The American Indian as Slaveholder and Seccessionist: An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern ConfederacyAbel, Annie Heloise
History
The American Indian as Slaveholder and Seccessionist: An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy
Abel, Annie Heloise
Indian Territory; Slavery -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
[7] Not all of the southern Indians had emigrated in the thirties and
forties. A considerable number of Cherokees removed themselves from the
country east of the Mississippi to Texas. This was immediately subsequent
to and induced by the American Revolution [Texas Historical Association,
_Quarterly_, July, 1897, 38-46 and October, 1903, 95-165]. Many Cherokees,
likewise, took the suggestion of President Jefferson and moved to the
Arkansas country prior to 1820. Moreover, there were "Eastern Cherokees"
in controversy with the "Western Cherokees" for many years after the Civil
War. Their endless quarrels over property proved the occasion of much
litigation. In the late fifties active measures were taken by the Office
of Indian Affairs to complete the removal of the Seminoles and to
accomplish by intrigue and diplomacy what the long and expensive Second
Seminole War had utterly failed to do. Elias Rector of Arkansas
superintended the matter and the Seminole chief, John Jumper, gave
valuable assistance, as did also the Creeks, who generously granted to the
Seminoles a home within the Creek country west [Creek Treaty, 1856,
Kappler's _Indian Laws and Treaties_, vol. ii, 757]. Billy Bowlegs was the
last Seminole chief of prominence to leave Florida [Coe's _Red Patriots_,
198]. In 1853 there were still some four hundred Choctaws reported as
living in Alabama and there must have been even more than that in
Mississippi. In 1854 steps were taken, but unsuccessfully, for their
removal. In 1859 Representative John J. McRae presented a petition from
citizens of various Mississippi counties asking that the Choctaws be
removed altogether from the state because of their intimacy and
intercourse with the negroes. The Office of Indian Affairs refused to act.
Perchance, it considered the moment inopportune or the means at hand
insufficient. It may even have considered the charge against the Choctaws
a mere pretext and quite unfounded since it was commonly reported that the
Choctaws had a decided aversion to that particular kind of race mixture.
In that respect they differed very considerably from the Creeks who to-day
are said to present a very curious spectacle of an almost complete
mixture. Choctaws from Mississippi and Cherokees from North Carolina and
Catawbas from South Carolina fought with the South in the Civil War.
[8] Other Indians made trouble during the progress of the Civil War, as,
for instance, the Sioux in the summer of 1862. The Sioux, however, were
not fighting for or against the issues of the white man's war. They were
simply taking advantage of a favorable occasion, when the United States
government was preoccupied, to avenge their own wrongs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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