Bøger af Ethel Crisp Taylor

Most books, movies and tv stories of the Civil War are of the battles east of the Mississippi River. The war west of the Mississippi has had very little information presented. The mails I have received over time, shows that many of the younger Native Americans from the Nations of the former Indian Territory, Oklahoma, did not know of the involvement of their Nations during the Civil War. Those soldiers fought for either the Union or the Confederacy. The Nations were just as divided as the people in the east. The information contained in this book's source notes are from "The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies", maps of significant actions, and speeches and correspondence of the principle parties during the War. Because of the forced removal of the southeastern Nations east of the Mississippi by President Andrew Jackson in the 1830's, internal conflicts simmered between those who had signed the treaties of Removal, trading their lands in the east for those west of the Mississippi. The coming Civil War divided them further as feuding political factions took sides with either the United States or the Confederate States.This ripped the Nations apart, bringing the seething conflicts to the surface. As a result, there were two wars being fought in Indian Territory. Over 30,000 western and eastern Indians were drawn into the conflict of the Civil War as soldiers or auxiliaries of the United States or the Confederate States.

I began to assemble bits of information on my family about 20 years ago, naturally, it was after the older members were gone. Working the various census, I found indications of where the family had been. I wrote for various records from several states, started contacting genealogical societies in counties where I had located family members. Contact by contact, information came my way; through new cousins, visits to courthouses around the country, searching through the basements where old record books are kept, helped me build on the information I had There is nothing to compare with the dusty, musty smell of fragile hand written books, over a century old. To hold one, you are holding history in your hands, written by someone long dead. They become your rope into the past. A past that lived, loved, fought, farmed, peopled by ghostly shadows of what once was. Old courthouse records, old census records, the new cousins I have met the last few years, to whom I owe a debt of much gratitude, have all come together, along with the history of our country, culminating in this effort.

General Watie's fame as the greatest Confederate Indian continued to spread. His Cherokee Regiment raided along the Fort Smith-Fort Gibson Road, pounding hooves, shrill Cherokee Rebel yell, and blazing guns. They were like dust in the wind, ever on the move, doing their damage and scampering out of reach. Riding with them and cheering them on, were the spirits of the fallen comrades as shadows in the dust. Their torches claimed Union haystacks and mowing equipment, as their bullets claimed Union Indians and African soldiers. Take a trip back to the 1860's and learn about this little known era of the larger Civil War that was fought west of the Mississippi. The Indian Nations had been forced west by President Andrew Jackson's "Indian Removal Act". This led to seething political rivalries between factions in the Nations. The Civil War further alienated the factions which led to an internal civil war as they chose sides between the North and the South.

This book is a companion to Forgotten Indian Soldiers. It shows the forts and battle sites during the Civil War action, 1861-1865. Also listed are the available troop rosters for Union and Confederate Indian Troops, along with CSA treaties with the Nations. The troops names could be searched for genealogy information.