Cox, along with these Television Companies, supports cspan2 as a public service. Tonights speakerou im very excited to introduce you to her, doctor fay yarbrough, professor of history and an associate dean at rice university. Doctor yarborough is an expert on 19th century native American History and shes got special interest in the interactions between Indigenous People and people of african descent during the 19th century so her first book was well have plenty of time at the end. Ou the way we do discussion. We this is through the q and a box at any time. Feel free to type it in or wait until the end. F well get to as many of your questions as we can. Within an hour and 15 minutes. Around 8 15 eastern time. I id just like to say how grateful i am to have our guest. It wasl. A wonderful book. Thank you very much. Thank you, so much. Good evening, its nice to be hereth with your virtually. Thankh you for spending your tie with me and id like to thank professor for inviting me and a Melinda Miller for a stimulating fun chat this afternoon. Ill share some things in a moment. I wanted to share moment. The man carrying it when the win with it. It went h around the horses hea. Around that time the rain came down hard. We just have to stop the wagon and sat did there. Came along more soldiers i ever saw before. All white men and they were died with walnut and butternut. They were the confederate soldiers. Davis, a full blood creek indian offers one of the few accounts of the battle of Honey Springs of late july 1962. Her account explains the roar of gunfire. Ro its off the blank bridge way off somewhere. This is about the far reaching power of battle and publication and on the plain landscape. What do we know so, hear ill share a space to make sure we are all on the same page in terms of location. So, im interested in the southwest corner. This is what i explore in the larger book project. This is my moment of shamelessub plug. Dr. Qwigley did some of it. This can be found in my new book. Its best shown by the fact thae they passed the statute deeming it treason to say negative about the confederacy. Thats how strongly that are committed toep the cause. By legislature. They could chose to align or remain neutral during the war. They early allied and placed a regiment of troops and brought men on the confederate officers andit paying 500,000 to arm and equip did troops. Authorities enlisted the troops and the records titled deject. This is demonstrated by examining the listing documents. I supplement the Service Records from firsthand account of civil war soldiers. These were w prepinted forms to facilitatein determining eligibility for pensions and other benefits. This includes a jacket and other cards associated with his record. There were sufficient numbers that the preprinted potion of the jacket first rifles. The jacket has a fill . The blank style. Company roll and name and information was preprinted on the form as o well. Listed the date and enlistment. This ask an example of one record. The second he was enlisted and there is information from his company muster role july 18, 1862. This formed the backbone on this talk of military of part of the larger book project. I went through thousands of the records in the reverse background white writing with the handwriting on there and compiled them into a database. Especially useful ask the remarks section. It shows he was present but sometimes rich tidbits about leave and work duedy. Payroll form whether they received communetation for clothing generally in the amount of 25. Sometimes a bounty pay and petition f for official correspondents regarding the soldier. There areth other miscellaneous documents included in the soldiers jacket. I spent time giving you a description theree is the misconception there arent a lot of records regarding native populations available. In fact, there are. We can do a number of things in terms off creative reading of te records we haveee or looking moe deeply to see if there are other records we could find and combine with other information to create a picture of native experience. So, again, just to remind you of the kinds of information in these t records available. Given ouril time constraints i will touch on the information you can get from the records. First they indicate more choctaw severed than we knew. The recordsds give us changes taking place in choctaw c society. We can infer connections between those that severed. I will look at what the records can tell us about enlists and how they are based on battle and politicalta activity. They provide a gleams of common soldiers in the civil war and remind us the war wasnt a rupture between northern and Southern Stateshe but native groups were drawn in. The contemporary choctaw nation said over 3100 individuals for the totality of the war. They translate to 17 hadnt 2 of the total population or 20 of the choctaw population if you exclude enslaved persons. This was 14 of the population and 8. 3 of the confederacy or border state. If you include the choctaw 12. 5 severed while the 3100 soldiers might seem like a small number. As a t propotion of the populatn its large and substantial. So, this figure, though, of 3100 troops is lower than the 10,000 troops coronal douglas predicted they would provide in a litter to the confederacy, jeff davis, given the number of the population was less then 23,000 people. D cooper w wrote the choctaw can furnish 10,000 warriors. They are extremely anxious to form another regiment. The data included in the compiled military records tell us about individual soldiers but the changing nation of the choctaw society. The s names can demonstrate the influence of euro americans and changes ine practices. This is an look at some of the names we can see in the records. Ou you will see several thomaser jefferson, jefferson david, private age 25. Also, more traditional name like chubby. You can see blended names were there is a european root of a name but combined with choctaw name and prominent families. The leflorees and mccurtains are important. Something as simple as these names on the enlistment records reveals t broader changes that were taking place in choctaw society. Ol the age data provides opportunities for comparison with similar data on american soldiers. Rs just summarize to say choctaw soldiers the average age was a bit older than the average age of a enlistees in the union army and little data we had on confederate soldiers. Again, they are older than americand counterpart. The age plus name data can reveal relationships between soldiers. There iss. S. A cluster of five greenwood enlistees age 20 to 28. We wonder if alex, gibson, and harris that mustered into the same company on the same day were allac related. Were they brothers or cousins that enlisted together. They also joined cubbees company in 1864. Theyey were a father and son tht joined together. These are maddenly silent about connections but other data from the indian pioneer similar to the wpa slave narratives but the informants are people that lived in indian territory during the h century,th data ta along with personal papers can augment the military records to confirm relationships. We know, for certain. The union and Confederate Army family members did join together. Cousins,on brothers, fathers, ad sons. We shouldnt be surprised we saw these patterns in the choctaw nation. Another record or data thats straightforward is the question of company assignment. Individuals divided into company a, k, or second d. As common among many other confederate troops. Choctaw were known by names connecting to their commanding officers. This was also known as walking state company and company i. We have other companies captain colman e. Nelson or captain edmond gardens company. These names were preprinted. This is how frequently they occurred and people knew these companies by other names. The use, again, of choctaw language and english names were noteworthy. Sintie is snake. Thats walking snake company isa a translation of his name. I think its interesting to ponder that traditional choctaw language name was included. Similarly, shema means to embellish. Perhaps, thisoh job gibson also known as captain shemonto is a traditional name. The presence of the choctaw traditional names on civil war military records shows how much thiss american event included others that didnt identify as american. The date on the records, the date on the muster reveals patterns when and were soldiers enlisted. Almost 70 of the records include this information that makes sense if you think about trying to track of how long the enlistment period lasts. You want to keep track so you know when there term of service should end. We can see, in these records. Most of the enlistments took place in 1861. June and july per popular months to enlist. 950in soldiers enlisted in the o months alone. This choctaw enthusism is more remarkable given they didnt sign a treaty until july of 1861. M there were choctaw men committing to fight before the Choctaw Legislature officially sided with the confederacy. The enthusism is high. The work was signed before. The government passed a resolution in support of the Southern State in february of 1861 the formal treaty alignance didnt come to later. The resolution was than response to the february 4th meeting of six Southern States to form a provisional government and form the Confederate States of america. This must have been in response to the meeting. The choctaw might have been waiting to the succeeding states before expressing support. The u. S. Indian agent enrolled natives before an official treaty of aligns was signed. Musterer roles show 180 troops. Youan can see the description he in the Northeast Corner of largf slaveholders in the area. That explains the high number of enlistments in the area or this might have been prompted by the neighboring state of arkansas to joinhe the confederacy one week prior on may 7, 1861. Fort washington, sulfer springs. Sugar loaf, perryville were all locations for clusters of enlistment in 1861. Each severed as capitol of the choctaw nation. These seemed like logical sites for forming companies. In 1862 enthusism was still strong and nearly 800 enlisted. January, march and july were popular time. The 200 men that joined the regiment were spurred to action by the november and december battle that took place in indian territory. Round mountain and more. All three were efforts to subdue wealthy creek indian and his followers. S. Initiallyo hoping to remain neutral they disagreed with the creek councils decision to ally with the confederacy. Other native nations of negotiating treaties of alliance indiansnm loyal were around. We can see that in the rendering here. She promised freedom for enslaved freedom and many pledged to join him. One woman spoke about her family joining. Our familyas grew up with them there were ala lot of creek indians with them when they made a run away. Many free blacks also favored h his union and joined the loyal creek camps that were growing. Some estimated that opthleyahola joined so only 2,000 fighting men. Cooper had 2,000 federates to attack pursue troop of opthleyahola. He fleed to kansas. There were a number of deaths 105. Er fourse of which was former horss thats something we can talk about in the q and a. Is several were from the campaign for opthleyahola. The cherokee minister wrote in 1862, he heard about 14 men lost fighting. Theem additional death came from the texas calvary that coronal cooper called in. Despite thee losses the confederateau forces proclaimeda victory. They forced so many into kansas andpo neutralized the threat. With this threat remain outside of indian territory. Missionary warned once the conditions improved there were times in the territory again unless therere is considerable force of confederacy to impose old posey, another nickname. If this was widespread among the choctaw in particular it might explain the burst offendlessness in january of 1861. The men joined the regiment at eagle town. They were all located in the southeastern corner of the nation closer to texas and arkansas. 230 more men were marched from the same area. The companies raised in Red River County in response to the b battle at p ridge that was at the tavern in nearby r arkansas. Here is oneht representation ofe the battle at t ridge from 1889. B after the war but still in the 19th century. Here a is a 20th century rendering, again, we can talk about if you like that comes from the trading card company. This was produced in 1952 as part of a celebration of the wars centennial. Its the art of bob. The back of the card has a summery of the war and the whole collection included 88 cards, 87 with images and a card that was the checklist so you knew you collected all of the cards. You can see s the difference in terms of the depiction of the 1h century verses the depiction in the 20th century. Ill pause here. I dont want to leave us on this. We will goo forward to battles. You can see battles takes place. The a first mounted rifles faild to arrive on time and the confederate soldiers beat the troops. They left the indian territory isolated. The proximity of the fighting m might have spurred confederate choctaw companies to form. June and july brought another 200 troops into service. I hope, what im giving you a sens of and trying to argue for, you can see that these battles can spur enlistment activities. Enlistments are happening in the larger world were they Pay Attention to events and politicall activity and battle. This can encourage or discourage enlistment among choctaw troops. So, because i want to be mindful of our time and i always have more stuff then i should. Ill jump ahead a bit. Just to mention the massacre that took place in the least district of the chickasaw nation. I wantis to bring this up becaue it demonstrated during the war there would be tensions with end groups and tensions betweenha native groups that are magnatied with what is happening with the war. The Wichita Agency was at the center of the action. They claimed their treaty was signed underd duress. Groups such as the others were done willingly. As texans continue to make encouragements. Tension rose to the point that indian agent matthew moved his family to it safety of sherman, texas. This is members of the shawnee tribe infiltrated the agencies. Come confederate agencies joined because of their flustrations of unkept promises. Reports of o a boy and suspected cannablelism they eyed them. They reported that they lost 23 warriors and 100 of their women and children in the massacre. The American Civil War could exacerbate tension withins natie groups and between native groups p echoing the notion of e war. That could pit them against each other. Rather then stokent enthusism ty spoke about how convoluted the alliances could be and persistence of old grievances. By 1862 the numbers declined sharply. 189 soldiers enlisted. We chart more then 1,000 enlistments in 1861. The civil t war had gone on much longer thenin expected. Fighting and being poorly provisioned extinguished before the war. As stated here im sick of war. Surly, many soldiers would have agreed with the sentiment. Captain davis perkens resigned his commandd in the first regiment of 1862 because of infirmity but also stated inn last but not least they knew the suffering of civilians as the war continued. The choctaw that did occur with nono enlistments after july. Of course, in january of 1862 we have the emancipation. Whilee it was unclear if the proclaimmation applied to indian territory. The news spread. Troops sometimes informed enslaved people of their change in status. So, this woman, Charlotte Johnson white learned of emancipation hedger soldiers arrived at the plantation. Perhaps, more relevant to the military enlistments was the activity in the Cherokee Nation in 1862. A pro union fangs rightful authority torn govern and establishes a new legislation ad of the first acts was to abolish slavery. Many cherokee slaveholders didnt acknowledge this but the actions brought abolition and thend prospect of emancipation o the heart of indian territory. For some, choctaw events might have harden their resolve and let the clusters of enlistments andhe areas near the chubbee district. D this lead many other choctaw to see the see the confederate chances and soften the overall enlistmentnt numbers. In july, battles took place at cabin creek and Honey Springs. You can see the choctaw nation map up here and some of the enlistments took place. If we go to the battle, hear we go. You can see the battle at cabin creek and Honey Springs. This also effected the numbers. Cabin creek l was located along the supply route removing supplies from kansas to indian territory. The battle consisted of a series of families that attempted to capture supplies. They failed and blamed the defeat on famine. More remarkable is the diversity of forces present. Troopsis wisconsin and kansas. Confederate indian troops. Texas partisans, and the first volunteershe clashed on the battlefield. Private Christopher Kendle of the calvary described the forces attempting the crossing. They assumed command that consisted of the indians. The men of the Second Colorado and captain charles steward company. Majorap foreman of the third indian advanced. Together they preserved the country. In fact, historian suggests the triracial army could have been a model foror future race relatios in the united states. Here, you can see a pixeluated version. N. Likeon cabin springs honey spris was along the important supply route of the texas road. In july of 1862 Confederate Forces used this as a attack on fort gibson and push the federal forces out of indian territory. Soldiers at Honey Springs former harper weekly and brought in supplies and preparation for the march against gibson. This included nativeamerican ancestory. A fact not lost on the men involved. Coronal james m. Williams told the volunteers this is the day we have been waiting for. This is for the freedom of their children ando childrens children. They, the rebels received a lesson that taught them not to despise onn the battlefield. They realized they had no rights that thepi white man would respect. Coronal williams understood the meaning of colored troops on the battlefield for themselves and the men they faced. Privateou edward was on the othr side of the battle line and