Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country

by Fay A. Yarbrough

Overview

When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s. By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to fight alongside Confederate forces.

In Choctaw Confederates, Fay A. Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states' rights mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery also determined the Nation's support of the Confederacy. Mining service records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace traditional masculine roles that were disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between Native populations and slavery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469665122
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Fay A. Yarbrough is professor of history at Rice University and the author of Race and the Cherokee Nation.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A scrupulous Civil War history that reads at times like a political thriller, Choctaw Confederates shows why and how Native American statesmen, police officers, soldiers, and family members identified with the South's martial cause in order to protect Indigenous sovereignty and defend a system of racial slavery. In the hands of Fay Yarbrough, a most talented historian of Black-Native relations and Indian Territory, this sensitive subject is handled with care and interpreted through a revealing range of Native American as well as African American sources. This book offers a penetrating look at a Native American state that chose to support the Confederate states and at the population of enslaved Blacks over whose bodies these ideological battles were fought."—Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

With compelling storytelling and insightful analysis, Choctaw Confederates reminds readers about the importance of Indigenous sovereignty and reshapes our understanding of the Civil War's western theater."—Gregory D. Smithers, author of The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity

Editorial Reviews

An award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee."—Civil War Books & Authors

Deeply researched and cogently written history…Yarbrough's empathetic use of anecdotal material form the Indian Pioneer History Collection allows readers to experience events of the period through Indian eyes."—Civil War Times

Scholars of the Civil War Era, the Civil War in the West, and those interested in race and slavery in Indigenous nations will undoubtedly find this deeply researched book immensely valuable and illuminating."—Civil War Book Review

Historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction should read Choctaw Confederates and appreciate Yarbrough's important contribution."—H-CivWar

Insightful. . . . Choctaw Confederates tells an important history that has too long been told from the vantage point of white outsiders."—Civil War History

A much-needed corrective to scholarship on Native experiences during the Civil War era. . . . Yarbrough's study compellingly demonstrates that internal demands for the maintenance of slavery and the strengthening of tribal sovereignty drove the nation to support the Confederate war effort in 1861."—Journal of Southern History

Yarbrough's study is an important contribution to the literature on Indigenous peoples and the Civil War era."—New Mexico Historical Review

From the Publisher

08/27/2021

Moving beyond dichotomies of North and South or free and enslaved, Yarbrough (history, Rice Univ.; Race and the Cherokee Nation) focuses on the Choctaw people's experiences during the American Civil War. Expelled from their traditional homelands in the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi, along the Trail of Tears, the Choctaw settled in Indian Territory bordering Texas and Arkansas. Yarbrough writes that like their white neighbors to the south, the Choctaw used the labor of Black enslaved people, primarily for growing corn and grain and herding animals; cotton formed a small portion of Choctaw agricultural output. When the Civil War began, the Choctaw nation quickly sided with the Confederacy. Choctaw men thronged to specially formed units in the Confederate Army, displaying, Yarbrough claims, a degree of enthusiasm often lacking in white Southern recruits; she makes the case that participation in the Civil War was a means for Choctaw men to reclaim older conceptions of manliness rooted in warfare. After the war's end, Reconstruction forced Choctaws to reconsider tribal membership and citizenship, Yarbrough maintains. In this cogent work, drawing on narratives of enslaved people, the records of Choctaw recruits to the Confederate Army, and government and archival sources, Yarbrough gives a more complete look at Choctaw experiences of and perspectives on the Civil War and its effects on their society and culture. VERDICT Readers interested in history of Indigenous peoples and the U.S. Civil War will enjoy this look at the Confederacy through the lens of Choctaw people.—Chad E. Statler, Westlake Porter P.L., Westlake, OH

Library Journal