AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE CIVIL WAR

Weakened by disease, wars and native disunity, the Indians had steadily retreated before the irresistible onrush of whitened settlers. In the North Tecumseh had failed to organize effective resistance during the state of war of 1812. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "half convinced and half compelled, they go to go new deserts, where the importunate whites will not let them dwell ten years in peace." By 1860, only 30,000 Indians were leftfield in the North east of the Mississippi, mostly in Michigan, innovative York and Wisconsin.

The first great surge of settlers into the Northwest Territories had been facilitated by the inwrought improvements, canals, roads and steamboats partially subsidized by the federal g everywherenment, and later on the 1840s by the building of the railroads. Another great surge followed the silver rush of 1849 in California where disease, starvation and white massacres had decreased the Indian population from about 100,000 in 1848 to 35,000 in 1860.

In the South, the Indian Relocation Act of 1830 which authorized the exchange of nonunionized public land in present day Oklahoma, therefore known as the Indian Territory, for Indian lands in the South, resulted in the wholesale relocation of 84,000 Indians of the Five Civilized Nations, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Choctaws and Seminoles over the 'Trail of Tears,' over which 20-25 perc

The see saw battle left the Indian Territory, according to Abel, "a devastated land, in mountainous areas, desolate." The Indian Nations became disillusioned with their Southern allies and sometimes deserted. Abel says "the partner service in Indian Territory was honeycombed with cunning and corruption. Wastrels, desperadoes, scamps of every sort luxuriated at Indian expense." She says that the harsh basis imposed by the North on the Indian Nation, which include the cancellation of previous treaties and the opening of their lands to settlement by Indians from the north and whites meant that "the Indians had do an alliance with the Southern Confederacy in vain.

" At the abrogate of the War, only 15,000 Cherokees were left, all destitute.

Thereafter, Indian troops were used generally as scouts and as guerrillas harassing coalition supply lines. In 1864, Watie pulled reach a coup by capturing intact a meat supply boat on the Arkansas River. The Confederate bm in the Trans-Mississippi was, however, bedeviled by supply problems, quarrels among the various Southern commanders and divisions among the Indians themselves. harmonize to Abel, in its dealings with the Indians, "the intentions of the Confederate government were one thing, its accomplishments another." She says "the Indians were woe from lack of forage, medicines, clothing, and food."

As Northern and Southern forces tussled for control of the Trans-Mississippi in 1862 and 1863, the tide of battle gradually shifted to the North, especially after the sicken of Honey Springs in July 1863 and of Vicksburg that same month. The Union forces in the Indian Territory and Arkansas included a Union Expedition which contained several Indian brigades recruited in 1862 among the Creeks, the Delaware and other tribes.

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