CAUGHT IN THE MAELSTROM: The Indian Nations in the Civil War, 1861-1865

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Discusses the plight of the Five Civilized Tribes -- the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole -- during the American Civil War. From 1861-1865, the Indians fought their own bloody civil war on lands surrounded by the Kansas Territory, Arkansas, and Texas.

The onset of the Civil War exacerbated the divergent politics of the five tribes and resulted in the Choctaw and Chickasaw contributing men for the Confederacy and the Seminoles contributing men for the Union. The Creeks were divided between the Union and the Confederacy, while the internal war split apart the Cherokee nation mostly between those who followed Stand Watie, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, and John Ross, who threw his majority support behind the Union cause. Throughout, Union and Confederate authorities played on divisions within the tribes to further their own strategic goals by enlisting men, signing treaties, encouraging bloodshed, and even using the hard hand of war to turn a profit.