Native Americans in The American Civil War

Native Americans in the American Civil War composed various Native American bands, tribes, and nations. Native Americans served in both the Union and Confederate military during the American Civil War. At the outbreak of the war, for example, the minority party of the Cherokees gave its allegiance to the Confederacy, while originally the majority party went for the North. Native Americans fought knowing they might jeopardize their freedom, unique cultures, and ancestral lands if they ended up on the losing side of the Civil War. 28,693 Native Americans served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, participating in battles such as Pea Ridge, Second Manassas, Antietam, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in Federal assaults on Petersburg. A few Native American tribes, such as the Creek and the Choctaw, were slaveholders and found a political and economic commonality with the Confederacy. The Choctaw owned nearly 6000 slaves.

Read more about Native Americans In The American Civil War:  Overview of The War, Problems in The Midwest and West, Native Americans in The Confederate Army, Tribes Involved in Battles, See Also

Famous quotes containing the words native, americans, american, civil and/or war:

    The remnant of Indians thereabout—all but exterminated in their recent and final war with regular white troops, a war waged by the Red Men for their native soil and natural rights—had been coerced into the occupancy of wilds not far beyond the Mississippi.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    Slowly, and in spite of anything we Americans do or do not do, it looks a little as if you and some other good people are going to have to answer the old question of whether you want to keep your country unshackled by taking even more definite steps to do so—even firing shots—or, on the other hand, submitting to be shackled for the sake of not losing one American life.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there’s something wrong with American politics.
    Edna Ferber (1887–1968)

    Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    Either war is obsolete or men are.
    R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983)