Cherokee Civil War History
Knoxville [Tennessee] Register
Knoxville Register:
February 21, 1863 - Thomas' Legion The Indian Legion.--Major Thomas,
commanding the Legion of Cherokee Indians, who have rendered much service to the Confederate cause in East Tennessee,
was in our city yesterday. The Major is now with his aboriginal allies in the mountains on the border between this State
and North Carolina, where he is in reality conciliating the tories. Let us mention a fact or two communicated to us
by Major Thomas, to the credit of these dusky warriors. They excel any troops in either the Northern or Southern armies
for subordination--an Indian always executes an order with religious fidelity. They scrupulously respect private property--there
are no reports of depredations where they are encamped. They are the best scouts in the world, and hence the good
that they have accomplished among the mountain tories and bush-whackers. A notice that Maj. Thomas' Indians are in a section
of country brings in the dodgers at once, for they know that hiding out will not avail against the Cherokees. By their
aid the Major has enlisted without bloodshed, a great many men in his corps of sappers and miners, who have thus been
converted from mischievous tories and bush-whackers into useful employees of the Confederate Government. The Major, if
the war lasts, will yet be of infinite service to the Government.--Knoxville Register, [February] 21st.
Recommended
Reading: Storm in the Mountains: Thomas' Confederate Legion of Cherokee Indians and Mountaineers (Thomas' Legion: The
Sixty-ninth North Carolina Regiment). Description: Vernon H. Crow, Storm in the Mountains,
dedicated an unprecedented 10 years of his life to this first yet detailed history of the Thomas Legion. But
it must be said that this priceless addition has placed into our hands the rich story of an otherwise forgotten era of
the Eastern Cherokee Indians and the mountain men of both East Tennessee and western North Carolina who would fill the
ranks of the Thomas Legion during the four year Civil War. Crow sought out every available primary and secondary source by traveling to several states
and visiting from ancestors of the Thomas Legion to special collections, libraries, universities, museums, including
the Museum of the Cherokee, to various state archives and a host of other locales for any material on the unit in
order to preserve and present the most accurate and thorough record of the legion. Crow, during his exhaustive fact-finding, was
granted access to rare manuscripts, special collections, privately held diaries, and never before seen nor published photos
and facts of this only legion from North Carolina. Crow remains absent from the text as he gives a readable
account of each unit within the legion's organization, and he includes a full-length roster detailing each of the men who
served in its ranks, including dates of service to some interesting lesser known facts.
Storm in the Mountains, Thomas' Confederate Legion of Cherokee Indians and
Mountaineers is presented in a readable manner that is attractive to any student and reader of American history, Civil
War, North Carolina studies, Cherokee Indians, ideologies and sectionalism, and I would be remiss without including the
lay and professional genealogist since the work contains facts from ancestors, including grandchildren, some of which
Crow spent days and overnights with, that further complement the legion's roster with the many names,
dates, commendations, transfers, battle reports, with those wounded, captured, and killed, to lesser yet interesting
facts for some of the men. Crow was motivated with the desire to preserve history that had
long since been overlooked and forgotten and by each passing decade it only sank deeper into the annals of obscurity.
Crow had spent and dedicated a 10 year span of his life to full-time research
of the Thomas Legion, and this fine work discusses much more than the unit's formation, its Cherokee
Indians, fighting history, and staff member narratives, including the legion's commander, Cherokee chief and Confederate
colonel, William Holland Thomas. Numerous maps and photos also allow the
reader to better understand and relate to the subjects. Storm
in the Mountains, Thomas' Confederate Legion of Cherokee Indians and Mountaineers is highly commended, absolutely
recommended, and to think that over the span of a decade Crow, for us, would meticulously research the unit and
present the most factual and precise story of the men, the soldiers who formed, served, and died in the famed Thomas
Legion.
Advance to:
Recommended Reading:
The Blue, the Gray, and the Red: Indian Campaigns of the Civil War (Hardcover:
288 pages). Description: Inexperienced Union and Confederate
soldiers in the West waged numerous bloody campaigns against the Indians during the Civil War. Fighting with a distinct geographical
advantage, many tribes terrorized the territory from the Plains to the Pacific, as American pioneers moved west in greater
numbers. These noteworthy--and notorious--Indian campaigns featured a fascinating cast of colorful characters, and were set
against the wild, desolate, and untamed territories of the western United
States. This is the first book to explore Indian conflicts that took place during the Civil
War and documents both Union and Confederate encounters with hostile Indians blocking western
expansion. Continued below...
From
Publishers Weekly: Beginning with the flight
of the Creeks into Union territory pursued by Confederate forces (including many of Stand Watie's Cherokees), this popular
history recounts grim, bloody, lesser-known events of the Civil War. Hatch (Clashes
of the Cavalry) also describes the most incredible incidents.... Kit Carson, who fought Apaches and
Navajos under the iron-fisted Colonel Carleton, arranged the Long Walk of the Navajos that made him infamous in Navajo history
to this day. The North's "Captain" Woolsey, a volunteer soldier, became a brutal raider of the Apaches. General Sibley, a
northerner and first Governor of Minnesota, oversaw the response to the Sioux Uprising of 1862 that
left several hundred dead. The slaughter of Black Kettle's Cheyennes at Sand Creek in
1864 by Colorado volunteers under Colonel Chivington,
a militant abolitionist whose views on Indians were a great deal less charitable, “forms a devastating chapter.”
Hatch, a veteran of several books on the Indian Wars that focus on George Armstrong Custer, has added to this clear and even-handed
account a scholarly apparatus that adds considerably to its value.
Recommended Reading: East Tennessee and the Civil War (Hardcover) (588 pages). Description: A solid social, political, and military history, this work gives light to the rise of the pro-Union
and pro-Confederacy factions. It explores the political developments and recounts in fine detail the military maneuvering
and conflicts that occurred. Beginning with a history of the state's first settlers, the author lays a strong foundation for
understanding the values and beliefs of East Tennesseans. Continued below...
He examines the rise of abolition and secession, and then advances into the Civil War. Early in the conflict,
Union sympathizers burned a number of railroad bridges, resulting in occupation by Confederate troops and abuses upon the
Unionists and their families. The author documents in detail the ‘siege and relief’ of Knoxville.
Although authored by a Unionist, the work is objective in nature and fair in its treatment of the South and the Confederate
cause, and, complete with a comprehensive index, this work should be in every Civil War library.
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