Native Americans in the Military

Antebellum Service

Throughout the latter decades of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, indigenous peoples found themselves in a cross fire between American and British armies for control of territories east of the Mississippi River. Keen to protect their lands and way of life, Native Americans maneuvered to maintain neutrality or, failing that, to ally with the side most apt to advance their specific interests.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress authorized George Washington to recruit 2,000 Native American allies, primarily from the Iroquois League (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras). The British also sought Iroquois assistance. Although desperate to maintain neutrality, the unity of the Iroquois League quickly unraveled in the face of relentless pressure from each side. At the battle of Oriskany (August 1777), a force of Oneidas, fighting alongside American forces, fired upon their Mohawk brethren who had sided with the British. By the war's end, the 200-year-old Iroquois Confederacy lay in ruins as Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and a faction of Onondagas took up arms in support of the Continental Army against pro-British Mohawks, Cayugas, Senecas, and other Onondagas.

When the United States again went to war against the British in 1812, Gen. Anthony Wayne employed Choctaw and Chickasaw scouts from the Southeast against a determined pan-Indian movement in the northwest led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. To the south, Gen. Andrew Jackson enlisted the support of Choctaw and Cherokee auxiliaries in his efforts to subdue the “Red Stick” faction of the Creek nation. On March 27, 1814, Jackson's army, accompanied by Cherokee and Creek allies, destroyed Red Stick resistance at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. A few months [Page 580]later, a Choctaw contingent fought alongside Jackson's army at the battle of New Orleans.

Civil War and the Late 19th Century

Both Union and Confederate governments sent emissaries in 1861 to the Indian Territory in hopes of recruiting members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek) for assistance during the Civil War. Given their long history of poor relations with the U.S. government and that some members of each tribe were slaveholders, most of the estimated 3,000 Native Americans who served during the Civil War fought for the Confederacy. Some 1,000 Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, for instance, battled Union forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater at the March 1862 battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Cherokee leader Stand Watie, a brigadier general, surrendered to Union forces on June 23, 1865, the last Confederate general to lay down his arms.

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