Salah

During the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Confederate General Lee was introduced to Colonel Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian serving on Grant's staff. Lee said to Parker "I am glad to see one real American here", to which Parker warmly replied "we are all Americans here".

Both individual Indians and tribal groups found their way to one side or the other during the Civil War, while the increasingly besieged Plains tribes eyed the fighting white men dubiously. Incidentally some Southern POW's turned 'galvanized Yankees' were used as expendables during the Plains wars of the mid-late 1860s.

The Cherokee and Choctaw tribes were known in particular for providing contingents of allied warriors for the Southern cause, but I am not aware of any Native group offering their services wholesale to the North. It was Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief, who is generally recognized as the last Confederate general to lay down his arms.

Baltis

Wasn't there a Sioux war in Minnesota during the Civil War?

bluesman

Native Americans have been a part of the Union's military tradition since the Revolution, but to my knowledge they did not provide entire regiments during the Civil War. Rather, individual soldiers were stuck in the regiments or divisions raised from their home states. Thus, many Six Nations volunteers served in New York and midwestern regiments, and so on. Out West, life continued as it had before, only the natives were not being harassed in the same manner as before the war. There was absolutely no danger of increased raiding or incursions into established US territory, nor am I aware of any perceived danger at the time.

In terms of second order effects: if anything, the Civil War just provided the infantry commanders later sent West with a wholly inadequate well of experience to draw from when they faced complex counterinsurgency operations. The Fetterman Fight is a great example of what happened to Civil War heroes sent to teach the Cheyenne a lesson. In a word, humiliation.

Chookie

What about Pike's Cherokee Brigade?

Salah

Was curious to see if any more interest could be generated in this topic.

tjadams

Yes. It goes by many names, the Sioux in Minnesota in 1862 grew tired
of broken promises of the Federal Government and decided to push back.
The Union moved in and put down the uprising and it ended in Lincoln ordering the
hanging of 39 Indian men and pardoned the rest from the 300 taken captive.

tjadams

I just saw this link about the Cherokee's in the Civil War.