Virginia Indians played a variety of roles during the Civil War. What about tribes in other states? Statistics show that not quite 3,600 Native Americans served in the Union Army during the war. Perhaps the best known of their number was Brigadier General Ely Parker (Seneca), who served as an aide to Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant and was present at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. Statistics for the Confederacy are less reliable, but more than 15,000 uniformed Indians fought for the South, mostly in the West. The only other Indian to rise to the rank of brigadier general during the war, Principal Chief Stand Watie (Cherokee), was the last Confederate general to surrender his arms, two months after Lee’s surrender. Watie had earlier been a signer of the treaty that agreed to the removal of the Cherokee from their home in Georgia to what was then the Oklahoma territory; this split the tribe into factions and culminated in 1838 in the infamous removal known today as the “Trail of Tears.”
Further Reading:
Laurence M. Hauptman, Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War (1996)
This Vignette Provided By
Karenne Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
