[lentulusgracchus]

"Hey, guys, never mind that the Feds mistreated them for years prior to this and fueled a visceral hatred and mistrust. The truth of the matter is they sided with the Confederates just because the Confederates were right!" Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I take your point that the Cherokee might have been attracted to the Confederate cause more out of grudgefulness and resentment than by the scintillating logic of the Confederate apologists.

But isn't it equally fair to say that, if the Confederates were articulating in the abstract -- their aversion to domination by Northern political factions, the likelihood of abolition, unconstitutional measures of the Lincoln Administration, etc. -- and the Cherokees were operating from concrete experience of the same sort of coercive federal policies, that the Cherokees were indeed attracted to the Confederate cause on policy grounds and from a due consideration of their own best interests?

In that construction, isn't the author of the article more or less correct?

[Jokelahoma]

I wouldn't begin to read their (Cherokee) minds, or even attempt to. It's possible, of course, but even if they were attracted to the cause, you have to know that the prior acts against the Cherokee by the Federal government would color their perception as to whom they should throw in with. Having similar reasons for hating someone enough to go to war with them doesn't necessarily imply philosophical agreement between the allied parties, especially when prior historical events could influence the decision making of one of the groups so heavily. To use a more modern analogy, I don't think anyone would say "the Arabs are now pro-West" or even that the Kuwaitis are now pro-West simply because Kuwait allowed us to attack Iraq from there. Both of us wanted Saddam out, for different reasons. Combining those reasons into one cohesive philosophy in the way the author does with the Cherokee and Confederacy is disingenuous, I believe.

My point, which apparently I'm doing a poor job of making, is that the article seems to ignore any fact or relevent history that won't support the author's claims that the Feds were wrong and the Confederates were right and the Cherokee "support" for the Confederacy proves that. As I stated, instead of support for the Confederacy, it could have been more a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". His (the author) failure to write a decent article doesn't disprove any theories he may have, but it certainly doesn't benefit his cause either.

[stand watie]

pardon me, but let me put my .02 in.

my ancestor, William James "Little Thunder" Freeman, late of the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles & the 4th MO Partisan Rangers, was a traditional Cherokee warrior.

Little thunder was illiterate in English, though he spoke/read/wrote Tslagi after TWBTS (his wife taught him to read & write in the 1870s).

nonetheless, he WELL UNDERSTOOD the NECESSITY of freeing the southland & the Cherokee Nation from the arrogant, hateFILLED, self-righteous,intrusive, imperialist damnyankees, who constantly schemed for any advantage against the people of dixie & the several Indian nations.

from the point of view of the typical Cherokee man there was NO honorable alternative to war, after 1855 in either the South or the Trans-Mississippi West.

that too is TRUTH!

free dixie,sw