"An account of Indians in the U.S. Civil War has been issued in paperback—and with it comes a now-familiar sense of letdown. That’s because such books invariably leave out Native voices, relying on academic research and accounts. Clarissa Confer’s The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War, first published in hardcover by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2008, is no exception.
American Indian participation in the Civil War tends to be seen as an anomaly. Yet scholars and tribal historians should not be surprised that Indians took part, with men from many nations fighting on both sides. Indigenous communities of the South found themselves caught between the two American factions, while tribes that had been removed from the South and the Plains and sent to Indian Territory were drawn into the very heart of the critical debates dividing the states: disputes over Free Soil, Bleeding Kansas, slavery and abolition, sectionalism and even secession."
Get the Story:Missing Voices: Native Perspective Lacking in Civil War Accounts (Indian Country Today 8/26)
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