OKLAHOMA INDIANS IN MILITARY SERVICE DURING THE CIVIL WAR

In all there were some twenty organizations effected among the Indian tribes of the Indian Territory for service with the Confederate army. It is probable that the total number of Indians engaged in the war on the Confederate side was between 6,000 and 7,000.

The following list of such organizations has been compiled by the office of the Adjutant General of the United States army:

First Cherokee Cavalry Battalion, Maj. Benj. W. Meyer; First Cherokee Cavalry Battalion, Maj. J. M. Bryan; First Cherokee Mounted Rifles (also called the Second-see Drew's Cherokee Mounted Rifles); First Cherokee Mounted Rifles, Col. Stand Watie; First Chickasaw Cavalry Battalion, Lieut. Col. Joseph D. Harris; First Chickasaw Cavalry Regiment, Col. Wm. L. Hunter; First Choctaw Cavalry Battalion (afterward the First Choctaw War Regiment), Lieut. Col. Franceway Battice; First Choctaw Battalion (afterwards Third Choctaw Regiment), Lieut. Col. Jackson McCurtain; First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Col. Douglas H. Cooper; First Choctaw Cavalry War Regiment (in 1864 known as the Second Choctaw Regl ment), Col. Simpson N. Folsom; First Choctaw Cavalry Regiment, Col. Sampson Folsom; First Seminole Cavalry Battalion (afterwards known as the First Seminole Regiment), Lieut. Col. John Jumper; First Creek Cavalry Battalion, Lieut. Col. Chilly McIntosh; First Creek Regiment, Col. Daniel N. McIntosh; Second Cherokee Mounted Rifles, Col. William P. Adair; Second Creek Regiment, Col. Chilly McIntosh; Third Choctaw Regiment (formerly First Choctaw Battalion), Col. Jackson McCurtain; Cherokee Battalion, Maj. Moses C. Fryc, Maj. Joseph A. Scales; Chickasaw Cavalry Battalion, Lieut. Col. Martin Sheco; Drew's Cherokee Mounted Rifles (called First and Second), Col. John Drew; Osage Battalion, Maj. Arm Broke.

Both officers and men of these organizations were members of the various tribes among which they were respectively recruited. with the exception, however, of Col. Douglas H. Cooper, of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifle Regiment. He was a white man, who had been the United States Indian Agent for the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes at the outbreak of the war, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.

The Indians who were in the service of the Union Army during the war were organized into three regiments, known as the First, Second, and Third Regiments of the Indian Home Guards. They were recruited principally in the Cherokee, Creek and Seminole Nations, though other tribes were represented, and there were a few Indians who enlisted with Kansas regiments.

The First Regiment, Indian Home Guards, consisted mainly of members of the Creek Nation, and its aggregate strength was sixtyfour officers and 1784 enlisted men.

The Second Regiment was composed principally of Cherokee and Osage Indians, its total force being sixty-six officers and 1835 enlisted men.

The Third Regiment was recruited mostly among the Cherokee and Creek, and its complete enrollment was fifty-two officers and 1437 enlisted men. Possibly two-thirds of the officers of these regiments were white men. There is no record of the tribal military organizations which supported the cause of the Union. The total number of the tribes then residing in the Indian Territory who served in the Union Army probably did not exceed 6,000.

The three regiments of the Home Guards, which composed a brigade in the Union Army, participated in twenty-eight battles. besides many lesser skirmishes, and it is probable that the Indians in the Confederate Army took part in a greater number of battles, as some of them were organized and placed in the field much earlier in the war. The total number of Indians who gave their lives in the struggle, including those killed in battle and those who died from wounds and disease, was over 1,000.

CHRONOLOGICL HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

The first known inhabitants of Oklahoma were the Osage, Quapaw, Caddo, Wichita, Waco, Tawakony, Kiowa, Comanche, the Apache of the Plains and several other tribes of Indians.

1528-1536.-Four survivors of Cabeca de Vaca's expedition, captured by the Indians, first saw the buffalo in the Red River valley and are supposed to have been taken through a portion of Oklahoma.

1541.-Francisco Vasquez de Coronado made an expedition from Mexico northward and is believed to have penetrated as far north as northeastern Kansas, crossing western Oklahoma. They named the Great Plains the "Llano Estacado."

1541-2.-Moscosco and a few survivors of DeSoto's exploring party are believed to have crossed eastern Oklahoma.

1549.-Bonilla, Spanish explorer, explored far out on the Great Plains and is believed to have crossed one or more of the counties of western Oklahoma.

1601.-Onate, Spanish governor of New Mexico, is believed to have passed through the western part of the state in search of Quivira, the land of supposedly fabulous wealth of gold. 1611.-A Spanish expedition was sent to the Wichita mountains, and until 1629 Spanish missionaries labored among the tribes in that section.

1650.-Don Dego del Castillo with a force of Spanish spent several months in the Wichita mountains seeking gold. He found many pearls which he sent to the governor of New Mexico at Santa Fe.

1655. The Crown of Great Britain made a grant for the colony of Carolina, embracing all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific between 30 degrees and 36 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude.

1673.-Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary, and Louis Joliet, a Quebec trader, floated down the Mississippi river to the mouth of the Arkansas.

1678-1682.-Robert de la Salle explored the Mississippi to its mouth and claimed all land drained by that river and its tributaries for the King of France in whose honor he named the great region Louisiana.

1714. Saint Denis from New Orleans ascended the Red river along the southern boundary of Oklahoma.

1717.-The Spanish under Padilla marched from the Spanish settlements on the Rio Grande across the Great Plains to punish the Comanche for making warfare on them. They fought

a hard battle on the western border of Oklahoma and captured seven hundred prisoners.

1719.-Bernard de la Harpe, under direction of Governor Bienville at New Orleans, set out from Natchitoches on the Red river to explore the valley of that stream. He passed over southern and southeastern Oklahoma.

1723.-New Orleans was proclaimed as the seat of government for the territory of Louisiana.

1723.-Etienne Venyard du Bourgmont crossed Oklahoma, visiting the Pawnee, Kaw, Osage, Missouri, and then the Comanche on the Arkansas river in what is now central Kansas. He loaded the Indians with presents in an effort to win their attachment to the French, thus beginning the rivalry with the Spanish for the Great Plains region.

1739-40.-Two brothers named Mallet and four companions ascended the Missouri river to the Platte, following that river to the Rocky mountains. Skirting the mountains, the party went to Santa Fe, N. M., where they spent the winter. separating in the spring, three members of the party returned overland to the Missouri, while the other three passed down the Arkansas through Oklahoma.

1760. Brevel, a French Creole trader from New Orleans, visited the Wichita mountains in company with the Caddo Indians. He reported the Spaniards to be engaged in mining operations in the mountains at that time. Spanish priests were also present among the Indians.

1763. The territory of Louisiana was secretly ceded to the Spanish by the French to prevent its falling into the hands of the British.

1801.-Louisiana was ceded back to the French by the Spanish. 1803.-Louisiana was purchased by President Thomas Jefferson for the United States for $15,000,000 cash and the assumption of obligations amounting to $3,750,000.

1806.-Captain Richard Sparks, Second United States Infantry, sought to explore the Red river but was met on the southern boundary of Oklahoma by a force of Spanish and compelled to return.

1806.-Lieutenant Wilkinson of Zebulon Pike's exploring party descended the Arkansas from a point near Great Bend, Kansas, to the settlements on the lower course of the river. 1809.-A band of Cherokee Indians made agreement with President Jefferson to move beyond the Mississippi river to what is now the state of Arkansas. These lands were ceded to them by treaty in 1817.

1811.-The Salt Plains of the Cimarron and Salt Fork were explored by George C. Sibley, United States Indian Agent at Fort Osage on the Missouri.

1817.-Fort Smith was established as a military post, at the mouth of the Poteau on the Arkansas river.

1819. Major William Bradford, stationed at Fort Smith, marched through eastern Oklahoma to expell "intruders," most of whom were declared to be renegades and fugitives from the eastern states. He was accompanied by Thomas Nuttall, the noted botanist, who visited the valley of the

Grand, Verdigris, Cimarron and the Deep Fork of the
Canadian during the season.

1819.-Treaty was made with Spain whereby the Red river was to be the northern boundary of the Spanish possessions to the 100th meridian, following that meridian to the Arkansas river and the channel of that stream westward to the Continental Divide.

1819-20.-Major Stephen Long's party of engineers entered western Oklahoma just north of the Canadian river, and following that river, believing it to be the Red River, landed at Fort Smith. His course was generally along the divide between the two Canadians.

1820.-Choctaw treaty made with Generals Jackson and Thomas Hinds, subsequently ratified by the treaty at Washington in 1825 and the Dancing Rabbit Creek treaty in 1830.

1821.-Captain Nathan Prior, Hugh Glenn and Jacob Fowler left Fort Smith with a party of traders and trappers on an expedition to the Rocky mountains. They crossed through northern Oklahoma.

1822. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions established a mission school on the Grand river for the Osage Indians, a few miles north of the spot upon which Cantonment Gibson was built.

1824. Forts Gibson and Towson were established.

1825. First treaty made with the Creeks for their removal from Georgia. This treaty was confirmed by the treaties of 1826 and 1832.

1825. The Santa Fe trail, crossing what is now Texas and Cimarron counties, was laid out.

1826.-Eastern boundary of Oklahoma from Red river to Arkansas was surveyed.

1828.-Treaty made with the Cherokees of Georgia by which they were to move on a reservation of 7,000,000 acres, west of Arkansas, with an outlet to the region of the Great Plains. 1830. By act of Congress provision was made for the establishing of the Indian Territory.

1832. The Seminole treaty was signed, but was unheeded by the tribe. In 1836 they were provoked into hostilities and in 1842 were forcibly removed to the Indian Territory.

1832. Chickasaw treaty was signed at Pontotoc Creek, Mississippi, and the tribe came to Indian Territory.

1832.-A company of mounted rangers under command of Captain Nathan Boone from the Osage Agency, near Fort Gibson, marched westward to a point near Guthrie and then turning south passed between the sites of Oklahoma City and El Reno, and thence southeastward across Cleveland and Pottawatomie counties, and to Fort Gibson.

1833.-War broke out between the Osage and Kiowa Indians and General Henry Leavenworth with a body of troops marched westward to a point between Anadarko and the Wichita mountains and thence southwestward through the Wichitas, in an effort to pacify the warring tribes. This led to a general peace council at Fort Gibson.

1835.-Second treaty made with Cherokees in Mississippi in February with John Ross as principal chief of the tribe. The