Southern Indians, Civil War, Land and Anglo Greed

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Skirting the Everglades of the Confederate Flag discussion at MarxMail, I do
feel obligated to add another several words.

The Southern Indians of the so-termed "Five Civilized Tribes" [this Anglo
categorization because of some acculturation, with the exception of the
Seminoles]  and the Civil War make up an obviously very complex story.  By
the time Ft. Sumter occurred, only a portion of Seminoles [Florida] and a
faction of Choctaws [Mississippi] remained more or less "officially" in the
Old South --along with scattered other remnants of the Five Tribes and with
a then unofficial but substantial group of Cherokees holed up in the Smoky
Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina  and  Georgia [now mostly in North
Carolina and formally known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee].   Most of the
Cherokees, virtually all Creeks and Chickasaws. a large group of Choctaws,
and many of the Seminoles had been, with much loss of life, forced into
Indian Territory [now, of course, Oklahoma] via Andrew Jackson et al and the
Indian Removal Act. The Southern lands of those forced westward were
immediately lost to the whites.

With the onset of  War, some Southern Indians in Indian Territory supported
the  Union. And the  Mississippi Choctaw leader, Greenwood LeFlore --- who
was part of the Choctaw Nation not "removed" to Indian Territory --  flew
the American flag consistently at his large Magnolia farm holding. [Despite
this apostasy, the Mississippi Delta county of LeFlore and its seat,
Greenwood, are named for him.,]  In other instances, substantial factions
sought with difficulty to remain neutral.  In still others, there was at
least nominal support for the Confederacy.

The last Confederate general to surrender was Stand Waitie [Tsalagi] --
Cherokee of Indian Territory.

And the surrender terms in Virginia that were signed in the tent by Robert
E. Lee were written out by General Ely Parker, Seneca Indian from upstate
New York,  top aide to Commander U.S. Grant -- and, during the Grant
presidential administration, the first Native to hold the position of Indian
Commissioner. Lee and Parker got along, BTW, very well during the ceremony
and visited extensively afterward.

Following the War, the United States used the fact that some Southern
Indians had supported the Confederacy as a patently spurious excuse to
seize, generally, much of the Southern Natives'  nation lands in Indian
Territory via several maneuvers [no matter their respective stances during
the conflict] and open this to Westward-pushing settlers.  And that seizure
in turn was one of the tragic rationales used by the incipient and
well-meaning and almost completely white Indian Rights Association in its
very strange alliance with the far more cunning  Anglo land interests -- in
their joint support of the hideous General Allotment [Dawes] Act of 1887
[which affected many tribes] and the Curtis Act of 1898 [which specifically
affected Oklahoma.]  Kansas U.S. Senator Charles Curtis, BTW, was 1/8 Kaw
Indian, no great friend of Indians, and ultimately Herbert Hoover's
Vice-President.]

 The rationale for the Indian Rights Association's support of allotment was
that it had decided, with no consultation with any Natives, that
assimilation was the best option for Indians, that the traditional [and, in
actuality, extremely strong] communal land base was too easily seized by the
foes of the Indian [as had happened to a large portion of the Indian
Territory land after the War], and that Indian private individual ownership
offered the best protection.  The land-coveting enemies of the Indians were
far more savvy.  Few Natives anywhere assimilated but, in those considerable
tribal nation instances where allotment occurred [many tribes fortunately
escaped it] and communal holdings were broken up into individual
arrangements [e.g., 160 acres for a Native family, 80 acres for an
individual], multi-faceted Anglo chicanery saw two-thirds of Indian land
lost to the whites within only a few years.  When John Collier became FDR's
Indian Commissioner in 1933, he ended the allotment process at that point --
but vast damage in land loss and collateral impact had been done. Collier,
in his many fine works, moved immediately to maintain and strengthen the
remaining Native communal land base and try, with very limited success, to
rebuild it.

A personal note:  On the Anglo side of my family [my mother's people], two
of her uncles rode in the Cherokee Strip land rush "opening" in what was
becoming Oklahoma.  One secured land and remained, the other returned to
Kansas to become a sheriff.  Also on her side, a wealthy cousin married an
almost full-blooded lady from the Eastern Cherokee band and took her back to
Kansas.  When he died, he left her plenty of dinero -- and she, in turn,
moved to Topeka and became a pillar in the Kansas Republican Party. [My
Native father and I always liked her despite her politics and she, in turn,
was a consistently good and loyal cousin to us.]

Things are certainly complicated in The Creation.  Black-board formulae go
only so far -- and then the brush-covered mountains and canyons begin.

Yours -

Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

----- Original Message -----
From: "Juan Rafael Fajardo" <fajardos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: marxism-digest V1 #5031





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