Although many Indian nations fought in the Civil War, historians
have given little attention to the role Native Americans played in
the conflict. Indian nations did, in fact, suffer a higher
percentage of casualties than any Union or Confederate state, and
the war almost destroyed the Cherokee Nation. In The Confederate
Cherokees, W. Craig Gaines provides an absorbing account of the
Cherokees' involvement in the early years of the Civil War,
focusing in particular on the actions of one group, John Drew's
Regiment of Mounted Rifles.
As the war began, The Cherokees were torn by internal political
dissension and a simmering thirty-year-old blood feud. Entry into
the war on the Confederate side did little to resolve these
intratribal tensions. One faction, loyal to Chief John Ross, formed
a regiment led by John Drew, Ross's nephew by marriage. Another
regiment was formed by Ross's rival, Stand Watie. The Watie
regiment was largely por-Confederate, whereas many of Drew's
soldiers, though fighting for the Confederate cause, were secretly
members of a pro-Union, antislavery society known as the
Keetoowahs. They had little sympathy for the southern whites, who
had driven them from their ancestral homelands in Alabama, Georgia,
North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Drew's regiment
nonetheless earned a degree of infamy during the Battle of Pea
Ridge, in Arkansas, for scalping Union soldiers.
Gaines writes not only about the actions of Drew's regiment but
about military events in the Indian Territory in general. United
action was almost impossible because of continuing factionalism
within the tribes and the desertion of many Indians to the Union
forces. Desertion was so high that Drew's regiment was effectively
disbanded by mid-1862, and the soldiers did not complete their
one-year enlistment. Drew's regiment bears the distinction of being
the only Confederate regiment to lose almost its entire membership
through desertion to the Union ranks.
Gaines's solidly researched, ground-breaking history of this
ill-fated band of Cherokees will be of interest to Civil War buffs
and students of Native American history alike.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!