The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes all fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, although they did have some contingents that were Pro-Union.
The Cherokee Nation at this time period was run by a political elite of wealthy mixed-race men. Chief John Ross preferred to approach the Civil War from a position of neutrality. He did not want the tribe to get involved in what he considered a "white man's war." Ross's rival, Stand Watie, was very much Pro-Confederate and ended up assuming role as Chief after John Ross allowed himself to be captured and was subsequently sent to Philadelphia. Watie would go on to become a Confederate General.
The Cherokee Elites were wealthy slave-owners and the Cherokee as a whole did not hold the Union/Federal government with much esteem (remember, the Trail of Tears happened roughly just 30 years prior.) This can give you an idea of why the Cherokee Nation chose to align itself with the South.
In Oklahoma the Cherokee had 3,000 men in the Confederate Army and 1,000 fighting for the Union. Cherokee units would fight at Wilson Creek as well as Pea Ridge.
Once the Civil War was over, the Federal Government used the Cherokee secession as an excuse to invalidate all previous treaties with the Cherokee. They revoked some Cherokee lands to develop railways, allocate it to other tribes, or hand over to white settlers.
Sorry, I don't have any interesting anecdotal stories, but this is a general look at the events.
Source: Cherokee History-Lee Sultzman.
Like in other moments of United States history, Native Americans made their own decisions about whether they would participate in the Civil War and to what degree they would be involved. Many historians refer to the Civil War as a conflict where “brother fought brother.” For American Indians involved in the hostilities, this was often a literal truth. The goal of this post is to give a broad look at Indian involvement in the Civil War throughout the United States.
As IronMaiden571 noted, the Cherokee, Chickasaws, Chocktaws, Creeks, and Seminole were slave-holding tribes who aligned with the Confederacy. These peoples were known as the “Five Civilized Tribes” and their population was over 100,000. They considered the Confederacy their best chance to maintain their freedom, which was ironic considering it was the southern states who pushed hardest for Indian removal to Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Cherokee chief John Ross considered neutrality in the Summer of 1861. At first he tried to play both sides. He wrote to Confederate General Benjamin McCulloch requesting protection from “movements against the Cherokee people upon their Northern border.” Soon after Ross wrote to Lincoln and promised the Cherokee would remain faithful to the Union in any conflict. Governors and agents on both sides worked to woo the Cherokee and other Indian nations. Many Native Americans took Confederate victories at Bull Run and Wilson’s Creek as a sign of Southern superiority, which led Ross to follow the example of the other “Civilized Tribes” and sign a treaty with the Confederacy on October 7, 1861. The Treaty guaranteed the Cherokee self-government, a representative in Congress, and $500,000 for their neutral lands. For many Native Americans, entering the war was a complex decision that encompassed their entire populations.
The loss of the Five Civilized Tribes was a major blow to President Lincoln. The war was taxing the already inefficient and corrupt Indian system. Minnesota Sioux saw weakening federal control as an opportunity to revolt against encroaching settlers. In 1862, a long history of tension erupted and a series of Sioux raids forced 23 Minnesota counties to evacuate. Settler groups responded by forming their own guerilla bands and executing 303 Sioux prisoners. Lincoln apologized for the incident and promised Indian reform. But the threat of uprisings in the West persisted. The Union could not afford to fight the war on two major fronts. The threat Western Indian tribes posed was one of the major reasons Lincoln moved to enlist African American soldiers in the Union Army.
Some Indians, like the Cherokee Colonel Stand Watie and his raiders, saw the war as an opportunity to pillage both Union and Confederate border communities. Watie had grown disillusioned with a Confederacy that made “no vigorous effort” to drive “the enemy from Indian Territory.” In the far west the Shoshones and Bannocks used federal preoccupation with the South as an opportunity to attack caravans, mining camps, and Mormon towns. Other tribes, such as the Comanche, Kiowa, Shawnee, Wichita, and Seneca were less concerned with the Southern cause and only assisted the Confederacy when it served their own interests.
I should note that Indians were not universally opposed to the Union states. Ute and Jicarilla Apache scouts were key in General James H. Carleton’s defense of New Mexico against the Comanche and the Texans. Additionally, the Civil War was not a time when all Indian tribes thrived. Carson fought the Navajo living in northern New Mexico in 1863. The Dine were then moved to a large reserve/prison at Bosque Redondo in 1864.
I hope this post illustrates how the effects the Civil War had on Native communities were incredibly diverse (and how Native Americans affected the war too). After the Civil War, the country’s attention turned West with the passage of the Homestead Act. Unemployed soldiers/engineers found work on the railroads and the bourgeoning mining industry. Native Americans provided a new, powerful enemy for the Union’s strengthened military institutions. Fighting Indians offered Americans a chance to reform an identity that had been shattered by the Civil War.
SOURCES:
Major Problems in American Indian History by Albert C. Hurtado and Peter Iverson
“Deadly Contests” by Ari Kelman
Lincoln and the Indians by David A. Nichols
“Native Americans and the Civil War” by Arrell Morgan Gibson
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides
The American Civil War is often seen by historians as having a Western front as well - against Native Americans. I work in Colorado, and the Sand Creek Massacre can be viewed within this context. It took place in 1864, and all the language leading up to it was couched in terms of loyalty to the Union. Gov. Evans referred to "hostile Indians" as enemies of the state. He authorized volunteer militias to raise up and fight these people. The history of that event in particular is long and contentious, so I won't delve into it here. You can see some useful original documents relating to the SCM here. That's just one example, I'm sure others can speak to Native groups in their own regions. I think there's some interesting history around the Cherokee in North Carolina during the Civil War, but I'm no expert in that area.
An older post I did about the historical accuracy of Blood Meridian during this time period about the Native Americans. It might be of some interest.
"I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces ... With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors ... By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops."
—John S. Smith, Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith, 1865
"Fingers and ears were cut off the bodies for the jewelry they carried. The body of White Antelope, lying solitarily in the creek bed, was a prime target. Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears, and testicles-the last for a tobacco pouch."
—Stan Hoig
These passages seem like they could have been pulled out from Blood Meridian, but they were actually the vivid descriptions of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 during the Civil War.
Your question stuck with me for some reason. I'm a big Cormac McCarthy fan and also read a lot about the US Civil War. There were a few instances that came into my mind when you originally asked your question, but none of the things that I've read about the Civil War would have contributed to answering the question until I read about the Sand Creek Massacre. McCarthy had to have used this as his inspiration for writing the scene where the Glanton gang massacres the Indian tribe. I looked online and there is surprisingly no mention of McCarthy doing this but even a cursory look at the battle makes it seem like he almost lifted it verbatim.
The men, led by Col Chivington a veteran of the New Mexico campaign, who participated in the massacre were all American soldiers. This group of about 700 men attacked an Indian tribe who was trying to make peace with the United States--they were flying an American flag at their campsite and flew up a white flag as soon as the attack started--and believed they were under the protection of the US.
Most of the Indian men of the tribe were off hunting buffalo but Chivington's men slaughtered the remaining men, women and children who were there. The attack happened before dawn, "The Indians lay sleeping in their lodges pitched in a bend of the creek at their back." The soldiers cut off their scalps, genitalia, and fingers to display on their horses and the tops of their hats. After the battle was over the soldiers prowled amongst the wounded Indians taking more scalps and battle trophies. This reminded me of Blood Meridian to a tee.
Many of the men got drunk before the massacre and some of them even refused to fire on the Indian tribe.
I pulled all of this from Shelby Foote's Civil War Narrative Vol. 3 pgs. 725-726. It shocked me to read this and I immediately thought of your post. I also read about this on Wikipedia which corroborated all the things Foote wrote. It made me sad to think that American soldiers did this during the Civil War. There were problems with a certain group of Indians; the Indians that were massacred weren't the issue, and this event caused much of the problems that would follow in later years. The indiscriminate killing of infants and children by American soldiers was quite shocking. With the Glanton gang I always thought, "These are outlaw men and fiction; not real people or American soldiers."
I can only imagine what happened in the lawlessness of the west in the 1840's and 1850's if this was happening during the Civil War. I guess I found out McCarthy's Blood Meridian was more truthful than I ever thought.
There was a unit of Sharpshooters that was formed in Michigan from the Odawas, they made up company K for the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters.
Here's an article that talks about them and some of the other tribes during the war.
During the Civil War, the Comanche took the opportunity to push the Texas frontier back eastward about 100 miles. With both the US and Confederates preoccupied with each other, the Comanche were able to raid even to the coast in Texas and continue their annual raids into Mexico.
Empire of the Summer Moon S.C. Gwynne