General Stand Watie's Confederate Indians

by Frank Cunningham; SB; 239 pages--This is the story of Stand Watie, the only Indian to attain the rank of general in the Confederate Army. An aristocratic, prosperous slaveholding planter and leader of the Cherokee mixed bloods, Watie was recruited in Indian Territory by Albert Pike to fight the Union forces on the western front. He organized the First Cherokee Rifles on July 29, 1861, and was commissioned a colonel. In 1864, after battling at Wilson�s Creek and Pea Ridge, he became brigadier general. Watie was the last Confederate general to lay down his arms in surrender, two months after Appomattox.