for Frank Leslie's Illustrated News­paper, and making Blunt flee for his life. Chastised, Blunt was taken off his command of the Army of the Frontier and put in charge of recruiting Negro regiments.

And what of Colonel Watie? Since his camp in the vicinity of Dutch Mills was not, after all, on the route of the Federal Supply trains — in defeat or victory — the Cherokee Colonel found himself left out of the fighting engendered by the Prairie Grove action. But Watie's command near Dutch Mills was not to be devoid of contact with the enemy. On Wednesday, he learned that the Pins, concentrating at Manus', some ten miles from his camp were planning to attack him.

In Watie's report to Cooper, sent from Scullyville on December 19, he recorded his action to the news about the Pins:

Dapper Hindman, for all his worthwhile work for the Confederate fortunes, paid for his failure to carry the attack to Fayetteville and he was soon on his way out as commander, replaced by General Theophilus Holmes, sixty-year-old friend of Jefferson Davis. In the reorganization of command, Douglas Cooper relinquished his temporary position replacing Pike — to General William Steele, formerly a Captain in the United States Army.

Colonel Phillips with twelve hundred Indian troops, two companies of white cavalry and an artillery unit, rode into Indian Territory to occupy Fort Gibson and then crossed the Arkansas River and attacked Fort Davis, which had been established by General Pike and named in honor of Jefferson Davis, and now defended by the forces of Cooper and Watie beneath the Confederate flag that flew on an Indian mound in the post's center. Phillips defeated the Texans and Indians and burned the million dollar Confederate camp, located on a slight hill north of what is now Muskogee. The Confederates fell back in the direction of Scullyville and Fort Smith, but Cooper, on orders from Hindman, retired deep into the Choctaw Nation at Johnson's Station, ninety miles northwest of Fort Smith on the Canadian River, and furloughed many of his Indian troops for two to three months. But before long Phillips was reversing his march under orders and the Northern headquarters in the southwest operated out of Fayetteville.

Camp Starvation became the Indian Territory winter headquarters for Colonel Watie. After the snows, heavy rains made the roads impassable and for six weeks Watie's men ate only parched corn and dried beef as no supplies could get through. The prized cavalry mounts which had carried Watie's Rifles on so many success­ful raids were fed on tree bark and branches.

Activity of the Civilized Nations was not confined to the battlefield. The mixed-breed Indians placed their representatives in Richmond to further any interests of their nations; S. B. Callahan represented the Seminoles and the Creeks; Robert M. Jones, the Choctaws; Peter Pitchlin, the Chickasaws and Colonel Elias C. Boudinot, the Cherokees. There was ever the question of supplies and money for the Indians as well as obtaining the  p88 proper recognition for the support the Civilized Tribes were giving Jefferson Davis.

John Christopher Schwab wrote in his book, The Confederate States of America:

The cordial relations between the Confederate States and its Indian allies, is brought out in a report by S. S. Scott, Confederate Indian Commissioner at Richmond, made January 12, 1863, to James A. Seddon, Secretary of War. Scott wrote:

Several unusual facets of the Indian Territory, reported on by Scott, were:

The Northern Cherokees were plotting their political activity, too. On February 4, 1863, the Cherokee Council convened at Cowskin Prairie with Lewis Downing as its presiding officer and Thomas Pegg as acting Principal Chief. In a session which ran many days, the Council passed numerous resolutions including:

As spring approached, Colonel Watie called in all of his men who had been on furlough for General Steele was proving to be an energetic commander — at least at the start — and he ordered the Southern Indian forces to be ready for renewal of the fight to control the Indian Territory. In March, Stand Watie's soldiers were back north of the Arkansas River. But Colonel Phillips' men were on their way back to Fort Gibson accompanied by a large flock of loyal Indians who wanted to be in their homeland. Phillips rode with anticipation of the greening grazing section of Cherokee lands. His cavalry horses had suffered from lack of forage so intensely that, in some cases, the horses had eaten each other's tails and manes.

Federal scouts, missing the Indian Confederate troops, reported no Southern Indians north of the Arkansas River, but in a few days a unit of Cooper's command was unsuccess­fully skirmishing with the Federals. On April 9 the Union Indian refugee mile-long wagon train, which was guarded by three hundred Indian soldiers, reached Park Hill. And by the 13th, Phillips was back in Fort Gibson, but not until after a company of Stand Watie's was hemmed in and had to swim the Arkansas River to escape.

Highlight of the spring campaign was Watie's capture of a Yankee wagon train, bound from Fort Gibson to Fort Smith, at Webber's Falls. His men bested a Federal Cavalry unit which fell back to a battle line along a mountain top where infantry guarded the wagon train. Watie's beloved bugler, "Dutch Billy,"  p92 sounded a charge and the men advanced up the mountain capturing the Federal supplies.

Colonel Stand Watie, as Principal Chief of the Cherokees, ordered a meeting of the Cherokee Legislature at Webber's Falls, twenty-five miles below Fort Gibson, and on the south side of the Arkansas River. Cherokee troops and leaders came in from around the countryside for the parley and, by night when Watie made the opening address, a sizable contingent was gathered. Nearby, at Northfolk, General Cooper stood by with his main command of Choctaws and Chickasaws.

And exactly what happened after that is disputed history. The Federal historians tell it this way:

Stand Watie was to contend with uninvited and most unwelcome guests who, at daybreak, broke up any hope of further convening the Cherokee Legislature and sent incensed soldiers and political leaders — often one and the same — reeling back into the canebrakes for protection. Colonel Phillips — a proclamation of the coming session having fallen into his hands —- with no chivalric regard for political courtesy to the Rebel Cherokee Government, had led six hundred men — Indians and Sixth Kansas Cavalry — across the Arkansas on a night march. With Watie and the lawmakers scattered, gloating Phillips rode back to Fort Gibson.

General Watie's men, after the war, protested this story of the breaking up of the Cherokee Legislature. They did not accuse the historians of deliberately falsifying the store, but said apparently the Union writers had confused this supposed Rebel defeat at Webber's Falls with an actual one in the late fall of 1862 or the early winter of 1863 when Confederate Captain O. H. P. Brewster and a small party of Cherokees at Webber's Falls was attacked by Federal troops under Colonel Phillips. Colonel Watie, at that time, was at Camp Steel.

Be that as it may, if Colonel Phillips did disperse the Cherokee Legislature and ride in exaltation back to Fort Gibson, his countenance must have fallen when he heard the news there. The Yankees had abandoned their headquarters at Fayetteville and retreated to Cassville, Missouri. Because of that not only would Fort Gibson, which was established around 1830, and which held a commanding view of the surrounding territory, be a target for attack from Cooper and Watie, but also from General  p93 W. L. Cabell, new commander of the Confederate forces in Western Arkansas, who readily occupied Fayetteville with his cavalry.

Soon Cooper and Watie marched within five miles of Fort Gibson and watched the movements of the Union troops. Confederate Cavalry forded the Arkansas and Verdigris rivers and impertinently threatened to make life miserable for any Federal parties on their way to and from Fort Scott. General Cabell brought over his Arkansas troops and put them on the flank.

Inside Fort Gibson, Phillips was perturbed that Watie knew as much about the movements of Yankee supplies as the Federal supply officers themselves. The former newspaperman, through spies and scouts, learned that the next big wagon train bringing in supplies from the north would be in serious trouble.

Phillips' position wasn't made any more tenable by the knowledge that Major Tom Livingston's Partisan Rangers — the Major was to die soon, leading his "bushwhackers" on an attack on Stockton, Missouri — were making rapier thrusts against Colonel James M. Williams' First Kansas Colored Infantry at Baxter Springs, sixty miles south of Fort Scott on the military road to Fort Gibson.

Watie must have ruffled considerably any good humor Phillips had left by a raid on the Fort Gibson herds. The Confederate scouts having observed that Union horses and mules were turned out to graze before daylight each morning, Colonel Watie's raiders swooped down in the early morning hours — death taking from the horsemen Major George W. West and Captain Buzzard — and cut off a vast number of horses and mules, capturing them under the Federal guns. The loss of the animals caused Phillips to revise his cavalry plans against the Confederates.

In mid-May, with their field glasses focused on Confederate activity in and around their camp, Union officers stood on the roofs of the stone buildings atop the bluff and speculated on where Cooper and Watie would strike and if Cabell could be held to his position.

For a week there were quick raids around Fort Gibson as news of the impending arrival of a large wagon train became known. The Federal commander of the train — which had two hundred wagons — marched at night with a reinforced escort of  p6 a thousand soldiers. About five miles from Fort Gibson, the Texans and Indians swooped down on the train, their mounted charge standing out against the lightening sky of the early morning.

When the wagon train pulled into Fort Gibson, later in the day, it had two wagons freshly loaded — Confederate Indian dead!

But in June another large train was expected. And the conniving Confederate Indians could wait for this one!

No one missed his family more than Captain James M. Bell, son of John A. Bell and brother of Sarah Watie, who was married to Caroline Lynch. His letters written to his wife brought out how much he wanted to be back with his loved ones, to live in the agrarian atmosphere of farm animals with their smells and noises amid the pastoral scenes of corn and wheat growing in a world which was only a memory as Captain Bell fought beside Stand Watie.

Even such memories were not to last long for a party of more than a score of Confederates, which set out in May 1863, on a diplomatic mission to the Plains Indians, and, who had ridden some eighty miles across Osage country, when they stopped to rest at noon in what is now Montgomery County, Kansas.

The Confederate mission was surprised by Osage warriors who wanted to take them to a Federal garrison. Between the hostile Osages and the prospect of being turned over to the Federals, the trapped Confederates had little choice. They fled under the fire of volleys of arrows.

But the unplanned flight was right into hundreds of Osage warriors coming from one of their villages. In dismay, the Rebel horsemen sought the comparative safety of the Verdigris River where they could rally on a sand bar.

Hopelessly outnumbered, the Rebels were unable to hold off the Indians and ran up a surrender flag. Better to be captured by the Osages and turned over to the Feds than to be pierced with Indian arrows and die on a sand bank.

Surrender was of no avail. The Rebels were soon stretched out in death, some beheaded, almost all scalped. One Osage hacked away at the beard of a dead Secesh as his victim was bald!

So ended the diplomatic mission, which, under orders from  p95 General Steele, tried to resume the parleys with the Plains Indians commenced by Albert Pike in 1861.

News of the massacre reached the border from two sources. Osage leaders, fearful of what their warriors had done, reported the bloody affair to the Union authorities at Humboldt, Kansas, who sent investigators to the Osage village. There were found remains of the Southern diplomatic messages as well as some Confederate scalps.

The other news source was two survivors — they had dropped out of the race for safety on the sand bar — who walked into a Missouri settlement after days and nights of perilously crossing the prairie.

To keep the Federal Indians in a state of confusion and agitation, Colonel Watie commenced another lusty raid through the Cherokee Nation, killing loyal Indians who resisted and gathered supplies for the Confederate camp before Fort Gibson. Major Foreman and three hundred cavalrymen tried to trap Watie near Maysville, but Watie avoided a fight and headed back through Tahlequah and Park Hill with Foreman riding hard on him. Colonel Phillips, ever on the alert to catch Watie, sent out four hundred men to cut off Watie before he could reach the Arkansas River and then Phillips would have the elusive Cherokee Chief in his grasp.

But Cooper was equally bent on protecting his famed raider and he entertained no thought of letting Watie run any greater risks than need be. Cooper rushed out a force under Colonels Thomas G. Bass and Tandy Walker to cover Colonel Watie's racing withdrawal.

His horses worn out and not realizing that Phillips' aid was close at hand, Major Foreman slowed down his blue-coated cavalrymen and at Tahlequah gave up the chase and empty-handed turned toward Fort Gibson.

Safely back from his success­ful raid, Watie found a message from Texas in which Sarah was greatly disturbed over the report that Charles Webber, Saladin's nephew, and Saladin had killed a prisoner. Sarah asked that the boys be merci­ful to their prisoners, if they, in turn were to expect mercy themselves and she told how sad she became when such news reached her.

At the same time, although she knew the animosity toward the Waties and the Confederate cause came by the Union Indians, and  p96 especially the Ross clan, she implored her husband to spare William Potter Ross, nephew of John Ross, if he should run across him, and make him a prisoner of war, as Mrs. Watie had a sympathetic feeling for his mother, Mrs. Jack Ross. Sarah Watie did not think it necessary for Stand Watie to kill his top enemies in order that they be removed from his path. But Sarah was being overly alarmed because of the reputed action by Saladin and Charles for Watie, although a raider, was not a wanton killer. Sarah urged her beloved husband always to do the right thing whenever it was possible.

"Do as near right as you can . . ." That was why Stand Watie risked his valuable properties, the welfare of the people who chose him their leader and the lives of those beloved to him. That he put his own life on the scales every time his raiders charged out against the Yankees was the price paid for leader­ship, yet a price paid equally by the stout horsemen who clashed with the blue-clad riders of bewhiskered Colonel Phillips.

These men who fought alongside Watie were not blank-faced strangers from a far state. These warriors were such men as, besides teen-aged Captain Saladin, Stand Watie's brother, Captain Charles Watie, and Major James M. Bell, his brother-in‑law. And the acid-pen Yankee writers, blinded by the mechanisms of the abolitionists, had portrayed the Confederate Indian allies as border murderers and semi-savages. Charles Watie, Adjutant in the First Cherokee, at one time had been assistant editor of the Grass Valley, California, Journal when the famed John Rollin Ridge was its editor; and devoted Major Bell, ever at Stand's side, was one of the foremost leaders of Cherokee politics and culture.

No, these men of the Cherokee Rifles were not men with meaningless names who slept, sometimes very little; and ate, sometimes very little; and suffered from cold and sun, from absence from their loved ones and from love of their country; and who, far more frequently than it would seem just, died from a Yankee slash across their stomach, a Pin bullet in their chests or a neutral bug in their vital organs.

These were men who revered the brave flag of the Confederacy that marked defiance over their heads, pre-eminently proud of the high-born heritage of Cherokee and White South that ran in their veins, and possessors of an ironside determination that  p97  their beloved land and their way of life would not fall to would-be conquerors who knew not either the Southern land or the Southern life. These were the men who answered the bugle-call of Dutch Billy when he signaled for an encounter with Death.

And new widows and orphans shed tears down the Red River for their menfolk who perished in the Indian Territory for the same cause the men of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson died in the valleys of Virginia.

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