The response of Virginia Indians to the American Civil War varied from tribe to tribe. Several Pamunkey men served the Union Army as gunboat pilots, not fighting directly as soldiers. These men were thrown off the rolls of the local Colosse Baptist Church for aiding the “enemy.” The Pamunkey chose to serve the North because they had been forced to repeatedly defend their remaining lands from encroachment by Virginia and by local landholders over time. One of these men, William Terrill Bradby, went on to become a Union spy and eventually served as an informant for noted anthropologist James Mooney. Other tribes responded differently. An 1896 article in a Richmond newspaper reported that men belonging to the Monacan community near Bear Mountain in Amherst had been “taken” to Petersburg during the recent war to work on fortifications there, presumably for the South, perhaps against their will. These varied responses are indicative of the nation’s Indian tribes as a whole, some of whom fought valiantly for the South, while others took the Northern side. Some tribes, such as the Cherokee, were directly involved.
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
