Oklahoma Native American
Data June 23, 1865. When the leaders of the Confederate
Indians learned that the government in Richmond had fallen
and the Eastern
armies had been
surrendered, they, too,
began making their plans to seek
peace
with the Federal
government.
The chiefs convened the Grand Council June 15 and
passed
resolutions calling for Indian commanders to lay
down
their arms and for
emissaries to approach Federal
authorities for peace terms. The largest
force in
Indian Territory was
commanded by Confederate Brig. Gen. Stand Watie,
who was
also a chief of the Cherokee Nation. Dedicated to
the
Confederate cause
and unwilling to admit defeat, he
kept his troops in the field for nearly a
month after Lt.
Gen. E. Kirby Smith
surrendered the Trans-Mississippi May 26.
Finally
accepting the futility of continued resistance, on
June 23
Watie rode
into Doaksville near Fort Towson in
Indian Territory and surrendered his
battalion of Creek,
Seminole,
Cherokee, and Osage Indians to Lt. Col. Asa C.
Matthews, appointed a few weeks earlier to negotiate
a
peace with the Indians.
Watie was
the last Confederate
general officer to surrender his
command.
This
surrender was
made in what is now Sequoyah County.
Source:
"Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War"
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