One of those killed was Watie’s brother Elias Boudinot (who had adopted the name of a New Jersey statesman and Indian rights advocate). Many Cherokees, especially those who lost friends and relatives on the thousand-mile Trail of Tears during the brutally cold winter of 1838-39, never forgave Watie and his cohorts, three of whom were murdered by Ross supporters. Watie, by contrast, regarded most Cherokees as poorly informed on the issue and felt justified in acting in what he interpreted as the people’s best interest, even if it was contrary to popular will. In return, the Cherokees would be moved west of the Mississippi River and settled with the other tribes displaced from the Southeast - the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole.Ĭherokee principal chief John Ross, duly elected by the National Council under the tribe’s constitution of 1827, represented the vast majority of Cherokees, who opposed removal. Watie, who was born in Georgia, was part of a small, unauthorized group of Cherokees who negotiated the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that ceded the Cherokee homeland in Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee to the United States for a promised payment of $5 million. The latter began more than three decades earlier. Watie had been fighting two civil wars - one against the United States and another against fellow Cherokees. Stand Watie, commander of the 1st Indian Brigade of the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in what is now Oklahoma. The man who surrendered there, on June 23, had never been an American citizen. But the war’s real end came months later, an unheralded event outside any state borders, in Indian Territory. For many Americans, Appomattox marks the end of the Civil War, and Parker represents the involvement of Native Americans in it. It’s a storybook ending to four nightmarish years, emphasizing Lee’s grace in defeat and Grant’s compassion in victory as the nation turned toward the task of rebuilding. Ely Parker, Grant’s military secretary and a Seneca Indian, recalled that Lee shook his hand and said, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Stand Watie's War: The Last Confederate General Close
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