 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation with Faye Yarborough about her new book, Chalk, Talk, and Federates. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up on our YouTube channel. On Wednesday, December 8th at 1 p.m., Bruce Ragsdale will tell us about his new book, Washington at the Plough, which takes a fresh original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager. His passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. And on Monday, December 13th at 1 p.m., Jeremy Dauber will be here to discuss his new book, American Comics, which is a history of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels over the past century. We often look at the American Civil War as a straightforward division between North and South. In Chalk, Talk, and Federates, Faye Yarborough reminds us that other groups were involved and the conflict spread west from the Eastern Theater of War. At the outbreak of the Civil War, several Native American tribes sided with the Confederacy, including the Choctaw Nation, and in the National Archives, you can find the names of soldiers in Choctaw Units among Confederate military service records. Using these records, Professor Yarborough was able to extract enlistment information about the troops and gain insight into the experiences of individual soldiers. In the decades before the Civil War, a series of treaties transferred Choctaw lands to the United States and relocated the Choctaw Nation to the Indian territory of the Mississippi River. These treaties and more than 350 other treaties with Native peoples have been digitized and are freely available online at the National Archives catalog and through the Indigenous Digital Archives treaties portal. When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly removed to the Indian territory, they brought along hundreds of enslaved Black people. By 1860, the enslaved made up 14% of the Choctaw Nation. Protection of slavery made a powerful argument for Choctaw alliance with the seceding southern states. Professor Yarborough's new book shows us the Civil War from a very different perspective. Fe Yarborough is professor of history at Rice University and a faculty affiliate of the Center for African and African American Studies. She's also the author of Race and the Cherokee Nation and the forthcoming, the American Civil War in Indian Country. She has held national research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and is currently serving as a visiting editor for the Journal of Southern History. Now let's hear from Professor Yarborough. Thank you for joining us today. Good afternoon everyone. It's a pleasure to be here if only virtually and I'd like to thank all of you for joining me during what for many folks is their lunch hour. And I'd like to thank Susan Clifton and Brian for organizing the visit and managing the technical aspects of our session today. So I'll just jump right in. Just as we're starting to leave here comes something across that little prairie show. We know they as Indians the way they as riding and the way they as all strung out. They had a flag and it was all red and had a big crisscross on it that looked like a saw horse. The men carry it and rear back on it when the wind whip it. But it flap all around the horse's head and the horse pitch and rear like he knows something going to happen show. About that time it turned kind of dark and began to rain a little and we get out to the big road and the rain come down hard. It rained so hard for a little while that we just have to stop the wagon and set there. And then along come more soldiers than I ever see before. They all white men I think and they have on that brown clothes dyed with walnut and butternut and old master say they is confederate soldiers who send a Davis owned by Tuskaya Hiniha a full blood Creek Indian offers one of the few existing accounts of the battle of Honey Springs in July of 1863. She described saying native troops approach carrying the confederate battle flag the changing weather conditions and the arrival of white confederate troops. Her account goes on to recount the roar of gunfire that sounded like houses lopping across a plank bridge way off somewhere. Davis offers compelling testimony about the far reaching and destructive power of battle on the civilian population and on the landscape. But what I'm most interested in today is the experience of native soldiers. What do we know of those horse of those soldiers on horseback whose riding style was so distinctive that Davis and her fellow spectators identified them as Indians from a distance. What can we say about their experiences in the confederate army to answer these questions questions. I will turn to service records from National Archives. It's quite fitting that I'm invited to speak with you today, given the reliance of National Archives records, how much I relied on those records for this book project. The records I used are the compiled service records of confederate soldiers who served in organizations raised directly by the confederate government. And I want to point out that you can order these records. I used the website to order them and I received digitized copies again that are really the source base that are at the heart of my book. From the outside, however, these records are something of a misnomer. This title suggests that authorities from the confederate states of America enlisted these troops into service. However, Choctaw legislative documents from the era reveal that Choctaw lawmakers spent a great deal of time talking about their commitment to the confederate states of America. And here I will share my screen so you can see some maps and images about that reveal what I'm talking about. So this first map shows Indian territory at the time of the Civil War. And I focus on the Choctaw Nation because of their strong commitment to the Confederacy, which is the subject of my larger book project. And so the Choctaws are described by confederate authorities, actually, as their most faithful and loyal allies among the Native Nations. So I was very curious about why that would be. So again, the larger book project from which this talk comes is Choctaw Confederates. And there I talk about slavery in the Choctaw Nation. I talk about the decision to get to the choosing to side with the Confederacy. I talk about removal. I talk about reconstruction as well. But today I'm focusing on one chapter in the book which has to do with Choctaw soldier experiences. So as a separate and sovereign country with its own constitution, judicial system, and bicameral legislature, Choctaw lawmakers could choose to align with the federal government or the Confederacy or attempt to remain neutral altogether during the war. And you could argue remaining neutral is like signing with the federal government in this case. They early allied with the Confederacy and agreed to place a regiment of Choctaw troops numbering 1,000 men under Confederate officers with the Confederacy committing to pay $500,000 to our men-equipped said troops. Which authorities, Choctaw or Confederate States of America, enlisted these troops then is less clear than the records title would suggest, which will also be demonstrated by examining the actual enlistment documents below. In addition, I supplement the service records with firsthand accounts from Civil War soldiers more broadly to create a fuller picture of Choctaw soldiers' experiences. The majority of the enlistment records consist of pre-printed forms compiled by the War Department to facilitate efficiently and rapidly determining individual eligibility for pensions and other veterans' benefits. The record includes a jacket with the soldier's name, company and rank, enlist the other cards associated with his record. There were sufficient numbers of Choctaw troops that the pre-printed portion of the jacket or envelope stated, one Choctaw mounted rifles, also known as calphory with Confederate in parentheses. The jacket often contains fill-in-the-blank style, a fill-in-the-blank style company muster roll. The company name and the information Confederate, one Choctaw Chickasaw mounted rifles appear pre-printed on that form as well, and the form listed the date, location and term of enlistment. So here you can see what these records look like. So this is the record for Private Filumi, excuse me, of Second Company K. You can see that he's 30. You can see that he enlisted on June 12, 1861 at Sulphur Spring Blue County for 12 months. You can see the muster into the company date. You can see that he was enlisted by Iskutini Homa and that he was on duty on guards. So especially useful in these records is the remark section, again here where it just says on duty on guards. In most cases, it merely indicates if an enlistee was present at the end of his term of service, but sometimes it includes rich tidbits about soldiers being absent without leave, promotions or work duties. A frequently included payroll form stated whether the soldier received a commutation for clothing for six months, generally in the amount of $25. Sometimes a bounty pay and receipt roll for $50 is on file as well, along with petitions or official correspondence regarding the soldier. Less frequently other miscellaneous documents, often handwritten, are included in the soldier's jacket. So this is a slide to tell you about some of the different types of information that are in these records. So given our time constraints today, I will touch just briefly on some of the info that you can glean from these records. First, the records indicate that more Choctaw served for the Confederacy than we previously knew. Second, the records can give us some sense of the changes taking place in Choctaw society. We can also use the records to infer connections between the people who served. In particular, I will look at what the records can tell us about enlistments and how fluctuations in enlistments could vary based on battles and political activity. Most importantly, the records provide a glimpse at the experience of common soldiers in the Civil War and reminds us that the war was not just a rupture between northern and southern states. Other groups were drawn into this dispute. The contemporary Choctaw nation estimates that approximately 1200 Choctaw troops served on the side of the Confederacy by the middle of the Civil War. I have collected the service records for over 3100 individuals for the totality of the Civil War and these 3100 troops translate into roughly 17.2% of the total Choctaw population or 20% if one excludes the enslaved population. In the United States, soldiers counted for approximately 14.6% of the northern population and 8.3% of the Confederacy and border states. If one excludes the enslaved population in the south, however, 12.5% of southerners served in the Confederacy. So while this 3100 troops that I find in these Choctaw records might seem small in the aggregate, as a proportion of the Choctaw population, it is large. Of course, this figure of 3100 troops is much lower than the 10,000 troops that current Douglas H. Cooper predicted that the Choctaws and Chickasaws would provide in a letter to the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. A number that is all the more astonishing given that the combined population of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations at this time was less than 23,000 people, including their enslaved population. So again, this is an officer who's claiming that 10,000 troops can be raised here from a population of 23,000 people. Cooper wrote, the Choctaws and Chickasaws can furnish 10,000 warriors if needed. The Choctaws and Chickasaws are extremely anxious to form another regiment. The data included in the compiled military service records tell us not only about individual soldiers, but can reveal aspects of the changing nature of Choctaw society. For instance, the names on these records simultaneously demonstrate the influence of Euro-Americans and the resilience of traditional naming practices. So names include, I'll give you a little slide, John Simpson, several Thomas Jefferson's and Jefferson Davis, private aged 25, but also Cubby, Iahan Tubby, Haiko Nubi, or Shumpo Lubby. Some soldiers' names were a blend of traditional Choctaw names and European names, as you can see here, like William Ayesha Hopei, Shiahika Thompson, or Louis Himekambi. The surnames of prominent families within the Choctaw political arena also appear. The Folsoms, LaFoulores, and McCurtans are three examples, each family having produced district or principal chiefs of the Choctaw nation during the 19th century. The aged data on soldiers from the first Choctaw and Chickasaw mounted rifles provide some opportunity for comparison with similar data on American soldiers in the Civil War. I won't get into the details of the numbers other than to say that the native soldiers were slightly older than their American counterparts. And then you can use the age and the name data to suggest relationships between soldiers. So where the cluster of five Greenwood enlistees aged 20 to 28 related to each other in some way, Allen, Gibson, Harris, Hogan, and Sesson Greenwood all mustered into company 1E on July 3rd, 1861 at Blackjack court ground as privates. So perhaps they were, and we know from records of Union and Confederate soldiers in the United States that community members, family members often enlisted together. Similarly, we have Joseph Hunter aged 43 and Stylen Hunter aged 18, both joining May Tubbie's company at Goodland Station on September 2nd, 1864. Could they have been a father and son joining together in hopes of watching out for one another? These sources are often maddeningly silent about such connections, but other data from the Indian pioneer history and personal papers can be used to augment these records and confirm some relationships. And if you're not familiar with the Indian pioneer history collection, it's very similar to the works progress administration slave narratives collection. So the WPA slave narratives are interviews conducted with people who experienced slavery and the records are collected around the time of the Great Depression. They begin as projects conducted by scholars at historically Black colleges and universities who realize that this population of people who experienced slavery in their lifetime is dying. And then when the works progress administration gets involved, it's in part an effort to put people to work after the Great Depression. And a similar program interviews people who lived in Indian territory during the 19th century, and those are these Indian pioneer history collection records. And so there's just a wealth of information in these Indian pioneer history records that have to do with what life was like, food ways, religious practice, education, people talk about crime, right? There's just a wealth of information in those records. The question of company assignment in these enlistment records may seem pretty straightforward. Individuals mustered into company A or second company K or second company D among many others. And as was common among other Confederate troops, some Choctaw companies were known by names connected to their commanding officers. So there's Captain Centenoa's company, for instance, which was also known as Walking Snake Company and known as Company I. Other companies were known as Captain Coleman E. Nelson's company or Captain Edmund Gardner's company or Captain Shimon's company, also known as John Gibson's company. This information was pre-printed on enlistment records, reinforcing the idea that these companies were very well known by these less standard names. And again, it's a practice that we see mirrored in other Confederate troops as well. The use of both Choctaw language and English names is also noteworthy. Sinti is snake in Choctaw and Noah means a walk or to walk. So Walking Snake was a translation of Captain Centenoa's name. And Shimonta may come from the Choctaw word Shima, meaning to dress up or embellish. There's even, we can see a record for a John Gibson, aged 65 and 1899, who appears on the Dawes' rolls as a full blood Choctaw. Maybe this John Gibson, also known as Captain Shimonta, is that John Gibson. The presence of these native names on Civil War military records exemplifies how much this quintessentially American event included other peoples who did not identify as Americans. The data on the date and place of muster reveals patterns in where and when soldiers enlisted into the first Choctaw and Chickasaw mounted rifles. Almost 70% of the records include this information. And careful preservation of the enlistment data was crucial to determine when a soldier's term of service was complete. So you would expect this information to be included on the records. We can see that there's a surge of young men signing up to fight at the start of the Civil War in 1861, right, when enthusiasm for the war is quite high. Again, we would see a similar pattern in the Confederate States as well. Of the records that include data and muster location, half indicate enlistments that took place in 1861. June and July of 1861 were especially popular months to enlist. The records include 950 enlistments for those two months alone, again, out of a larger pool of 3100 records. This Choctaw enthusiasm for the Confederacy is even more remarkable given that the Choctaws did not sign a treaty with the Confederacy until July of 1861. Thus, Choctaw citizens were committing to fight in the war even before the Choctaw legislature had officially sided with the Confederacy. And this, again, goes back to the title of these records, being records of soldiers enlisted by the Confederate States of America. These folks are enlisting even before this alliance has officially been made. Historian Angie Debo notes that the work of consolidating Indian support began before any formal treaties were signed between the Choctaw Indians and the Confederate government. The Choctaw government had already passed a resolution in support of the Southern States in February of 1861, though the formal treaty alliance would not come for five more months. So gathering Choctaw support might not have been so difficult. Surely the Choctaw resolution was a response to the February 4th meeting of six Southern States in Montgomery to form a provisional government and establish the Confederate States of America. The Choctaws may have been waiting for the succeeding States to create a more formal body before expressing Choctaw support. U.S. Indian agent Douglas H. Cooper enrolled Indians for service as early as April of 1861, again before an official treaty of alliance had been signed. Muster rolls show over 100 Choctaw troops enlisted in May of 1861, specifically on May 13th in Scullyville. And here you can see a map and you can see Scullyville appear in the upper northeast corner of Choctaw Nation. And this area, Scullyville is described by some contemporaries as a stronghold for Southern support because of the large number of slave holders in the area. Perhaps this enlistment fervor was prompted by the neighboring southern state of Arkansas' decision to join the Confederacy less than one week prior on May 7th, 1861. Again, more over Scullyville, as you can see, is located on the far eastern border of Choctaw Nation, very close to the shared border with Arkansas and near Fort Smith. So if we look at the records, we can also see other locations on this map that show up as centers for soldier enlistments during the Civil War. In 1862, enthusiasm for the war among Choctaw Indians was still strong and nearly 800 men enlisted in the regiment during the second year of the war. January, March, and July were especially popular times. The almost 200 men who joined the regiment in January may have been spurred to action by the November and December battles that took place in Indian Territory. Round Mountain, Chustod, Talasaw, and Chustenna Nala. All three engagements were efforts to subdue wealthy Creek Indian Apothla Yajola and his followers. Initially hoping to remain neutral, the Creek leader disagreed with the Creek Council's decision to ally with the Confederacy. While other Indian nations were negotiating treaties of alliance with Confederate officials, Indians quote-unquote loyal to the American federal government were coalescing around Apothla Yajola, whom we can see here. Though his wife was a slaveholder, he promised freedom for enslaved people and many in nearby Indian nations ran away to join him. Phoebe Banks, whose parents had been owned by the Creek Perrymen and Macintosh families, recalled her family joining Old Gage as Apothla Yajola was known. Our All Our Family joined up with him and there was lots of Creek Indians and slaves in the outfit when they made a break for the North. The runaways was writing ponies stolen from their masters. Moreover, many free blacks also favored his unionist stance and joined the loyal Creek camps which were growing in size. Some estimated that Apothla Yajola had as many as 9,000 followers, but only 2,000 would have been fighting men. Colonel Douglas H. Cooper led over 1,400 Native Confederates supplemented by the 9th Texas Calvary to attack and then pursue chief Apothla Yajola and his band. Each of these three battles punctuated Apothla Yajola's flight to Kansas. So again, I think that enlistment patterns may be connected to various battles and so we can see another cluster of enlistments of 230 in March from Lukwata and Nowood Red River County in the southeast corner of the district. The companies raised in Red River County formed on March 10th most likely in response to the battle at Pea Ridge. Here is a depiction of the battle of Pea Ridge from 1889 and then which took place at Elkhorn Tavern in nearby Arkansas on March 7th and 8th. You can also see a much more controversial depiction of the same battle at Pea Ridge. This is from a tops trading card and it's from the war Centennial in 1962 and it's the art of Bob Saunders and the back of the card has a summary of the battle and then there were 88 cards that were a part of this collection 87 with images and then one that was the checklist card. Right. So the first Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles failed to arrive on time at Pea Ridge and the federal forces defeated the Confederate troops. The Confederate general Albert Pike pulled back his forces leaving Indian territory very isolated. The proximity of the fighting and the threat of Southern failure may have spurred Choctaw companies to form. June and July brought still another 200 troops into service. Here is a map of Civil War battle sites in Indian territory. So another battle that I'd like to another event that I'd like to talk about is the Tankawa massacre which is right here in the Least District. This took place west of the Chickasaw Nation and highlighted the enternesine conflict that the Civil War represented within Indian territory. The Wichita Agency in the Least District was at the center of the action. The Wichita Indians claim that their treaty with the Confederacy had been signed under duress but groups such as the Comanches and Tankawa's had signed willingly. The Confederate government was not able to meet the stipulations for supplies and medicine included in the treaty. As Texans continued to make incursions at the agency despite their shared loyalty to the Confederacy, tensions rose to the point that Indian agent Matthew Leeper moved his family to the safety of Sherman, Texas. When Union Raiders, which reportedly included members of the Shawnee, Delaware, Kikapu, Seminole, Cherokee and Osage tribes infiltrated the agency, some Confederate Indians joined the Raiders because of their frustrations with Leeper and the Confederate government's unkept promises. Reports of the death of a cattle boy and the suspected cannibalism of the Tankawa's suddenly focused the various groups ire sharply on the Tankawa's. The Tankawa's reported to Superintendent SS Scott that they had lost 23 of their warriors and about 100 of their women and children in the massacre. The American Civil War then could exacerbate tensions within Native groups and between Native groups in some ways echoing the notion as a fight which could pit brother against brother or friends against each other. Rather than stoke enthusiasm for the Confederacy, the Tankawa massacre revealed how convoluted alliances between groups could be and the persistence of old grievances. By 1863 enlistment numbers had declined sharply, only 189 soldiers enlisted. And again, remember officials had charted more than 1,000 enlistments in 1861 and nearly 800 in 1862. As in the larger Confederacy by 1863, the Civil War had gone on much longer than anyone expected. The realities of fighting, familial separation, and being poorly provisioned extinguished Choctaw enthusiasm for the war as it did elsewhere. As Confederate officer Edward W. Cade wrote to his wife in 1863, I am sick of war and the separation from the dearest objects of life. Surely, many Choctaw soldiers would have agreed with this sentiment. Captain David Perkins, for instance, resigned his command of Company E in the first Choctaw Chickasaw Regiment in 1863 because of physical infirmity, but also stated. And last, but not the least reason is, I have so many little children. Unless I stay at home and provide for them, they must necessarily suffer as they have been during my first campaign. These men felt the tug of family at home and knew the suffering of civilians as the war continued. The Choctaw enlistments that did occur clustered in the first half of 1863 and February, March and April, with no enlistments occurring after July. Of course, on January 1st, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln took effect, ending slavery and rebelling states and parts of states. While it is unclear if the proclamation applied to Indian territory, news of Emancipation did spread to Indian territory. And if nothing else, Union troops often informed enslaved people in Indian territory of their change and status. So here we have Charlotte Johnson-White. She learned of Emancipation when soldiers arrived at her Cherokee and slavers plantation. And again, this is the kind of material you can get from the WPA slave narratives. Here at Rice in our library, there are 15 volumes. They're organized by state. They're indexed. And so you can, again, look for information about punishment, about food, about religious practice. And sometimes they include images like this image of Charlotte Johnson-White. So she learned of Emancipation when soldiers arrived at her Cherokee and slavers plantation. Perhaps more relevant to Choctaw military enlistments was the activity in the Cherokee Nation in the first part of 1863. A pro-Union faction of Cherokees claimed rightful authority to govern and established a new legislature in February of 1863. And one of their first acts was to abolish slavery in the Cherokee Nation. While many Cherokee slaveholders did not recognize the legitimacy of this new government and likely ignored this act, the fact remains that these actions brought abolition and the prospect of emancipation to the heart of Indian territory. For some Choctaw's events in the Cherokee Nation may have hardened their resolve and led to the clusters of enlistments in Scullyville and San Bois locations in Mosulatubby district closer to the Cherokee Nation, which we can see the Mosulatubby district is here, Scullyville and San Bois are here, and then the Cherokee Nation is in this upper northeast corner of Indian territory. On the other hand, perhaps Cherokee Emancipation and Lincoln's proclamation led many other Choctaws to see the Confederate chances for success declining and softened overall enlistments. In July, battles took place at Cabin Creek in Honey Springs. If we go back to our map of battle sites, that may have affected Choctaw enlistment numbers, Cabin Creek was located along Texas Road, an important supply route for moving military supplies from Fort Scott, Kansas to Indian territory. The battle consisted of a series of skirmishes as Stan Wadey's forces attempted to capture federal supplies. The Confederates eventually failed and Wadey blamed the defeat on his lack of cannon. More remarkable is the diversity of forces present, troops from Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, the Indian Home Guards, Confederate Indian troops, Texas partisans, and the first Kansas colored volunteers all clashed on the battlefield. Private Christopher Kimball of the Ninth Kansas Calvary described the federal forces attempting the crossing. Major Foreman assumed command, which consisted of the Indians, five companies of the colored regiment, the mounted men of the Second Colorado, and Captain Charles J. Stewart's company, the Ninth Kansas Major Foreman followed by Captain Bud Gritz of the Third Indian advanced into the stream. Private Kimball's words pain a portrait of men of different races fighting together to preserve the country. In fact, historian Mark Lau suggests that the Union's tri-racial army in the West could have been a model for future race relations in the United States. Here is an image of the Choctaw Confederate battle flag. It's based on the seal of the Choctaw Nation, and you can, I would just point your attention to the bow and two arrows and the tomahawk at the center. Like Cabin Creek, Honey Springs was also located along the important supply route of the Texas road. In July of 1863 Confederate forces used the location as a staging ground to prepare an attack on Fort Gibson and pushed federal forces out of Indian territory. Soldiers amassed at Honey Springs. Here's an image from Harper's Weekly and brought in supplies in preparation for the march to Fort Gibson. Again, the fighting would include men of native ancestry of African descent and Euro-Americans, a fact not lost on the men involved. As they waited for the command to advance Colonel James M. Williams told the men of the first Kansas Colored Volunteers, this is the day we have been patiently waiting for. The enemy at Cabin Creek gave you the opportunity of showing them what men can do fighting for their natural rights and for their recently acquired freedom and the freedom of their children and their children's children. Colonel Williams also assessed his men's performance after the fighting. They, meaning the rebels, received a lesson which in my opinion taught them not to despise on the battlefield, a race they had long tyrannized over as having no rights which a white man was bound to respect. I had long been of the opinion that this race had a right to kill traitors and this day proved their capacity for the work. Colonel Williams suddenly understood the meaning of colored troops on this battlefield for themselves and for the men that they faced. Private Edward Folsom of the first Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles was on the other side of the battle lines and the colored troops made an impression on him as well. He remarked, it was not long before the federal cavalry found us and came over with Negro troops and give us fight. We had one side of Elk Creek and they the other. It was a stand-up fight. I never did see so many Negro troops, wounded Negro troops in a small fight. Soldiers everywhere, not just in the South, were impressed by the combat action of colored troops during the war. The Confederates failed at Honey Springs because of inferior munitions, supplies and in part the combined actions of the first Kansas colored regimen and the Indian home guards. The Confederates outnumbered the Federals by two to one but were outgunned three to one. And the inferior quality of the Confederate gun powder meant that the downpour during the battle on July 17th rendered their arms useless according to General Cooper. As the fighting raged on, the federal Indian home guard regiment inadvertently misled the 20th and 29th Texas cavalry into thinking the Federals were retreating. The Texans pursued only to be met with a volley of bullets from the first Kansas colored and forced to pull back. Then federal troops picked up the Texans colors. Tandy Walker arrived with Choctaw and Chickasaw troops late in the fight and was able to hold the federal forces as the Confederates continued to retreat. Dallas Bowman, a private from the first Choctaw and Chickasaw mounted rifles remembered, the feds followed us about half a mile out on the prairie at which time our battalion charged on them and held them in check until the train could get out of the way. Native troops then were important in both Confederate and federal forces in the battle. As the troops fled, General Cooper ordered the destruction of supplies and munitions in Honey Springs, located in Honey Springs. Corporal W.K. Mackamson of the Confederate Indian Brigade led the squad that set fire to the commissary and quartermaster stores. Former enslaved person Henry Clay had been owned in Creek Nation and remembered the smoke and fire as the Yankees burned up Honey Springs, but in reality he likely saw the results of Confederate rather than federal action. Some enslaved people also witnessed the battle and described the retreat years later. Creek freedwoman Lucinda Davis, whom I whose words opened my talk today, heard the guns going all day and all and along in the evening. Here come the South Side making for a getaway. They come riding and running by where we is and it don't make no difference how much the head men hollers at them. They can't make that bunch slow up and stop. Davis' description matches Private Bowman's comments that the Confederate troops scattered which caused confusion and we had a general stampede. Likewise, Private Edward Folsom reported that his company's picket stampeded and broke for the mountains and most got away. Phoebe Banks, Uncle Jacob, told her the fighting at Honey Creek was the most terrible fighting he's seen, but the Union soldiers whipped and went back into Fort Gibson. The rebels was chased all over the country and couldn't find each other for a long time the way he tell it. Phoebe Banks' family had been owned by a Creek family and followed a post-Leahola to Kansas. Uncle Jacob had returned to Indian territory with federal troops to fight the Indians who stayed with the South in his words. A disheartened Private R McDermott from the 20th Texas Calvary seemed to confirm Uncle Jacob's account. I believe they will whip us and whip us all the time until we are reinforced from Texas or some other point. We got so much scatteredness and the stampede that we was three days getting together and not all have come in yet. It seems that Confederate soldiers truly had scattered across the country and did not immediately regroup for a counter attack or another engagement. The Battle of Honey Springs proved to be the largest battle fought in Indian territory based on the numbers. Approximately 9,000 men met in battle there, nearly 6,000 Confederates and close to 4,000 Union soldiers. The Confederate loss left the Texas road open for Union control and allowed federal troops to take Fort Gibson. Some view Honey Springs as a turning point for Confederate forces in Indian territory after which white troops no longer defended the area in an organized manner. Moreover, the victory gave federal troops an avenue into Choctaw Nation, the fiercest and most steadfast of the of the Indian nations in the Confederacy. And that's a quote. Given the scale of the fighting and the defeat, it comes as no surprise that the first Choctaw and Chickasaw mounted rifles did not see any new enlistments for the remainder of the year. The federal sent troops to Fort Gibson to strengthen its position in the territory and July of 1863 had handed Confederate forces major losses. Confederates were back on their heels and Choctaw soldiers may have viewed the southern effort as a losing one overall. The compiled service records for the soldiers of the first Choctaw and Chickasaw mounted rifles provide a window into the experiences of Civil War soldiers in Indian territory. These troops often did not leave other kinds of records such as journals or diaries and letters home were rare indeed. Service records include important information about when and where soldiers mustered for battle, for how long they enlisted and the kind of work that they performed. The accompanying records in the service jackets while uneven and unpredictable offer further glimpses of daily life for the troops. Some of the records that I haven't discussed today track the movement of federal prisoners of war from camp to camp and showed that some soldiers would choose to swear the oath of loyalty and even join federal units. Other prisoners of war were exchanged. The records also include more mundane though consequential information such as petitions for promotion, letters of resignation and certificates of disability. The records offer the opportunity to add meat to the bare bones data about troop movements and battle losses. Thus a picture emerges of enthusiastic enlistees at the beginning of the war whose support of the war waned as they were plagued by poor provisions and desertion as the war progressed. Choctaw Confederates were not so different from southern Confederates in many respects. Thank you. And now I will answer a couple of questions. I think we have time for a few questions. What was the rationale for aligning with the Confederacy among the Choctaw and other Indigenous nations? So that's really the question that's at the heart of my book. So I argue that there are two reasons that the Choctaws align, ally with the Confederacy during the Civil War, which given that those states that are a part of the Confederacy are precisely the same ones that pushed for the Native nations in the southeast to be removed to Indian territory in the first place might come as a surprise. So I think there are two again two main reasons. One, the Choctaw Nation and other Native nations in Indian territory who ally with the Confederacy take Confederate promises to recognize Native sovereignty seriously. The Confederates offer all kinds of inducements to Native nations to ally with them during the war. And they make promises about recognizing the sovereignty of Native nations. And they also offer to pay for all of the costs of the war. And they also offer the Confederacy also offers to honor all of the financial obligations that have been incurred to Native nations through the federal government and the treaty making process. So it wouldn't be a moment where you have to renegotiate every treaty. You can expect that the Confederate government is going to honor all of those obligations. So that's one. The other is that they're slaveholders and they're building a society in which people of African descent clearly have an inferior status. And so I think they also want to preserve the practice of slavery. It's economically very fruitful for them. And then also the social hierarchy that comes out of practicing the institution of slavery. So I think that those are the two main reasons. They take promises to recognize and protect and preserve Native sovereignty seriously that these promises made by the Confederate government. And they've already had ample evidence that the federal government isn't going to take those promises seriously. And then two that they are invested in the practice of slavery. So that is why I think they choose to ally with the South during the war. Do the enlistments of Indigenous peoples and Black enslaved or formerly enslaved persons to Confederate Union ranks challenge concepts of the intent or purpose of the war? I don't think so. I assume this is a question that has to do with if what I think is at the center of the war is the issue of slavery. I do think what is at the center of the war is the issue of slavery. I think Native nations are invested in the continued practice of that. These Native nations in particular who are practicing the enslavement of people of African descent. I think what's different for Native nations is that they sometimes I joke that the people that I'm studying, in particular the Choctaws and the Cherokees are more they are populations for whom I should back up. Sometimes scholars of the Civil War we'll talk about this argument about it being about states rights as a fig leaf for what's at the heart of the war if we look at for instance the words of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens when he says slavery is the cornerstone of this new Confederate government. So scholars will talk about states rights as being a fig leaf to cover that, that the issue at the center is states rights. I think for Native nations that the issue at the center is slavery. I think for Native nations the question of states rights they do take seriously because I think they're making an equation between a group that's claiming to want to preserve states rights in parentheses to preserve slavery but they want to preserve states rights are also interested in recognizing respecting and preserving Native sovereignty as well. So I think that's what that question is getting at. Can you discuss any record showing if when emancipation freed Confederate enslaved persons some indigenous tribes only considered those owned by White's freed, i.e. the Seminole. So in 1866 these Native nations that side with the Confederacy have to negotiate new treaties to get back into good relations with the federal government and so as I mentioned in my talk the Cherokees for instance abolish slavery on their own but then still we'll have to have that written into the treaties that they the treaty that they negotiate with the federal government in 1866. So it's those treaties in 1866 that include a provision about the abolition of slavery and also the new status for formerly enslaved people in Indian territory and in those treaties those those formerly enslaved people are supposed to be granted citizenship which has a very different which in some ways has a very different more powerful meaning in these Native nations in for among the Choctaw and Cherokee for instance land is owned communally and members of the nation hold the land together in as a community and so in these treaties when they're being forced to include their formerly enslaved people as citizens of Choctaw Nation right they are also that means giving them access to land which is something that clearly we all know did not happen in the rest of the Confederacy this wasn't something that was imposed upon southern states so that citizenship has really powerful meaning in these Native nations let's see we're Choctaw veterans eligible for pensions like other veterans so these are these records were compiled in order to determine eligibility for for pensions I haven't done any research to see if any of these soldiers were actually paid pensions so that I can't answer but I suspect because they were collected in order to to figure that out that perhaps they were but I can't say for certain that that happened what happened to the lands owned by those Confederate Choctaw soldiers after the war where they punished for being on the losing side so again to the point of land being owned communally the land there there wouldn't be a let's take the land away from you moment unless you're going to have citizenship revoked for those people and they didn't have citizen revoked for siding with the Confederacy so there wasn't I haven't seen any records of anything done to to punish Choctaw soldiers for participating in the war I have not seen that because the nation it's very different from what we're seeing in the in the American context right because in the American context we have a civil war in which somebody is fighting against the the against federal authorities in the Choctaw nation they're a sovereign nation and they voted in the legislature to side with the Confederacy so the nation as a whole made this choice and then enlisted troops into the into this regimen and sent them to participate in the war so they weren't doing anything that they could be punished for at least within the Choctaw nation and once the war is over and the treaties are negotiated between the federal government and the various native nations the they're still sovereign nations and so within Choctaw nation in Choctaw nation why would you punish people for fighting on the side of the Confederacy if the nation as a whole sided on the side of the allied with the Confederacy so I we don't see examples of land being confiscated for from Confederate Choctaw soldiers after the war so um I think our time is is close to being over so I like to thank everyone for joining me today I'd like to again thank um uh Susan Clifton and National Archives for inviting me to share a little bit about my work and thank you for uh these really uh great questions