By Al Fonner
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in May 2024.
When civil war broke out in the United States, a bloody struggle began that stretched on for four years. The causes, stated and unstated, were many: preeminence of states’ rights, preservation of the Union, abolition of slavery, even freedom itself. Native Americans warily viewed hostilities amongst the whites with mixed responses. Some, like the Chiricahua Apache, preferred to remain neutral. Others, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw who had been forced from their ancestral lands by the U.S. Federal Government to live on reservations in the Oklahoma Territory, would throw their lot in with the Confederacy. Northern tribes, such as the Ottawa, sided with the Union in hopes that their loyalty would help preserve their shrinking land and way of life. Chippewa Chief Nock-ke-chick-faw-me, in Detroit, motivated the young men of his tribe to join the colors by warning, “If the South conquers you will be slave dogs…. There will be no protection for us; we shall be driven from our homes, our lands, and the graves of our friends” (Gordon Berg, 2016).
Continue reading “A Valorous but Fruitless Service: Native Americans of Co. K, 1st Michigan Sharpshooters”