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Cherokee Chief Stand Watie
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Cherokee Chief Stand Watie exhibited
bravery and leadership while fighting for two lost causes. So who was Chief Watie? Was he infamous or famous? We will explore
the history of legendary Stand Watie and then you decide.
| Cherokee Chief Stand Watie |
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| (December 12, 1806 - September 9, 1871) |
By Jim Stebinger
Always a clear-thinking man, even on a day when kinsmen were murdered and
vengeful fellow Cherokees dogged his heels, Stand Watie knew that he had to maintain a straight
face and stay calm if he wanted to remain alive.
The son of an old friend had ridden from one of three murder scenes and brought
him a warning. The youth remained collected and spoke calmly with Watie, who was inside a small store he kept in northeastern
Indian Territory.
Knowing that enemies could be listening, the young man bargained loudly for sugar and softly told Watie what had happened
and where to find the horse called Comet standing bridled and ready. Deliberately, Watie left the store and rode off safely.
He would remain in jeopardy for almost six years.
The murders, which took place on the
morning of June 22, 1839, pushed Watie into the leadership of a small and unpopular Cherokee faction for the rest of his life.
The tribal majority blamed Watie and his faction for the removal of the Cherokees along what became known as the Trail of Tears. Watie's uncle, the prominent chief Major Ridge, Watie's cousin John Ridge and Watie's brother Elias Boudinot
(also known as Buck Watie) all died that day in the new Cherokee Nation in the West. Stand Watie faced few worse days in his
adventurous and violent life that saw him become a Confederate brigadier general. On the losing side twice in his life, he
had intimate familiarity with dashed hopes and lost causes.
| Daughters of Chief Stand Watie |
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| Daughters of Stand Watie, ca. 1870 |
The Cherokees, linguistic kinsmen of the Iroquois, numbered about 30,000 in 1605
and lived in what is now Georgia, Tennessee and western North Carolina. Smallpox and other diseases struck often in the 1700s. By 1800, the Cherokee
population was probably about 16,000. In the Georgia Compact of 1802, Georgia
gave up the land that became Alabama and Mississippi
with the understanding that the federal government would force the Cherokees west. The Cherokees refused, and Washington stalled. Most of the tribe decided that assimilation gave them the best hope
to stay in their homeland. Cherokees began to take on white ways, seeking education, material profit and cultural interchange.
Assimilation, though, didn't work as planned. Growing economic power on the part of the Cherokees enraged white Georgians,
who redoubled expulsion efforts.
To some natives the solution was obvious, and one-third of the tribe had moved west
of the Mississippi River by 1820. They were eventually pushed all the way to what would become
Oklahoma. The bulk of the tribe went to court, and the debate
over relocation simmered. Meanwhile, the tribe (which numbered about 14,000 in the Southeast in the mid-1820s) began to suffer
a debilitating internal split. Perhaps 20 percent of the Cherokee people successfully adapted to white lifestyles, some becoming
affluent Southern slave-owning planters.
Among the most prominent slave-owning Cherokee aristocrats were the Watie and Ridge
families. The faction of the tribe headed by the Ridges and Waties owned most of the estimated 1,600 slaves held by tribesmen.
Cherokee slave owners tended to work side by side with their chattels, children were born free, and intermarriage was not
forbidden. Only about 8 percent of tribal members (1 percent of full-blooded families) actually owned slaves. Because of the
influence of mission schools, many Cherokees were intensely anti-slavery. Poorer than the Ridge-Watie faction, the traditionalists
had neither the money nor the inclination to move West.
In 1827, the Cherokees created their first central government to better deal with
the white world. At a convention the next year, John Ross was elected principal chief--a post he held until his death in 1866. Ross, born in 1796 in Tennessee, was mostly Scottish, having only one-eighth Cherokee blood. But he was Cherokee
to the core and enormously popular.
His rivals turned out to be the sons of old-time full bloods. Major Ridge and his
brother, David Watie (or Oowatie), were descended from warrior chiefs. Both men married genteel white women and rose in society,
dressing and acting like planters. The family was close, and family members wrote more often and better than most whites of
the time. Some 2,000 family letters were found in 1919. Following Sequoyah's development of a syllabary in 1821, Cherokees took enthusiastically to reading and writing. When Stand Watie began writing
is not certain, but his only surviving letters date to the Civil War.
Stand Watie was born in Georgia,
probably in 1806; his early life is obscure. He was educated at a mission school, but less thoroughly than his brother Elias
Boudinot, who was born Buck Watie but took the name of a white benefactor. Elias became a newspaper editor, and Stand held
the job briefly during his brother's absence. Stand Watie married several times, losing a number of wives and children to
disease. The family did not record dates and details.
Watie's rivalry with John Ross, whose bywords were unity and opposition
to removal, slowly began to grow after 1832. Most of the Cherokees who had not moved West in the removal treaties of 1817
and 1819 continued to be against relocation, and Ross was their spokesman. The Ridge faction thought relocation to be in the
best interests of the people. Major Ridge, a full-blooded Cherokee, and his son John
Ridge felt that the educated and wealthy Cherokees could probably survive in Georgia but that the others would be led into drunkenness
and then cheated and oppressed. War would be the inevitable result. Each faction thought the other was corrupt. The Ridge-Watie
party allied itself with U.S. President Andrew Jackson and his supporters, and connived behind the backs of the Cherokee councilmen,
who usually opposed them.
The atmosphere became poisonous as rival Cherokee delegations went to
Washington, D.C., with different
plans, and President Jackson played both sides against each other--fostering allegations of bribe-taking. In 1835 the issue
came to a head. Ridge's faction helped draft a treaty that would require Cherokee removal west of the Mississippi in return for about $5 million. Ross and the council rejected the treaty, holding
out for $20 million and other terms; they would not move on Ridge-Watie terms. By October it was clear that most Cherokees
sided with Ross. It was also clear that the government would not pay $20 million.
Then, in December 1835, the Ridge-Watie party committed what amounted to suicide.
Major Ridge, John Ridge and the Watie brothers
were the only prominent Cherokees to sign the Treaty of New Echota, in Georgia,
on December 29. A free-blanket offer attracted some 300 to 500 people--probably 3 percent of the tribe--to the signing place.
Only about 80 to 100 people eligible to vote were present. Ross and the legitimate council were nowhere near. The treaty was
roundly denounced--even by such unlikely allies as Davy Crockett and Daniel Webster. Cherokees in the East had to leave the Southeast in return
for a payment of $15 million and 800,000 acres in Indian Territory (in what would become northeastern Oklahoma
and part of Kansas). The Cherokees were to be removed within
two years. The Ridge-Watie faction ("treaty party") thought the terms generous--that they had gotten a good price.
Whether or not the terms were generous, the treaty was a disgrace, as
it was opposed by some 90 percent of the tribe. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the treaty invalid, but President Jackson refused
to void it. The Martin van Buren administration did likewise. Ross and his "anti-treaty party" fought a losing court battle,
and they were not well-prepared for removal when it began. In 1837, only about 2,000 Cherokees went West; most of the others
held out, perhaps not believing they would be forced to leave their homeland.
The so-called Trail of Tears (the Cherokees called it Nunna daul Tsuny,
"Trail Where We Cried") came in 1838, when Federal troops and Georgia militia removed the holdout tribe members to Indian
Territory (about 1,000 avoided capture by hiding in the mountains). As many as 4,000 Cherokees may have died from
disease, hunger, cold and deliberate brutality by volunteer Georgia troops and regulars led by a reluctant General Winfield
Scott. The Ridge-Watie parties had been among the first to depart to the new country, arriving in 1837. They had gone in comfort
and had located themselves on choice Indian Territory land. Because most of the Cherokees
who followed suffered during the migration and after their arrival in the West, resentment against the Ridges and Waties grew.
Historians disagree about the level of brutality on the Trail of Tears,
but most historians agree the suffering and death continued in the West, mainly because of epidemic diseases. And historians
also agree that the treaty was invalid, the military high-handed, the preparations and logistics inefficient, and the intent
rapacious. The Cherokees certainly thought so, and feelings against the treaty party ran higher and higher. Ironically, Major
Ridge himself had helped write the death penalty into the Cherokee Constitution for those selling tribal land without authorization.
Many years earlier, he had killed a fellow chief named Doublehead who was convicted by the tribal council of such a land deal.
Clearly, Ridge knew the penalty.
More than 100 members of the anti-treaty party met at Double Springs
on June 21 and pronounced death sentences in secret--outside the council and without vested authority--purportedly to keep
John Ross from finding out about their plans. Either Ross had reached the end of his patience with his enemies--or he simply
could do nothing to stop the killings.
Death came early and with ritual touches for John Ridge at his Indian Territory home on Honey Creek,
near the northwest corner of Arkansas. About 30 killers
dragged him from his bed and into his front yard around dawn on June 22. They knifed him repeatedly before his distraught
family. Old Major Ridge, John's father, was ambushed a few hours later while riding past a small bluff on the road to Washington County, Ark. Rifle-toting
bushwhackers opened fire, hitting him five times. Boudinot, at about the same time, was going about his daily work, helping
a friend build a house near Park Hill, some miles from John Ridge's house. Three Cherokees approached him and told him they
needed to get medicine. Because Boudinot's tribal responsibilities included providing medicine, he followed, unsuspecting.
One of the men quickly dropped behind him and stabbed him in the back. Another axed him in the head.
Boudinot's brother, Stand Watie, was also apparently marked for death
that day. But Boudinot's cries on being stabbed were heard by friends. The youth who delivered the warning to Watie was probably
the son of the Reverend S.A. Worcester, a family friend. Watie's store was close to John
Ridge's home.
Because John Ross was proud of his ties to the average Cherokee and
was very popular among them, he was in a difficult position. He repudiated the murders, but he did not turn the killers in
and may actually have hidden some of them. He denied complicity and does not appear to have been directly involved. Former
President Jackson wrote to Watie and condemned "the outrageous and tyrannical conduct of John Ross and his self-created council....I
trust the President will not hesitate to employ all his rightfull [sic] power to protect you and your party from the tyranny
and murderous schemes of John Ross."
Jackson
didn't curb his habit of speaking from both sides of his mouth. He urged Watie to make peace but endorsed seeking vengeance
if Watie didn't get what he wanted. Watie formed a band of warriors, and Ross complained to Washington that he had to go armed among friends. The government ordered Watie to disband
his followers, to little avail.
Until 1846 the Cherokees were involved in a murderous internal feud.
As chief of his segment of the tribe, Watie authorized retaliation, and vengeance murders were common. Legend has encrusted
Watie's activities, giving him heroic courage and coolness and deadly fighting skills. His most documented exploit occurred
in an Arkansas grocery where he confronted James Foreman,
an alleged killer of Major Ridge. The two men had threatened each other frequently, but this day they bought each other a
drink. A challenge was quickly issued, and the drinks were hurled aside. Foreman had a big whip, which he used against Watie.
Watie stabbed Foreman when Foreman tried to hit him with a board. He then shot and killed the escaping Foreman. Watie successfully
argued self-defense at his trial.
The tribal situation was brutal. In one letter to Watie, a relative
recounted family news that included four treaty-related killings (and two scalpings), three hangings for previous killings
and two kidnappings. The letter said that intertribal murders were so common "the people care as little about hearing these
things as they would hear of the death of a common dog."
The Cherokees made internal peace in 1846--Watie and Ross reputedly
shaking hands--and sought to rebuild tribal prosperity in the West. Times were improving until the Civil War. Stand Watie
was a member of the Cherokee Tribal Council from 1845 to 1861. He declared his support for the Confederacy early on, but Ross
resisted at first. The Confederacy was successful in seeking alliances with Comanches, Seminoles, Osages, Chickasaws, Choctaws
and Creeks. Ross was finally forced into the Confederate alliance.
Watie raised a cavalry regiment and served the South with distinction and
enthusiasm. Another Cherokee regiment served under John Drew. In all, about 3,000 Cherokee men served the Confederacy during
the war. Watie was beloved by die-hard Confederates. Judge James M. Keyes of Pryor,
Okla., said: "I regard General Stand Watie as one of the bravest and most capable
men, and the foremost soldier ever produced by the North American Indians. He was wise in council and courageous in action."
Watie fought most of the war at the head of a band of very irregular
cavalry. He led with dash and imagination as they ambushed trains, steamships and Union cavalry. He also fought in one major
battle.
On March 7-8, 1862, Watie was part of Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van
Dorn's army of 16,000 men. They were in the region of Fayatteville, Ark., trying to encircle the right flank of Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis' 12,000-man army.
Curtis, who was on the defensive about 30 miles northeast of Fayatteville at Pea Ridge, discovered the plan and spoiled the
offensive. Van Dorn withdrew after two days of stubborn fighting, but Pea Ridge cemented Watie's reputation. He captured a
Union battery after a dramatic charge, and also proved skillful in withdrawal, helping to prevent a disaster. One of his soldiers
said: "I don't know how we did it but Watie gave the order, which he always led, and his men could follow him into the very
jaws of death. The Indian Rebel Yell was given and we fought like tigers three to one. It must have been that mysterious power
of Stand Watie that led us on to make the capture against such odds."
After the Battle of Pea Ridge, Drew's regiment deserted the Confederacy. Watie,
though, stuck to the Southern cause. Untrained as a soldier, he had good sense and cunning and was an effective guerrilla. "Stand Watie and his men, with the Confederate Creeks and others, scoured
the country at will, destroying or carrying off everything belonging to the loyal Cherokee," wrote 19th-century anthropologist
James Mooney. Watie was promoted to brigadier general on May 10, 1864, and on June 23, 1865, was the last Southern general
to capitulate. Watie returned to absolute devastation. (According to Mooney, the Cherokee population during the war was reduced
from 21,000 to 14,000.) Watie then fought some losing postwar battles. He was rebuffed in his bid for federal recognition
as Cherokee chief and was also rebuffed in efforts to rebuild his fortunes.
Watie's last years were careworn as his family dropped around him. All
his sons died before he died on September 9, 1871, and his two young daughters followed in 1873. But Confederate veterans
and sympathetic writers kept Watie's legend alive. He became the example of devotion to "the Cause." Even enemy Cherokees
came to respect his devotion to his beliefs, and "Stand" and "Watie" became common Cherokee first names.
Watie had displayed unfailing courage,
devotion, constant optimism and good humor--at least according to his friends. He never, they say, had a harsh word for his
family and never gave way to despair or dejection. In reality he was not a shining cavalier--his Indian troops sometimes reverted
to scalping and torture. He clearly was involved in shameful political skullduggery. But he was a man who fought hard for
his beliefs and stuck to his guns even when the odds were against him. He had supported two lost causes--the Ridges and then
the Confederacy--but he had never given up.
This article was written by Jim Stebinger and originally appeared in the October 1997 issue of Wild
West; Stand Watie photo National Archives; photo of Daughters is Image #16978 in the Stand Watie Collection.
Recommended
Reading: Rifles for Watie.
Description: This is a rich and sweeping novel-rich in its panorama
of history; in its details so clear that the reader never doubts for a moment that he is there; in its dozens of different
people, each one fully realized and wholly recognizable. It is a story of a lesser -- known part of the Civil War, the Western
campaign, a part different in its issues and its problems, and fought with a different savagery. Inexorably it moves to a
dramatic climax, evoking a brilliant picture of a war and the men of both sides who fought in it.
Recommended Reading: General
Stand Watie's Confederate Indians (University of Oklahoma Press). Description: American Indians were
courted by both the North and the South prior to that great and horrific conflict known as the American Civil War. This is
the story of the highest ranking Native American--Cherokee chief and Confederate general--Stand Watie, his Cherokee
Fighting Unit, the Cherokee, and the conflict in the West...
Recommended
Reading: Civil War in the Indian Territory,
by Steve Cottrell (Author), Andy Thomas (Illustrator). Review: From its beginning with the
bloody Battle of Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861, to its end in surrender on June 23, 1865, the Civil War in the Indian Territory proved to be a test of valor and endurance for both
sides. Author Steve Cottrell outlines the events that led up to the involvement of the Indian
Territory in the war, the role of the Native Americans who took part in the war, and the effect this
participation had on the war and this region in particular. As in the rest of the country, neighbor was pitted against neighbor,
with members of the same tribes often fighting against each other. Cottrell describes in detail the guerrilla warfare, the
surprise attacks, the all-out battles that spilled blood on the now peaceful state of Oklahoma. Continued below...
In addition, he introduces
the reader to the interesting and often colorful leaders of the military North and South, including the only American Indian
to attain a general's rank in the war, Gen. Stand Watie (member of the Cherokee Nation). With outstanding illustrations by
Andy Thomas, this story is a tribute to those who fought and a revealing portrait of the important role they played in this
era of our country's history. Meet The Author: A resident of Carthage, Missouri, Steve Cottrell is a descendant of a Sixth Kansas Cavalry member who served
in the Indian Territory
during the Civil War. A graduate of Missouri Southern State College in Joplin,
Cottrell has participated in several battle reenactments including the Academy Award winning motion picture, "Glory". Active
in Civil War battlefield preservation and historical monument projects and contributor of a number of Civil War relics to
regional museums, Cottrell recently co-authored Civil War in the Ozarks, also by Pelican. It is now in its second printing.
Recommended Reading: The Blue, the Gray, and the Red: Indian Campaigns of the Civil War
(Hardcover: 288 pages). Description: Inexperienced Union and Confederate
soldiers in the West waged numerous bloody campaigns against the Indians during the Civil War. Fighting with a distinct geographical
advantage, many tribes terrorized the territory from the Plains to the Pacific, as American pioneers moved west in greater
numbers. These noteworthy--and notorious--Indian campaigns featured a fascinating cast of colorful characters, and were set
against the wild, desolate, and untamed territories of the western United
States. This is the first book to explore Indian conflicts that took place during the Civil
War and documents both Union and Confederate encounters with hostile Indians blocking western
expansion. Continued below...
From
Publishers Weekly: Beginning with the flight
of the Creeks into Union territory pursued by Confederate forces (including many of Stand Watie's Cherokees), this popular
history recounts grim, bloody, lesser-known events of the Civil War. Hatch (Clashes
of the Cavalry) also describes the most incredible incidents.... Kit Carson, who fought Apaches and
Navajos under the iron-fisted Colonel Carleton, arranged the Long Walk of the Navajos that made him infamous in Navajo history
to this day. The North's "Captain" Woolsey, a volunteer soldier, became a brutal raider of the Apaches. General Sibley, a
northerner and first Governor of Minnesota, oversaw the response to the Sioux Uprising of 1862 that
left several hundred dead. The slaughter of Black Kettle's Cheyennes at Sand Creek in
1864 by Colorado volunteers under Colonel Chivington,
a militant abolitionist whose views on Indians were a great deal less charitable, “forms a devastating chapter.”
Hatch, a veteran of several books on the Indian Wars that focus on George Armstrong Custer, has added to this clear and even-handed
account a scholarly apparatus that adds considerably to its value.
Recommended
Reading: The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War
(Hardcover). Description: This book offers a broad overview of the war as it affected the Cherokees--a social history of a
people plunged into crisis. The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War shows how the Cherokee people, who had only just begun to
recover from the ordeal of removal, faced an equally devastating upheaval in the Civil War. Clarissa W. Confer illustrates
how the Cherokee Nation, with its sovereign status and distinct culture, had a wartime experience unlike that of any other
group of people--and suffered perhaps the greatest losses of land, population, and sovereignty. Continued below…
No one questions
the horrific impact of the Civil War on America,
but few realize its effect on American Indians. Residents of Indian Territory
found the war especially devastating. Their homeland was beset not only by regular army operations but also by guerrillas
and bushwhackers. Complicating the situation even further, Cherokee men fought for the Union
as well as the Confederacy and created their own "brothers' war." About the Author: Clarissa W. Confer is Assistant Professor
of History at California University of Pennsylvania.
Cherokee Chief Stand Watie History, Cherokee Nation Oklahoma Indian Territory, Major Ridge, Trail
of Tears Details and Facts, Indian Removal, Confederate Battle of Pea Ridge, Cherokee Braves Mounted Infantry Photo
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