Indians enlisting in the Union Army often lacked equipment or modern weapons. In 1862, upon joining they were issued a Hardee hat, a four-button sack coat, a rifle, and a cartridge box in which to store ammunition, and the tools for the weapon. Initially they fought in civilian trousers and shirts, and scrounged their own haversack and knapsack. They rode to war on their own mounts – generally a pony or a mustang – and brought their own saddle and tack.
The Union Indians were generally those following the traditional Indian ways, which showed in their dress. They preferred wearing moccasins to shoes or boots, and added feathers to their Hardee hats. Some, especially Creek and Seminole Indians, went into battle wearing war paint, although as the war continued war paint appeared less.
This soldier belongs to the 1st Indian Home Guard Regiment and is armed with the 1817 model rifled musket. Additional weapons and rifles issued to the other regiments are shown in the margin of the plate: 1. Prussian rifle; 2. Mississippi rifle; 3. tomahawk; 4. side knives; 5. .36 cal. 1851 Navy Colt revolver.
Tools for the 1817 rifle are shown at the foot of plate A: 6. ladle for holding molten lead; 7. powder flask; 8. bullet mold; 9. cartridge box; 10. lead for bullets; 11. pricker.
Wiley Britton, who fought alongside the Union Indian Brigade, described them: “Care was not taken to see to it that the clothing issued to the Indian soldiers fitted properly … giving the Indian soldier a comical appearance mounted on their ponies with badly fitted clothing and wearing ‘Hancock’ [Hardee] hats, with their long black hair falling over their shoulders and legs astride their mounts coming down to the ground. But the comical appearance did not prevent them from shooting straight when skirmishing with the foe.”
The Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi region was total war. Stealing supplies from civilian supporters of the other side was a common occurrence in the Indian Territory and the surrounding states, both Union and Confederate. (Potter Collection)
This plate illustrates the different approaches to recruiting for the Confederacy and Union.
Confederate regiments (top) were raised by Indian nations. The tribal government issued a call for its citizens to report to a government building, such as an Agency building, a schoolhouse, a church, or in this case the Chickasaw Council House, where the Chickasaw legislature met. It was a scene similar to those seen throughout the United States, both North and South. A local Indian politician or possibly a member of the tribal police – “the light horse,” as they were termed – would exhort the citizens to join. Then, those willing, often young men looking for adventure, or middleaged planters worried about the effects of abolition on their property, enrolled in one of the companies of the regiment. Men brought their own weapons, if they had them. Joining without arms often meant a long wait in a barracks until an issue weapon trickled in from Texas or Arkansas.
The first obstacle that pro-Union Indians faced (below) was being permitted to fight. The North resisted organizing Indian units – especially among refugees from the Indian Territory – until the spring of 1862. (Indians from Kansas were allowed to join Kansas state cavalry regiments, especially those short of men.) When Washington finally consented, the first two regiments were organized from the remnants of Opothleyohola’s loyalist band. This included slaves that had run away from Indian masters. These Indians had lost most of their possessions when the Confederates drove them out of the territory in December 1861. They survived a winter of neglect by the Federal government, which issued condemned tents, old blankets, and rotten food to the refugees. Necessity encouraged many to join the Union Army, as they were reduced to rags, if that. The opportunity to reclaim by arms the lands they had lost to their Confederate cousins also prompted them to enlist.
One of the most daring exploits of the Civil War was the seizure of the steamboat J.R.Williams by a force of Confederate Indians led by the redoubtable Stand Watie. The steamboat was headed to Fort Gibson with 500 barrels of flour, 16,000lb of bacon, 20 sacks of coffee, 15 barrels of brown sugar, and fresh uniforms for the garrison. Watie successfully trapped the boat with an artillery ambush at a bend in the river. The guard aboard the J.R.Williams panicked, and the pilot ran the ship aground on the southern side of the river, where Watie’s men swarmed aboard.
Except for denying the Union the supplies, the Confederate Army failed to capitalize on their windfall. In Stand Watie’s words this prize “was very acceptable to the boys, but has turned out to be a disadvantage to the command, as the greater portions of the Creeks and Seminoles immediately broke off to carry their booty home.” Possibly a similar percentage of Cherokees also left, but Watie – a Cherokee – said nothing about them. Left with only a few men, he burned the J.R.Williams, and destroyed most of the supplies when the Union’s 2nd Indian Home Guard Regiment attempted to recapture the steamboat.
For individual soldiers of Watie’s force, the ship yielded a bounty for them and their families. This plate shows how they loaded their mounts with all the food they could carry. While the officers were preoccupied, some groups also took the initiative to examine the captured stores privately, and to “acquire” clothing and equipment needed to complete their outfit. Confederate Indian Regiments lacked “standard” issues but the man on the right now has a typical outfit:
• Socks
• Drawers
• Canteen
• Cartridge box
• Two coats
• Shoes
• Washcloth and towel
• Hat
• Knapsack
• Shirts
• Personal possessions – a razor, a Bible, a small mirror, a picture of his sweetheart.
Chustenahalan underscored the biggest weakness of the traditionalist Indians who remained loyal to the North. Their army was unorganized, with Indians and runaway slaves united only by an unwillingness to fight the United States. They needed firearms to exist, but could not produce the gunpowder these weapons used. Earlier battles at Round Mountain and Chusto-talasah (Bird Creek) almost exhausted their original supplies. The Confederate Indians fell back on their depots and got more, but the Union loyalists lacked sources for resupply.
The locks of two rifles assembled at the Tyler Armory in Tyler, Texas. The majority of arms used by Confederate Indians that were issued rather than brought from home were “Texas” rifles. (Smith County Historical Society)
Before the battle the loyalists pooled what gunpowder they had and gave it to their best marksmen. Except for this handful, the force was reduced to knives, axes, and clubs. The Confederate Indians, armed with rifles and ample ammunition quickly scattered the Union forces, who broke into small groups in an attempt to evade the pursuing Confederates.
It became a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Groups of a dozen mounted Confederates – mixed groups of Southern Indians and Texas cavalry – hunted through the countryside seeking pairs and trios of Northern Indians, who were typically on foot. If caught, all the Northern warriors could do was sell their lives as dearly as possible. The escaping Northern Indians relied on concealment, rather than combat to survive.
This plate shows one incident. Two loyal sharpshooters – Creeks skilled with firearms – and a runaway slave armed with a two-handed axe, are watching the progress of a Confederate search party across the creek from their position.
Indians on both sides wore war paint in this battle. The solely black war paint shows that the Creek believes he is fighting for survival. Neither side had uniforms. The Confederates tied a white or red string around their right upper arms for identification. Both wore the kind of clothing they would normally wear for work outdoors in cold weather. The loyalists, however, lacked adequate clothing, having lost their baggage.
Getting a horse shod was not a glamorous aspect of military life, but was critical to a horse’s endurance and its rider’s well-being. The military posts in the Indian Territory provided a place where such mundane but necessary tasks could be done. Two of the most important buildings in Fort Gibson were its bakery and blacksmith shop. The bakery fed both the garrison and the Indian civilian refugees that camped around the post. The blacksmith shop kept metal equipment – from wagon hardware to horseshoes – in fighting condition.
The Union Indian regiments enrolled as infantry, but fought mounted when possible. The mounts were the property of the riders and generally the Indians of the region rode plains ponies or mustangs. Brightly colored pinto, paints, and appaloosa horses which were short and tough were favored by the Creeks, Seminoles, and Osage who made up much of the 1st Regiment.
The Indians brought their own tack with them, too. Much of their equipment, like the saddle in the foreground, was made by the owner, in this case, of rawhide and wood. The corporal holding his newly shod horse (left) has acquired an army-issue saddle blanket.
The farrier shoeing the horses is a white soldier, part of Fort Gibson’s garrison. While the local blacksmith and farrier in a Cherokee or Creek town would be an Indian, typically a mixed-blood, when these tradesmen joined the Union Army they were usually assigned to a line company as riflemen.
The private waiting to get his horse shod (center) is a member of the Kee-too-wah, an abolitionist society formed by full-blooded Cherokees. Members wore a corn shuck on their chest or in their hair, or – as in this case – placed a pair of crossed pins on the collar of their coat.
After their defeat at Honey Springs, Confederate forces were reduced to the role of guerrillas and raiders. The Confederate Indians proved adept at both. On September 16, 1864, Confederate forces including the Indian Brigade commanded by Stand Watie, surprised a hay party sent out from Fort Gibson, and escorted by two companies of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry and one company of the 79th US Colored Troops (formerly the 1st Kansas Infantry (Colored)). Unfortunately, the black troops were also expected to help harvest hay – which put the main defense of the party in the hands of the 80 men of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry. The party was scattered over a three-square-mile area of prairie near the Grand Timber River, 15 miles west of Fort Gibson. The terrain was flat, and cut by shallow pools that ranged from a few yards to 50 yards long and about 2 feet deep.
Finding sufficient fodder was always a challenge. It required both Union and Confederate armies to send out hay-gathering parties, which were vulnerable to ambush. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
The Confederate force probably numbered 1,200, and they swept across the plain like a scythe. The Kansas Cavalry dismounted and attempted to fight on foot (they were armed with repeating breechloaders) but failed to hold their ground. The commander finally ordered his men to mount and charge the weakest point of the Confederate line. Of the 65 troopers that attempted the charge, only 15 broke through. The rest were killed or captured.
The black troops, from whom no surrender was accepted, fought until overwhelmed. They used the lagoons as strongpoints, and held the Confederates for two hours, until they ran out of ammunition. Forty were butchered as they attempted to flee. Ten escaped, either hiding in the tall grass, or by hiding themselves in the lagoons. The Confederates burned the hay and smashed the harvesting machines.
This plate shows the onset of the attack, with the Confederate line charging down on the unprepared harvesters.
The Civil War left the Indian Territory in ruins. At the end of the war, perhaps one-sixth of its inhabitants were dead; one-third of the wives were widows; one-sixth of the children were orphans with no parents, and almost as many were fatherless. Almost every barn, house, store, and public building in the Indian Territory had been burned down. The only exceptions were places like the Armstrong Academy that had been used as military strongpoints.
Additionally, the nations were bankrupt. The public treasuries had been spent on the war. Monies owed the Tribes for their Eastern lands by the federal government were forfeit. Since the Indian Nations had formally declared war on the United States, peace could only be concluded with formal treaties – treaties in which the Indian Nations forfeited much of their sovereignty, surrendered claims to land, and accepted the relocation of new tribes into the Territory.
Most Indians had homes that were less grand than the multistory mansions of Park Hill. The average Cherokee lived in “dog trots” or log cabins such as the one pictured here. Built prior to the Civil War, it was still being used as a home in 1936, when it was photographed by the Historical Architecture and Buildings Survey. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
What was left? Rebuilding. Some, like the Union veteran and Confederate veteran in this plate, were able to put their differences behind them and work together. Others confined their future disputes to the political arena. Still others carried grudges into peacetime, especially among the Creeks and Seminoles. The Delaware relocated from the Washita Agency to the northern part of the Cherokee Nation, where the Kansas branch of the tribe joined them.
For most, the immediate problem was getting a roof over their heads – something more substantial than a lean-to made from a dog-tent, which these former enemies are sharing. Fortunately, the eastern half of the Indian Territory still had plenty of timber after the Civil War. From that you could make the type of log cottage that these cousins are assembling in the plate. The gaps between the logs were filled with mortar or clay, yielding a building that stayed warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Men such as the sergeant in this plate, formed the rigid backbone that kept the Southern Indians fighting. His equipment was inferior to that of his Union Indian counterpart, except for those pieces that he raided from Northern supply trains or scavenged off the battlefield. By 1864 at least part of what he wore originally came from a Union commissary; the red stripes of this man’s trousers show that they were intended for use by a Union artilleryman. The rest of his clothing is civilian, the remains of what he had when he enlisted, although a wife or a fiancée probably added the sergeant’s stripes on the civilian jacket.
His main weapon was most likely a sawn-off shotgun (3). The barrel has been shortened to allow it to be more easily used while mounted, and the weapon probably came from his farm. Other weapons commonly used by these troops included the Texas rifle (1) and hunting rifles such as this Kentucky rifle (2). He is also armed with a pair of Colt Navy revolvers (5 and 6) – probably collected on the battlefield – and the ubiquitous Bowie, or side-knife, carried by most Confederates, white or Indian (4).
His mount is a Chickasaw, a breed developed by the Chickasaw Indians from horses captured from the Spanish in the 1500s. The breed is extremely hardy, and capable of great bursts of speed over short distances, making it an ideal raider’s mount in broken country.
The flag is the banner of the Cherokee 1st Mounted Rifles. This unit started as a volunteer Confederate force raised by Stand Watie in 1861 and was redesignated after the original Cherokee 1st Mounted Rifles (Drew’s Rifles) deserted to the Union in 1862. The banner uses the 1861 Confederate flag as a template with a cross of five red stars inside the circle of white stars. The white stars represented the states of the Confederacy while the red stars symbolized the Five Civilized Nations that allied themselves with the South.
The battle flag of the 1st Cherokee Volunteers as it appears today. (Cherokee Heritage Center)