Okla-homey
12/12/2008, 07:24 AM
Like OUr current field general Sam Bradford, an earlier Oklahoma Cherokee set records too...
December 12, 1806: Stand Watie born
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2898/standwatieclus6.jpg
202 years ago today, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie is born near Rome, Georgia. Watie, a 3/4 blood Cherokee survived the tribe's Trail of Tears in the 1830s and became the only Indian to achieve the rank of general during the Civil War. For the record, Stand Watie was also known as Standhope Oowatie (Oowatie is the non-anglicized version of his last name), Degataga "stand firm" and Isaac S. Watie.
Watie came from an influential family and played a major role during the Cherokee difficulties in Georgia. The tribe was under increasingly intense pressure by their white neighbors to remove to in the West. Watie was part of a faction that began to believe that voluntary removal might be the only way to preserve their autonomy. He fervently believed by agreeing to leave their Georgia homeland voluntarily, his people would suffer less than by being to Oklahoma at the point of a bayonet.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2687/standwatiestandyoungpicej5.jpg
Stand Watie, c. 1855
Watie was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which ceded the Cherokee's Georgia lands for a reservation in Indian Territory. After the disastrous Trail of Tears trek to the West, during which one in four Cherokee died, all who signed the treaty were assassinated except for Watie.
Even though the Cherokee suffered at the hands of Southerners, Watie and others always saw the federal government as the real culprit. When southern states began to secede from the Union in 1860, Watie and others supported the new Confederacy.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/1483/stand5015004e4f7fabcbw4.jpg
Watie was named colonel and raised a regiment of 300 mixed-blood Cherokee. Watie's first action came against Unionist Creek Indians near the Kansas border in 1861. At the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862, Watie's regiment captured a US artillery battery in the midst of a Confederate defeat.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/1084/standcherbrave20flagzm1.jpg
Watie's flag
From the summer of 1862 until the end of the war, Watie served back in his home territory. In 1864, he captured a US steamboat on the Arkansas River and a large supply train at Cabin Creek in Indian Territory.
Mostly, however, Watie fought against factions of his own people. The Cherokee became bitterly divided between the followers of John Ross, who pledged loyalty to the Union, and Watie, who stood by his Confederate allies.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/4813/stand06447030xlgvj7.jpg
Generations of kids have enjoyed OU's own Harold Keith's award-winning book
For the rest of the war, the Cherokee waged a bitter internecine guerilla war. On June 23, 1865, following the Battle of Doaksville, at Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation's area of the Indian Territory, Watie signed a cease-fire agreement with US representatives, becoming the last Confederate general in the field to stand down.
After a brief foray into the tobacco business after the war, Watie died in 1871at his home along Honey Creek in Indian Territory.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/895/standwatieuk1.gif
Watie toward the end of his life
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/4420/stand50758071056345626xj8.jpg
Watie's gravesite. Polson Cemetery, Delaware County Oklahoma
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/7889/insane7zowh7.jpg
December 12, 1806: Stand Watie born
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2898/standwatieclus6.jpg
202 years ago today, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie is born near Rome, Georgia. Watie, a 3/4 blood Cherokee survived the tribe's Trail of Tears in the 1830s and became the only Indian to achieve the rank of general during the Civil War. For the record, Stand Watie was also known as Standhope Oowatie (Oowatie is the non-anglicized version of his last name), Degataga "stand firm" and Isaac S. Watie.
Watie came from an influential family and played a major role during the Cherokee difficulties in Georgia. The tribe was under increasingly intense pressure by their white neighbors to remove to in the West. Watie was part of a faction that began to believe that voluntary removal might be the only way to preserve their autonomy. He fervently believed by agreeing to leave their Georgia homeland voluntarily, his people would suffer less than by being to Oklahoma at the point of a bayonet.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2687/standwatiestandyoungpicej5.jpg
Stand Watie, c. 1855
Watie was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which ceded the Cherokee's Georgia lands for a reservation in Indian Territory. After the disastrous Trail of Tears trek to the West, during which one in four Cherokee died, all who signed the treaty were assassinated except for Watie.
Even though the Cherokee suffered at the hands of Southerners, Watie and others always saw the federal government as the real culprit. When southern states began to secede from the Union in 1860, Watie and others supported the new Confederacy.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/1483/stand5015004e4f7fabcbw4.jpg
Watie was named colonel and raised a regiment of 300 mixed-blood Cherokee. Watie's first action came against Unionist Creek Indians near the Kansas border in 1861. At the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862, Watie's regiment captured a US artillery battery in the midst of a Confederate defeat.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/1084/standcherbrave20flagzm1.jpg
Watie's flag
From the summer of 1862 until the end of the war, Watie served back in his home territory. In 1864, he captured a US steamboat on the Arkansas River and a large supply train at Cabin Creek in Indian Territory.
Mostly, however, Watie fought against factions of his own people. The Cherokee became bitterly divided between the followers of John Ross, who pledged loyalty to the Union, and Watie, who stood by his Confederate allies.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/4813/stand06447030xlgvj7.jpg
Generations of kids have enjoyed OU's own Harold Keith's award-winning book
For the rest of the war, the Cherokee waged a bitter internecine guerilla war. On June 23, 1865, following the Battle of Doaksville, at Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation's area of the Indian Territory, Watie signed a cease-fire agreement with US representatives, becoming the last Confederate general in the field to stand down.
After a brief foray into the tobacco business after the war, Watie died in 1871at his home along Honey Creek in Indian Territory.
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/895/standwatieuk1.gif
Watie toward the end of his life
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/4420/stand50758071056345626xj8.jpg
Watie's gravesite. Polson Cemetery, Delaware County Oklahoma
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/7889/insane7zowh7.jpg