Opinion: Five Civilized Tribes pulled into the white man's war

When the Civil War broke out, most American Indians on the frontier understandably wanted no part of it. They were far from the action, and many had recently been forcibly removed to present-day Kansas and Oklahoma. And yet, many Indians were eventually pulled into “the white man’s war.”

Unlike the Indians who were herded into present-day Kansas from Northern states, the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory — Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole — were Southern in their outlook and politics. Across five Southern states, they intermarried with whites, built houses in town and owned plantations with slaves.

None of this protected them from envious neighbors who, as the interior South was settled in the early 19th century, demanded that authorities seize their sovereign lands. By the early 1820s the “Great Father,” as they called the American presidents, was summoning chiefs to Washington to sign land-cession treaties. These agreements became wedges that violently split each of the five tribal nations.

Among the Creeks (now known as the Muscogee Nation), the opposition was led by Opothle Yahola (also known as Opothleyahola). A wealthy landowner, Christian convert and Freemason, he had gone to Washington but had refused to sign anything. Back in Alabama, where he was head of the Upper Creek council, Yahola denounced William McIntosh, a Lower Creek who had signed the treaty.