The Civil War & Reconstruction Treaties - OKHIST

During the Civil War, the 5 Tribes sided with the Confederacy.
The Confederacy promised the 5 Tribes:
- Adoption of all financial obligations from the old treaties with the U.S.
- Protection from invasion.
- Guarantee of self-government.
The Confederacy also agreed to:
- Protect slavery.
- Grant representation in Confederate courts.

The most important battle of the Civil War in Indian Territory.
- Southern forces were not in good condition to fight against another Union invasion.
- Union soldiers out-gunned and out-manned the Confederates.
- Confederates were sent fleeing south to the Red River.

Confederates found safety in camps along the Red River.
- Joined by over 15,000 friends and family.
- Abandoned their homes in the northern part of Indian Territory to avoid the wrath of Union supporters.
- Food and medical supplies were in short supply.

The Confederacy lost the Civil War.
North sympathizers spent the war in refugee camps.
- The majority of the estimated 10,000 deaths occurred in refugee camps.
End of the “Golden Years” for the 5 Tribes.
- Homes were abandoned.
- Grain was seized.
- Livestock driven off.
- Schools and churches closed.
The 5 Tribes were now a “conquered enemy” of the Union.

Reconstruction Treaties with the Five Tribes reduced the land of those tribes to about half its previous size.
- Divided what had once been Indian Territory into two distinct parts.

Abolished slavery.
Gave each slave citizenship and property.
Allowed railroads to build on their land.
- Railroads would run North-South and East-West.
Avoided a territorial government.
Agreed to an intertribal council.
Restored their annuities.

Loss of land.
Ceded the western half of Oklahoma as a home for other Plains Indians.
Cherokees ceded land in Kansas and control of the Cherokee Outlet.
Seminoles had to sell old land for 15 cents per acre.
- Also pay the government 50 cents per acre for land they bought from the Creek for 30 cents per acre.

Indian Agents provided:
- Medical care and education to replace the schools which were left behind or to train Indians for a necessarily new way of life
- New medicine to replace the traditional medicine which was by nature a regional art
Each tribe or confederacy of tribes governed itself.
- The tribes made their own laws and set the penalties for breaking those laws.
- They provided their own police forces and patrolled their own boundaries.
The greater a tribe's need, the more control the United States had.
The Civil War not only reduced tribal lands but also reduced Indian power.
The reservation era was a whole new proposition for all Native Americans.

After the Civil War, the entire western half of Indian Territory was available for settlement by western tribes (Plains Indians).
- Tribes the government intended to remove from areas of the Western Plains and resettle in the Territory.

In October 1867, a peace council met at Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas.
Among the well-known Indian representatives were Satanta, Wolf’s Sleeve, Ten Bears, and Black Kettle.
The commission warned that the buffalo were disappearing and that for survival the chiefs should take their people to reservations to learn to farm.
The Commissioners left Washington with instructions to accomplish three things:
- Prevent Indian attacks on white emigrants and settlers.
- Stop Indian wars by removing their cause.
- Convince Indians to become farmers and stockmen, stopping their restless wandering about in search of a precarious living by hunting buffaloes and other game.

The Medicine Lodge treaties further reduced the tribal lands specified in the 1865 treaties.
Despite their peaceful promises, the government did not deliver the goods and services exchanged for depleted tribal lands.
Young Warriors believed that the United States had broken the treaty and therefore the Indians were no longer bound by it.
- Many of them left the reservations and made their way north, looting and raiding en route.

White settlers coveting Indian lands pressed into areas stipulated in current treaties as tribal lands.
The government wanted more tribal land reductions to satisfy the ever-moving frontier.
Angry Indians, who could not depend on government agents to protect their territories, retaliated against poachers.
- This brought the military to control marauding Indians.
The summer of 1867 saw constant warring between the United States Army in the west and the Plains Tribes: Kiowa's, Comanche's, Cheyenne's, Arapahoe's, and Apaches.

In retaliation, Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s peaceful band camped on the Washita River.
On November 27, 1868, in another early morning attack, Custer virtually annihilated the unsuspecting Indians.
- He killed 102 warriors, many women and children, and slaughtered a herd of 800 horses.
Black Kettle was shot and killed as he fled on horseback across the Washita River.

Battles and skirmishes between the army and the Indians continued.
- The army patrolled the reservations in Western Indian Territory.
- Young Indian Warriors slipped away to raid Texas and Kansas farms and ranches.
In 1871, the government declared that no Indian tribes were sovereign and that they no longer would be treated as free and independent states.

During the conquest of the western and Plains Tribes as well as the constant removal of the tribes of the Old Northwest, some tribes suffered great wrongs.
One policy seemed to remain constant throughout the dealings of the United States with the Indians, and that was that the Indians should be “Americanized.”
The reservation Indians were given their rations and taught to farm and raise livestock.
- If they resisted Americanization, agents were instructed to withhold supplies.
Indian children who spoke tribal languages were punished in school.
Ministers and teachers berated the customary tribal dress and hairstyles.
- All signs of Indian culture were to be obliterated, if possible.

How did the Civil War end the Golden Years for the 5 Tribes? How were they punished?
Explain what caused wars between Plains tribes and the U.S. Army.