page_title: Confederate States Army
section_title: Cherokee
hierarchical_section_title: Confederate States Army / Native Americans and the Confederate army / Cherokee
caption_attribution_description: English: Cherokee Confederate reunion in New Orleans in 1903
context_page_description: The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or simply the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, fighting against the United States forces in order to uphold white supremacy and the institution of slavery in the Southern states. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States Senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison.
context_section_description: Stand Watie, along with a few Cherokee, sided with the Confederate army, in which he was made colonel and commanded a battalion of Cherokee. Reluctantly, on October 7, 1861, Chief Ross signed a treaty transferring all obligations due to the Cherokee from the United States to the Confederate States. In the treaty, the Cherokee were guaranteed protection, rations of food, livestock, tools, and other goods, as well as a delegate to the Confederate Congress at Richmond.
  In exchange, the Cherokee would furnish ten companies of mounted men, and allow the construction of military posts and roads within the Cherokee Nation. However, no Indian regiment was to be called on to fight outside Indian Territory. As a result of the Treaty, the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles, led by Col. John Drew, was formed. Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 7–8, 1862, Drew's Mounted Rifles defected to the United States forces in Kansas, where they joined the Indian Home Guard. In the summer of 1862, U.S. troops captured Chief Ross, who was paroled and spent the remainder of the war in Washington and Philadelphia proclaiming Cherokee loyalty to the United States Army.
  William Holland Thomas, the only white chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, recruited hundreds of Cherokees for the Confederate army, particularly for Thomas' Legion. The Legion, raised in September 1862, fought until the end of the War.
caption: A Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903