There were also Indians fighting on the Union side. In fact, Grant’s aide who wrote out the final terms at Appomatox was a full blood Seneca.
The Cherokees fought their own amazingly bloody little civil war in the middle of the bigger war.
what an Indian here and there while the south had the 6 nations and the Cherokee were officially on the south sides and even when you go there they will tell you this.
They were the last ones to surrender and they bore a lot of deaths onto the north as they fought their kind of war instead of lining up and the north were being truly done by them.
Maybe the Cherokees saw what would happen to the rest of the indians in the west and how the north killed all tribes in the north like the pawtucket, etc