Native Americans in the US Civil War

For a majority of Americans, the American Civil War was a war to end slavery in the South. The nuances of the debate over a state’s right to secede or the degree of control by the federal government, indeed most issues related to the United States Constitution, are ignored in favor of a narrow, easy to understand idea. Yet within the indigenous nations of North America a separate Civil War was raging. The motivations for Indians were often similar to white Americans, but also included past grievances against the United States that were unique to Native Americans. Unlike the states that seceded from the Union, the American Indians who enlisted, either as part of their tribes’ support for a side or as individuals, considered themselves as sovereign people with the power to decide their own fate. However, the choices made by the leaders of the Indian nations gave further impetus to the white war on Native Americans.

The motivations for choosing a particular side in the Civil War compared favorably to white motivations, but were dissimilar in a number of respects. For the Cherokee, the plight of the South bore more than a passing similarity to the centuries of strife Native Americans faced from Europeans. In declaring themselves independent from the United States, the leaders of the Cherokee nation declared that

Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers…[1]

Aside from the references to Maryland and Missouri, this declaration seemed more a reiteration of wrongs committed against Indians than an enumeration of Union injustices against the South. Further, a core issue raised by the Cherokee in their declaration of independence was the “fate befallen those of their race in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon…” which was very much a separate issue than the issue of slavery or states’ rights. The Cherokee, then, found common cause with other Indians as well as with the Confederacy.

The Cherokee declaration of independence from the United States did not come immediately with the secession of the South. A principal signer of the Declaration of Causes, John Ross, was a conditional Unionist. While other members of the Cherokee leadership, most notably among them the future Confederate general Stand Watie, urged Ross to accept an alliance with the Confederate States, negotiated by Confederate agent Albert Pike, Ross urged his people to forego any alliance with the Confederacy and adhere to a policy of strict neutrality.[2]

Other Indian nations, such as the Chippewa, were actively pursuing support for the Union. Hole-in-the-Day, a prominent Chippewa chief in Minnesota, volunteered a hundred of his warriors for the war against the Confederacy on May 1, 1861, but was dismissed out-of-hand a week later by Secretary of War Simon Cameron with the statement that the secession of states “forbids the use of savages.”[3] H.B. Branch, of the Central Superintendency, explained his opposition to the enlistment of Native Americans by stating, “The Indians…must follow the chase, and they cannot engage in war and also pursue the hunt, while civilization and humanity demand that they confine themselves to peaceful avocations…”[4] The imperial paternalism expressed, by viewing Indians as outside “civilization and humanity”, was a further contrast to the South’s willingness to accept Indians as a slaveholding class within its society.

For Native Americans who lived in Border States, such as Arkansas and in Indian Territory, the choice between the Union and the Confederacy was a choice similar to whites. However, for American Indians living on reservations far to the north of significant sectional conflict, the alliances formed between the CSA and Indian nations had profound repercussions on a people already willing to submit to US authority. A cartoon published in Harper’s Weekly during the war illustrates Northerners’ disregard for distinctions in Native American relations. In Figure 1, Indians attack two white settler families. The native men are shown with knives raised above the family in the foreground, with one native holding an infant by the foot and preparing to kill the baby while the baby’s mother begs for mercy for her child. The woman is being pulled backward by the hair, an Indian standing with arm raised in preparation to scalp her. A man, possibly her husband, lies on the ground beside the woman. Another man is shown knifed by an Indian. A jug of whiskey lies at the feet of the third Indian with the words “agent C.S.A.” on the jug. The caption of the cartoon is a quote from Confederate president Jefferson Davis with an explanatory comment

“I am happy to inform you that, in spite both of blandishments and threats, used in profusion by the agents of the government of the United States, the Indian nations within the confederacy have remained firm in their loyalty and steadfast in the observance of their treaty engagements with this government.” The above extract from Jeff Davis’ last message will serve to explain the news from Minnesota. [5]

The situation in Minnesota in 1862, however, was only marginally related to the War Between the States. Rather than being encouraged by Confederate agents, the Sioux in Minnesota were fighting for their treaty rights and for survival. In 1851, the Santee Sioux, now known as the Dakota, ceded 24 million acres to the US government, which immediately opened the land to settlers. The Santee then were forced to cede control of an additional 1 million acres, reducing their reservation by half. Congress only paid 30 cents per acre two years later, less than the average price for prime farmland. 

Simultaneously, the US government was attempting to force American Indians to turn to farming. White traders fronted the Indian farmer’s credit on supplies and then, when the tribe was paid annuities, claimed inflated charges, leaving the native farmers with little or no money. Finally, in the winter of 1861-1862, a major crop failure left the Santee near starvation. Ultimately, the last straw came when the white traders refused to provide credit for food during the winter and spring, because Congress, engaged in funding a war with secessionist states, had not yet appropriated money for the Sioux. When the money did come, $71,000 in gold, it was two months late. On September 5, 1862, the Santee Sioux revolted, attacking the traders and white settlers who cheated them.[6]

The caption of Figure 1, then, becomes a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc. The Sioux in Minnesota rose against white authority, therefore, the fallacy states, the violence in the northern plains must be a result of Confederate incitement. Unfortunately, the split among Americans during the Civil War was not limited to Euro-Americans, but also to Native Americans. When war erupted between the states, the fourteen thousand Creeks in Indian Territory split roughly evenly along social and cultural lines. The Southern faction was comprised predominantly of educated, mixed-heritage slave-owners who were offered favorable treaties with the Confederacy. The Southern faction of the Creeks signed an alliance in 1861 and began raising troops for service in Indian Territory, Arkansas, and Missouri; the Northern Creeks, less formally educated and non-slaveholders, continued to support the Union.

One of the most ardent supporters among the northern Creeks was Opothleyoholo, who had led three thousand of his people into Kansas late in 1861. He considered Chief Ross “a man lying on his belly, watching for the opportunity to turn over.”[7] Opothleyoholo’s men were the nucleus of the First, Second, and Third Home Guards of Kansas. He best states the cultural split that occurred when he said, “The educated part of our tribes is the worst.”[8] It would ultimately be his fierce resistance against Confederate forces that would encourage the Union to accept the mass enlistment of Native Americans.

The Civil War rent asunder American society. Not only did white Americans face the agony of families divided, but Native Americans faced a more uncertain future if they chose the wrong side. The view that the Minnesota Sioux strife was connected to the Civil War only further muddied the politics surrounding Indian policy. While chiefs like Hole-in-the-Day and Opothleyoholo were as supportive of the United States as any white citizen, their ethnicity set them apart as unworthy, initially, to be Union soldiers. The Confederacy, ironically, had little issue with the formation of native units and the enlistment of Native Americans. The Civil War fought by Native Americans, then, was a war unto themselves.

Figure 1

Bibliography

Freeman, Charles. “The Battle of Honey Springs.” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 1935, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v013/v013p154.html

Kachuba, John B. “Sioux Terror on the Prairie.” America’s Civil War vol. 10, no 1 (1997):30

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1900, Series 3, Vol. 1, pg 184, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ANU4519-0122

 “The Cherokee Nation Declaration of Causes.” October 28, 1861, http://www.civilwar.com/cherokeecauses.htm

Seccia, Patrick T. “An Officer and an Indian.” Civil War Times, vol. 45. no. 7 (2006): 46-52

Trickett, Dean. “The Civil War in the Indian Territory, 1862”, Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol, 19, No. 1, March 1941, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v019/v019p055.html

unknown artist, Harper’s Weekly. September 13, 1862, http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=September&Date=13

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[1] “The Cherokee Nation Declaration of Causes,” October 28, 1861, http://www.civilwar.com/cherokeecauses.htm

[2] Charles Freeman, “The Battle of Honey Springs,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 1935, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v013/v013p154.html

[3] Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1900), Series 3, Vol. 1, pg 184, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ANU4519-0122

[4] Dean Trickett, “The Civil War in the Indian Territory, 1862”, Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol, 19, No. 1, March 1941, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v019/v019p055.html

[5] cartoon, Harper’s Weekly, September 13, 1862, http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=September&Date=13

[6] John B. Kachuba. “Sioux Terror on the Prairie.” America’s Civil War vol. 10, no 1 (1997):30

[7] Trickett, “The Civil War in Indian Territory 1862”, 64

[8] Ibid

A Mendocino Immigrant: Antone Carvalho

On November twenty-second, 1896, thirty-two-year-old woodsman Antone Raposo Carvalho was a man ascendant. Not three years prior, the native of Sao Miguel, Azores, had been a subject of King Luis I of Portugal. Now he stood in the Fort Bragg Catholic Church before his, and seventeen-year-old Maria Pacheco’s, friends and family as a citizen of the United States. Antone’s Certificate of Naturalization, dated January 8, 1894, states that he was a resident of the United States for at least five years. In fact, Antone immigrated to the US eleven years previously in 1883 at the age of 19. At this time, the Azores Islands were in the middle of a century of unrest and violence, bracketed at one end by bloody civil war in the 1830s and at the other end of the century with revolutions in the early 1900s. From this turmoil, Antone Carvalho fled, leaving behind everything he knew and taking only his trade as a woodsman, to build a new life half-way around the world. In contrast to the turmoil of the Azores, confined as it was to small geography, the labor strikes and riots that occurred in the sprawling United States during the 1890s must have seemed far away from Mendocino and tame.

Mendocino was a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city for much of its existence. Mendocino’ story is less the story of Euro-Americans than it is the story of cultural amalgamation. The coast was settled by immigrants from Portugal and the Azores, Sweden, Finland, Latin America, as well as Americans from other parts of the country. Mill and logging crews were littered with people with last names like Paoli, Gomes, and Silvia as well as  Kontag,  Klienschmidt, and Olsen. Other men were known to their peers by such colorful pseudonyms as Old Man MacDonald and Little River Smith. Other higher profile individuals in the Mendocino coast community were likewise either immigrants or first generation Americans. William Heeser was an immigrant from Germany who was invited into the homes of most coastal residents by way of his newspapers, The Fort Bragg Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon. Heeser also started newspapers in Kibbesillah, Westport, and Rockport.

Antone Carvalho resided on the Mendocino coast for fifty years. In 1903, he purchased his first family home in Mendocino at 44460 Little Lake Road. In 1921, Carvalho purchased and moved his family to the Blair House, which remained with the family until the 1940s. In Antone Carvalho’s fifty years on the Mendocino Coast, he witnessed nine children born and grown to adulthood. When he died in 1933, Antone was missed as a well-liked and well-respected member of the coastal community. Antone’s Certificate of Naturalization and marriage certificate to Maria Pacheco, in addition to other artifacts such as Antone’s workman’s pocket watch, are maintained by the Kelley House; images of these and other items can be viewed at the Kelley House’s website, www.mendocinohistory.org.

A View on the Treaty of Versailles

In the years leading up to World War Two, Germany was ostracized by the international community for its significant role in World War One. This ostracism was more than a popular misconception of German motivations during the Great War. In the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One (WWI), Germany was held accountable for everything that had happened in the years other countries were fighting Germany, paving the way for general anti-German sentiment abroad. Domestically, the Treaty of Versailles was viewed with opprobrium by policy makers and big business. Germans were humiliated by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and resented the loss of territory as well as the onerous reparations required by the treaty.

On June 28, 1919, Germany accepted the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles as a defeated belligerent nation. The United States, Great Britain, and France stripped Germany of many of a nation-state’s accepted arsenal of economic and military tools. German possessions won from the Turkish Empire were granted provisional recognition of independence. The provision required a foreign “Mandatory” such as France or Great Britain to oversee administration of internal policy “…until such time as they are able to stand alone.”[1] Similarly, the territories of Alsace and Lorraine were restored to France as they were in 1871, with the treaty noting “…the wrong done by Germany…both to the rights of France and to the wishes of the population of Alsace and Lorraine…” Certainly, there would be a grudge felt by Germans at having territory they possessed for forty years taken away.[2]

The grudge was further strengthened by Germany’s agreement to pay reparations. Part of the territory lost by Germany was the coal-mining region of the Saar Basin; the mining region was transferred to France and was to be considered part of Germany’s reparations.[3] Though the Treaty of Versailles recognized that “…the resources of Germany are not adequate…to make complete reparation for all such loss and damage…” the treaty nonetheless required that Germany would “…make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population…during the period of the belligerency…against Germany.” If Germany was held accountable for “all damage done to the civilian population” during the entire span of time it engaged in hostile military actions, then social and environmental issues only marginally related to the war became the fault of Germany and Germans.

The Allies further declared that “…Germany accepts the responsibility…for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.” Germany was essentially blamed for everything that happened during the war. And though World War I was begun by a Serbian assassinating the Austrian heir in Bosnia, Germany was blamed for everything that occurred during the Great War. Such a stark declaration within an international treaty bred bitterness within German hearts.[4]

Also a source of bitterness was the threadbare state in which the German state was left by the Versailles treaty. The Allied powers stripped Germany of its offensive and most of its defensive capabilities. For example, the German Army was limited to seven divisions of infantry and three divisions of cavalry with the total fighting force not to exceed 100,000 men, including four thousand officers. The Army was “…devoted exclusively to the maintenance of order within the territory and to the control of the frontiers…”[5]  Defensively, Germany was could not fortify the banks of the Rhine river, its common border with France, nor build fortifications within fifty kilometers of the Rhine. Germany, under the Treaty of Versailles, was to be considered the global equivalent of a toothless lion.[6]

There can be no doubt that the German political and social environment was primed with bitterness, anger, and resentment toward the Treaty of Versailles and the disposition of German defeat in 1918. From the losses of territory, to the laying blame for the war on Germany, and finally to the severe limitations on German military forces, Germans were ready to strike out against what they perceived as unfair international restrictions and prejudicial ostracism.

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[1] Article 22. The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)

[2] The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)

[3] Article 45. The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)

[4] Articles 231 and 232. The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)

[5] Article 160. The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)

[6] Article 42. The Treaty of Versailles and After: Annotations of the Text of the Treaty (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944)