Stand Watie was born near Rome, Georgia, and moved with his fellow Cherokees toIndian Territory in 1838. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the Cherokees aligned themselves with the Confederacy. Watie led a regiment of Cherokee volunteers called the Cherokee Mounted Rifles, fighting for the Confederacy with Texas cavalrymen and other Cherokees in the hills of northwestern Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The Indians wore feathers in their slouch hats and cloth turbans, and carried tomahawks, war clubs, rifles, shotguns, Bowie knives and bows and arrows. Although about half the Cherokee nation would eventually switch their allegiance to the North, the other half remained Confederates. Even after the North gained control of northwestern Arkansas and the Indian Territory north of the Arkansas River, Watie and his Cherokees continued to conduct damaging raids. At onepoint they attacked the Union-supporting Cherokees at Tahlequah and destroyed the tribal capital. On June 15, 1864, Watie shocked Federal commanders on the Arkansas River by capturing the J.R. Williams, a sternwheeler loaded with $120,000 worth of supplies bound for Union forts. Watie was promoted to brigadier generalfor his feat. Three months later, leading 800 Indians, he helped capture a Federal supply train of more than 250 wagons carrying $1.5 million worth of supplies. On June 23, 1865, he surrendered his forces at Doaksville, in Indian Territory, becoming the last of any sizable body of Confederate troops to surrender.
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