The Confederate Cherokees

The Confederate Cherokees
Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
Total Pages : 200
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0807127957
ISBN-13 : 9780807127957
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Confederate Cherokees by : W. Craig Gaines

Download or read book The Confederate Cherokees written by W. Craig Gaines and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1992-04-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


The Confederate Cherokees Related Books

The Confederate Cherokees
Language: en
Pages: 200
Authors: W. Craig Gaines
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1992-04-01 - Publisher: LSU Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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
The Civil War in the Indian Territory
Language: en
Pages: 230
Authors: Lary C. Rampp
Categories: Indian Territory
Type: BOOK - Published: 1975 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War
Language: en
Pages: 420
Authors: Annie Heloise Abel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1919 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars 1861-1865
Language: en
Pages: 898
Authors: Minnesota. Board of commissioners on publication of history of Minnesota in civil and Indian wars
Categories: Dakota Indians
Type: BOOK - Published: 1890 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams
Language: en
Pages: 308
Authors: Robert W. Lull
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013 - Publisher: University of North Texas Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This biography follows the military career of General James Monroe Williams, which spanned both the Civil War and the Indian Wars in the West.