Overview

When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s. By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to fight alongside Confederate forces. In Choctaw Confederates, Fay Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states' rights mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery was what determined the Nation's support of the Confederacy. Mining service records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace traditional masculine roles—including that of slaveholder—that were disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between Native populations and slavery.

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9781469665115

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Reviews

An award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee. --Civil War Books & Authors Deeply researched and cogently written history...Yarbrough's empathetic use of anecdotal material form the Indian Pioneer History Collection allows readers to experience events of the period through Indian eyes. - Civil War Times Historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction should read Choctaw Confederates and appreciate Yarbrough's important contribution. --H-CivWar Scholars of the Civil War Era, the Civil War in the West, and those interested in race and slavery in Indigenous nations will undoubtedly find this deeply researched book immensely valuable and illuminating. --Civil War Book Review

An award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee.--Civil War Books & Authors

Deeply researched and cogently written history...Yarbrough's empathetic use of anecdotal material form the Indian Pioneer History Collection allows readers to experience events of the period through Indian eyes. - Civil War Times An award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee.--Civil War Books & Authors

Author Information

Fay A. Yarbrough is associate professor of history at Rice University and the author of Race and the Cherokee Nation.

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