1861 - 1865 The Forgotten Native Heroes

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NOTE: Our historical posts have a direct connection with the subject matters in the film 'Red Man's View')

Have you ever noticed that some participants in America's civil war are ignored or likely no longer even known by those academics who are the gatekeepers of our national memory. Among the forgotten are the Native American of the Five "Civilized" Tribes as Abraham Lincoln scornfully called them. They were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole most of whom fought in the southern states, mostly Oklahoma territory.

Few participants in that war exhibited greater courage, or suffered greater loss, than these long-forgotten Native American heroes, whose blood kin included such distinguished personages as the great Sequoyah (George Gist), who committed the Cherokee language into an alphabet. Their lands and communities in 'Indian' Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), growing and prosperous before the War of 1861–65, lay in rubble and ruin afterwards. Many Natives at their homes were raped, mutilated and murdered by either Union soldiers or marauders thereafter. They fought and died to protect the land that the U.S. government invaded and took unlawfully.

Portions by - John Dwyer