Jim Martin
This started out as Native-Americans in Alabama units?
Sun Jul 22 21:27:01 2001


I'd prefer not to pursue a discussion of the war in the Indian Territory, as that is off-topic from this board. Very soon, I will have up and running the "Indian Territory in the Civil War Message Board" where this discussion is more appropriate.

The question of whether or not Indian troops scalped dead or wounded Union soldiers at Pea Ridge is a volatile and confused topic. What you will discover upon investigation is that Brig. Gen. Albert Pike, commander of the Confederate Indians (Drew's and Watie's Regiments), responded to a complaint from Brig. Gen. Samuel Curtis claiming that the Indians had scalped his wounded. Pike investigated and received a report from a surgeon that ONE Union soldier showed signs of scalping (i.e., about a silver-dollar sized piece of his scalp removed). Pike further stated that he saw one of his Indian troops shoot a wounded Union soldier and reprimanded the offender.

From the testimony of two Union soldiers they claimed that they had seen Texas troops scalping Union soldiers. Gen. James G. Blunt, commander of the Union army of the Frontier, stated that deserters from Drew's Cherokee regiment claimed they scalped some Union soldiers, but there is no detail as to where or when.

It is a shame that for all of the effort put forth by the Native-American Confederate soldiers that this story is all that is remembered of their service. No Confederate state suffered the per-capita loss of the Cherokee Nation during the Civil War. They fought for four years on many bloody battlefields, suffering all the wounds, hardship, disease and death of any other soldier and this story which was amplified into a propaganda tool in some Northern papers claiming hundreds of Union soldiers had been scalped and mutilated is their legacy.

I will not remember them (my fathers) this way and I continue to pursue the truth hoping someday to expunge this lie, or at the very least an exaggeration of atrocities committed during their service.

Jim Martin