County of grave: Delaware County
Location of memorial: Stand Watie Rd., Polsen Cemetery, Delaware County, OK
"SOUTHWEST CITY, Mo. — Although Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate forces, surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House 150 years ago today, for some, the war wasn't over.
"Stand Watie — he was called that because his first name in Cherokee meant "stand firm" — had seen action in March 1862 at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where his soldiers, the Cherokee Mounted Rifles, helped capture Union artillery batteries. Watie's soldiers also captured 130 wagons and supplies valued at $1.5 million in the Second Battle of Cabin Creek in September 1864 in a nighttime attack near what is now Big Cabin, Oklahoma.
'"He pulled off a lot of military actions that took a lot of preparation," said Nancy Brown of Southwest City, a direct descendant of Watie's uncle, Major Ridge.
"But the Cabin Creek victory, although it alarmed people in Southwest Missouri and along the Kansas border, was ultimately trivial to the outcome of the war.
'"He sort of symbolizes the idea that the tribes had agency, that they weren't just helpless victims, that they weren't pawns," said Bradley Clampitt, chairman of the Department of History and Native American Studies at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.
"Watie also was a character, along with other Civil War figures, in the popular and critically acclaimed children's novel "Rifles for Watie," which was published in 1957.
"But today, Watie, who was promoted to the rank of brigadier general, is best remembered as the last Confederate general in the field to surrender — on June 23, 1865, more than two months after Lee.
"'Graves of our fathers'
"Watie was born in 1806 in what is now Georgia and educated at a mission school. Watie, Major Ridge, Elias Boudinot (Watie's brother) and their cousin, John Ridge, lived in Georgia in 1830 when gold was discovered on land that belonged to the Cherokees. Georgia lawmakers passed the Sixth Georgia Land Lottery that year to give away Indian land. The Ridge-Watie families decided it was time to leave. In 1835, Major Ridge and 19 other men defied the leader of the Cherokee Nation, John Ross, to sign a treaty giving up all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River to the United States for $5 million and land in the West.
'"I know we love the graves of our fathers," Major Ridge said. "We can never forget these homes, but an unbending, iron necessity tells us we must leave them."
"The Ridge-Watie families moved west before the Trail of Tears, the forced migration in which thousands of Cherokee died, including Quatie Ross, the wife of the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. The signers of the treaty knew they could face death; Cherokee law prohibited individuals from selling land.
"On June 22, 1839, Major Ridge was assassinated, shot to death on his horse. John Ridge was stabbed to death in front of his family. Watie's brother was killed outside his home in what is now eastern Oklahoma. Only Watie, who had been warned, survived the attack.
"Divisions persisted among the Cherokees into the Civil War and afterward.
"After the Civil War started in 1861, most of the Cherokees — some of them slave owners themselves — supported the South. Ross, whose first wife died on the Trail of Tears, initially was neutral in the Civil War and then signed a treaty with the Confederates.
"In March 1862, Watie and the 1st and 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles fought with the Confederates at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Newspapers printed accounts of atrocities that were said to have been committed by the Cherokee troops, such as scalping.
"After Pea Ridge, Ross allied with the Union and left Indian Territory. Watie was then named head of the Cherokee Nation. In October 1863, Watie burned the home of Ross at Park Hill, Oklahoma.
"In June 1864, Watie's men captured the steamer J.R. Williams, which ran aground after Watie's men fired on it in the Arkansas River. During the Second Battle of Cabin Creek a few months later, black soldiers who were cutting hay were massacred near what is now Wagoner, Oklahoma.
'"The whole force of the enemy then charged into my camp, capturing all of the white soldiers remaining there, and killing all the colored soldiers they could find," Capt. Edgar Barker wrote. "Only four out of thirty-seven of them succeeded in making their escape."
"In all, Watie and his men participated in 18 battles and major skirmishes as well as a number of smaller skirmishes and raids, according to National Park Service records.
"Surrender and afterward
"There are different theories as to why it took so long for Watie for surrender.
"Brown thinks that word of the surrender at Appomattox was slow to make it to Indian territory. Historians also think that the tribes were thinking about how best to surrender. Their hope was that if they surrendered separately they would better position themselves to negotiate with the Union government. Continued divisions in the tribe may also have contributed to the delay.
'"The surrender of Lee and Johnson virtually puts an end to the war on the other side of the river," Watie's nephew, E.C. Boudinot, wrote Watie in May 1865. "The people from Virginia to the Miss. river are willing to try the experiment of absolute submission and return to the old Union."
"Watie surrendered on June 23, 1865, in what is now Choctaw County, Oklahoma.
"But Indians did not fare better in negotiations by surrendering separately; the tribes had to go through Reconstruction just as the defeated Confederate states did. The Cherokees also lost land that had been granted to them when they left Georgia.
"After the war, Watie farmed on bottomland along the Grand River. He died at age 64 on Sept. 9, 1871. The river was high at the time, so his relatives couldn't bury him in the family cemetery. Instead, they buried him in Polson Cemetery in Delaware County, Oklahoma, just across the state line from Southwest City.
"Brown's family has taken care of the cemetery since the 1930s. The bodies of Watie's relatives were later moved there. Watie's uncle, Major Ridge, is there. So is his wife. Watie had no direct descendants.
'"Since our family took care of the cemetery, he was an important person in our lives," Brown said." ~ The Joplin Globe, By Sarah Okeson, April 8, 2015