The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War

by Annie Heloise Abel

Footnote 710: [(return)]

Yet both Blunt and Herron were, at this very time, in line for promotion, as was Schofield, to the rank of major-general [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, II, 95.]

Footnote 711: [(return)]

—Ibid., 6, 12, 95; Confederate Military History, vol. x, 195.

Footnote 712: [(return)]

—Ibid., 22.

Footnote 713: [(return)]

Britton, Civil War on the Border vol. ii, 18-19.

Fort Wayne,[⁷¹⁴] was almost immediately detached from the rest of Schofield's First Division and assigned to discretionary "service in the Indian Nation and on the western border of Arkansas."[⁷¹⁵] It continued so detached even after Schofield's command had been deprived by Curtis of the two districts over which the brigade was to range, the eighth and the ninth.[⁷¹⁶] Thus, at the beginning of 1863, had the Indian Territory in a sense come into its own. Both the Confederates and the Federals had given it a certain measure of military autonomy or, at all events, a certain opportunity to be considered in and for itself.

Indian Territory as a separate military entity came altogether too late into the reckonings of the North and the South. It was now a devastated land, in large areas, desolate. General Curtis and many another like him might well express regret that the red man had to be offered up in the white man's slaughter.[⁷¹⁷] It was unavailing regret and would ever be. Just as with the aborigines who lay athwart the path of empire and had to yield or be crushed so with the civilized Indian of 1860. The contending forces of a fratricidal war had little mercy for each other and none at all for him. Words of sympathy were empty indeed. His fate was inevitable. He was between the upper and the nether mill-stones and, for him, there was no escape.

Indian Territory was really in a terrible condition. Late in 1862, it had been advertised even by southern men as lost to the Confederate cause and had been

Footnote 714: [(return)]

It is not very clear whether or not the constituents of the Indian Brigade were all at once decided upon. They are listed as they appear in Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. ii, 3. Schofield seems to have hesitated in the matter [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 26].

Footnote 715: [(return)]

—Ibid., 33.