Review of The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War

This powerful history details a little known part of the Civil War--how Native Americans in Indian Territory responded to the Civil War.

The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War by Clarissa W. Confer is a very tragic narrative beginning with how some Cherokee leaders had adopted a few of the worst social behaviors of European Americans in the early 1900's including enslavement of others, owning at least 4,000 Negro slaves. (Of course, even a few Negroes also owned Negro slaves in the Carolinas and Florida so this wasn't unique to a minority such as the Cherokee.)

A few of the Cherokee became rich despite racism and opposition by White Americans, but then the Cherokee were jettisoned from their lands and homes (along with other 'Civilized Tribes') by President Andrew Jackson and other American leaders.

The national mistreatment officially began with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which banished a number of tribes to Indian Territory so Whites could steal their lands, houses, and other things (including gold in Georgia), and forced the tribes onto the Trail of Tears.

The future state of Oklahoma became a dumping ground for unwanted peoples by the Americans, the state name even comes from a Choctaw leader who coined it, meaning “Red People”! Some of the Native Americans, after resisting for a while, eventually tried to appease the American government, thinking that was their only choice, and moved to Indian Territory soon.

But some of the Cherokee continued to resist. Even the resisters were forced out in 1838. Many Cherokee suffered disease, starvation and other horrors on their forced removal, about 3,000 dying on the way. The mostly Scottish John Ross (1/8th Cherokee, 7/8th's White), was one of the Cherokee Nation leaders who severely criticized the Cherokees who had quit resisting the U.S. Law. His 2nd wife was a Delaware Quaker lady, Mary Brian Stapler.

The compromising Cherokee voluntarily moved to Indian Territory earlier. Eventually, some pro-Ross forces murdered 3 of these Cherokee leaders; and Ross supporters justified the murders as following Cherokee Law, that of executing 'traitors.' No one was ever arrested for the murders.

Both pro-treaty and anti-treaty Cherokee owned slaves. John Ross continued to own slaves until one year before his death in 1866. One question is why did Ross continue to own slaves after he married a Delaware Quaker. Was Mary Brian Stapler only culturally a Friend, or wouldn't Ross listen to her abolitionist views?

In the midst of these controversies within the Cherokee Nation, the Civil War started. The Cherokee, including John Ross supported the Confederacy because of the many cases of abusive treatment by the U.S. Furthermore, the Confederate Government made big promises including representation in the Confederate Government!

However, the Confederate leaders failed to follow through on most of their promises. So then some Cherokee for various reasons decided to switch and support the Union. This led to civil war within the Cherokee Nation itself. Native American groups attacked other Native Americans, stole, destroyed property, and slaughtered each other. Pro-Union Cherokee civilians were attacked as they fled north by pro-Confederacy Cherokee.

Union and pro-Confederates burned homes in the Cherokee capital, etc. At least one Union army attacked and killed Native Americans after being told, basically, to kill them all, not take prisoners.

The whole book shows so vividly how evil war is, no matter what its justifications. Again throughout the U.S. and including Indian Territory, both sides violated most moral truths, all of the commandments of 10 Words of the Old Testament, especially slaughter and stealing.

The Cherokee Nation never recovered to its previous achievements, but at least slavery was banned after the end of the war.

Stand Watie (De-ga-ta-ga), the only Cherokee (3/4's Cherokee, 1/4 White), to become a general in the Civil War, continued to fight against the Union, even after Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 9, 1865. Brigadier General Watie kept fighting until June 23, 1865! He was also the only one of the 4 accommodating Cherokee leaders who escaped assassination by the pro-Ross faction of the Cherokee.

Watie served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1862 until 1866. (An intriguing historical footnote is that the U.S. Postal Service printed a stamp honoring Watie on June 29th, 1995, 130 years later.)

The compassionate views of Watie's wife, Sarah Caroline (Bell) show that despite the fog and horrors of the war that at least some recognized that war is contrary to compassion and spirituality. She wrote her husband "to be a good man as always" and to maintain a clear conscience before God and others. She was "particularly worried about the effect of wartime conduct on the young men in the armies."

When she heard that her son, Saladin and a nephew had killed a prisoner, she became very upset. "It almost runs me crazy to hear such things....tell my boys to always show mercy as they expect to find God merciful to them." "She worried that because of this early exposure to condoned killing, Saladin would never value human life as should."
page 131, The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War

Book Evaluation: B

For insights into how Quakers eventually became involved with Native Americans in the 19th century read "Quaker Indian Boarding Schools--Facing Our History and Ourselves" by Paula Palmer, October 2016 in the Friends Journal:

https://www.friendsjournal.org/quaker-indian-boarding-schools/


In the Light,
Dan Wilcox

ATTACKED! What Are You Going to Do?

How Are We Going to Respond to Attacks?

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- A Muslim Palestinian teenager, Muhammad Nasser Tarayra, was killed by a security guard on Thursday morning in an Israeli settlement in the southern occupied West Bank after carrying out a "martyr" attack--
repeatedly stabbing a 13-year-old Jewish girl, Hallel Yafa Ariel, in her own bedroom.
Shortly later, Hallel died from the murderous attack.
from http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=772054

Two months earlier, Muhammad's cousin, Yousef, was shot while committing a vehicular attack against Israeli soldiers.
Muhammad wrote on his Facebook page,
"Yousef is not the first martyr nor the last / and before he is my cousin he is a son of Palestine / God willing I will walk in the martyr’s footsteps / God have mercy on him and take him to heaven.”

After Muhammad's murder of the 13-year-old girl, his mother stated that she is "proud" of her son, and that her son is a "hero."
“My son died as a martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque..."

“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, he [my son] has joined the martyrs before him, and he is not better than them. Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine.
Allah be praised.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/mother-of-kiryat-arba-terrorist-my-son-is-a-hero/

A sister of the killer said, “My brother is now a martyr. May God judge the Jews, and may my brother be content with his portion in paradise.”
--

What Are You Going to Do?

How Are You Going to Respond?

Other True Real Life Events,
(from minor to serious to horrific):

#1 Property Damage/Vandalism: Your New Chevy Van Is Keyed on the Whole Left Side

#2 Verbal Threat:

#3 Assault and Battery: A 200-pound Girl Knocks a 100-pound Girl to the Floor and Beats on Her

#4 Bodily Harm: You Get a Very Bad Cut Across Your Forehead and Lose One of Your Eyes When 2 Thugs Attack and Rob You (This happened to the Brethren in Christ leader Donald Tippet. Read of how he responded at the bottom of this article.*)
http://www.bic-church.org/connect/publications/Shalom/previous/pdfs/Spring01.pdf

#5 Lethal Violence: U.S. Ally Attacks Others
(A Government or Group to Whom We’ve Given Intelligence and/or Monetary Assistance)

#6 Massive Wars: The Great War, The Seven Years War, etc.

#7 Invasions: The Mexican War, the Invasion of the Confederacy, Invasion of Vietnam by the U.S. and French, etc.

#8 First Strike War: U.S. Attack and Invasion of Iraq

#9 Individual Acts of Terrorism:
a. Palestinian Muslim Knife, Vehicle, and Shooting Attacks Against Many Jewish Civilians such as the murder of Hallel Yafa Ariel
b. Omar Mateen, Muslim American Security Guard, Shoots to Death 49 and Wounds 53 Same Sexual Individuals in the Pulse NightClub in Orlando, Florida

#10 Mass Slaughter/Terrorism in War:

#10A 9/11: Muslim Jihadists, originally supported by the U.S. Against the Russians Turn Against the U.S. and use planes to kill over 3,000 people

#10B U.S. Civil War: General Sherman's infamous March to the Sea, creating a 40-mile wide swath of destruction, vandalism, theft, and horror across Georgia, to terrorize the Confederacy into Surrendering;
the intentional abuse and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate prisoners of war by both sides


#10C Pearl Harbor: Japan's First Strike Attack on U.S. Naval Ships on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu--2,335 military personnel killed and 68 civilians

#10D Japan's War Slaughter of Chinese:
"Japan’s China war produced notable cases of atrocities that, then and later, captured world attention."

"They included the Nanjing Massacre, the bombings of Shanghai, Nanjing, Hankou, Chongqing and other cities, the enslavement of the comfort women, and the vivisection experiments and biowarfare bombs of Unit 731."

"Less noted then and since were the systematic barbarities perpetrated against resistant villagers, though this produced the largest number of the estimated ten to thirty million Chinese who lost their lives in the war,
a number that far surpasses the half million or more Japanese noncombatants who died at the hands of US bombing..."
http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html



#10E U.S. Counter War-Responses: Later Intentionally Firebombing 67 Japanese Cities Including Tokyo and Atomic Bombing Hiroshima/Nagasaki--killing at least 500,000 civilians, most burned to death.

In the firebombing of Tokyo alone, 100,000 died, and 1,000,000 were injured.
In contrast, at the start of WWII, President Roosevelt had warned European nations, “under no circumstances [to] undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities."

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey provided "a technical description of the firestorm and its effects on Tokyo:

"The chief characteristic of the conflagration . . . was the presence of a fire front, an extended wall of fire moving to leeward, preceded by a mass of pre-heated, turbid, burning vapors . . . . The 28-mile-per-hour wind, measured a mile from the fire, increased to an estimated 55 miles at the perimeter, and probably more within. An extended fire swept over 15 square miles in 6 hours . . . . The area of the fire was nearly 100 percent burned; no structure or its contents escaped damage."

“...probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man. People died from extreme heat, from oxygen deficiency, from carbon monoxide asphyxiation, from being trampled beneath the feet of stampeding crowds, and from drowning. The largest number of victims were the most vulnerable: women, children and the elderly.”


#10F



How do you think we ought to respond to attacks by others?

Here's the answer of only one man in response to a single attack:
*"Bishop Donald Tippet of New York City had a scar that ran across his forehead and he was
blind in one eye from two men who robbed and mugged him.

After his hospitalization, he decided to declare war on them. He went to the jail to visit them and told them God loved them and had a purpose for their lives, and he wasn’t going to leave
them alone until they discovered that purpose.

He visited them weekly, and finally led them both to Jesus Christ. He went to their parole hearings, and testified on behalf of the two men who had blinded him. Finally, he told them that when they got out of prison he would help them finish high school, and then he would help
them finish college if they chose to go.

One didn’t go to college, but the other did. He made outstanding grades, went to medical school, and became an opthamologist!

Donald Tippet won his war. He took back enemy territory. He would have added to the enemy’s victory if he had allowed vengeance and hatred to fester in his heart. Every time we join with Satan’s hatred, it enlarges his territory. Every time we add to his violence, it enlarges his territory.

We are called to take back enemy territory. This young man became a restorer of vision instead of a taker of vision.

He became a healer and friend; he was lost and now he is found...Donald Tippet declared war, and
assaulted those two men with love; he hurled forgiveness and grace at their hearts,
and he stabbed them with truth and compassion.

That’s how God fights wars. If you want to control somebody’s body, kill them, put them in shackles and in jail, but if you’re after somebody’s heart, the only weapons that work are the weapons of Jesus
Christ."
--Woody Dalton is senior pastor of the
Harrisburg (PA) Brethren in Christ Church.
Grantham BIC,March 4, 2001.
Shalom: A Journal for the Practice of Reconciliation,
Volume 21, Number 2; Spring 2001, page 5
http://www.bic-church.org/connect/publications/Shalom/previous/pdfs/Spring01.pdf
--


To be continued--


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox