Brigadier General Stand Watie

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After visiting Fort Towson the employee sent me to Fort Towson Cemetery and he told me to go over the stone wall and down the path, this is where the last confederate general surrender his command. He couldn’t remember what his name was but that was easy to find out, thank you google. General Stand Watie, a Native American, realizing he was fighting a losing battle, he surrendered his unit on June 23, 1865. The men where Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, and Osage Indians. 

Born in 1806 to a Cherokee father and mixed race mother (half-Cherokee, half-European). He was born with he given Cherokee name Degataga which means “stand firm.” But later his father was baptized in a Moravian church as David Uwatie, and his father changed his name to Isaac S Uwatie. Growing up Stand went to Moravian school. But Isaac combined both his names to become Stand Watie.  David became a wealthy planter and who also owned slaves. 

Stand joined the south more for the fact that the Union was the enemy of the Indians. He was know to be a gifted field commander and a bold guerrilla leader. March 1862 his troops earned acclaim during the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. His troops captured Union battery in the midst of a confederate defeat. Then in June 1864, his men had a major victory by capturing the Union steamboat JR Williams. Then in September, they seized millions of dollars worth of supples at Cabin Creek. 

Even as the Indian nation started to go the way of the Union army and territories, he stayed loyal. He was rewarded with a new title: Brigadier General.

He did more work after the war to help the Indians with the Cherokee Reconstruction Treaty of 1866. Though I’m not sure that it was really a help but the treaty stripped tribe members vast tracts of land in exchange for their reinstatement in the union. After his public life he retreated to his plantation where he died 1871.

So I went into the cemetery and found some really cool looking graves. Here are a few.




See you at the next bend in the road,

Kelli


* History Channel for most of the information 


 







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