Bear Grease - Ep. 467: Civil War - Part 3: The Scalped Soldiers and Why They Fought

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Host Clay Newcomb continues his personal exploration of the Civil War with historian J.D. Huitt of The History Underground YouTube channel. J.D. surprises Clay with historical documentation of his own third-great-grandfather, Thomas Newcomb, a Confederate soldier from southwest Arkansas. As they continue through the history of the war, Clay attempts to answer one of the most challenging questions in American history: Why did ordinary people choose to fight? The search for answers leads Clay and J.D. to the Fayetteville National Cemetery and the graves of Union soldiers who were scalped after the Battle of Pea Ridge. From there, they dive into the overlooked story of Native Americans in the Civil War, exploring why thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole soldiers sided with the Confederacy and the remarkable story of Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. My SUV is worth more than ever. Time to upgrade? There's never been a better time. At Plaza Auto Group locations get top value for your trade and shop hundreds of new and pre-owned vehicles across 11 locations. And if you can't come to us, we'll come to you.

With best in class pricing, unbeatable trade values, and 70 years of trust. It's easy to see why families choose the Plaza Auto Group. Plaza Auto Group, celebrating 7,000. 70 years, family owned and operated. Visit plaza auto group.com. If you do offseason work, you know what beats up gear, scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldware is built for all that.

No shortcuts. Purpose built, durable. Hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. People typically look at the Native Americans who were relocated out to present-day Oklahoma, and they say, okay, federal government is the oppressor. The five civilized tribes are the oppressed.

And then we'll also look and say, okay, slave owner is oppressor, slave is the oppressed. Well, what do you do when you have an oppressed people who are oppressing people? you know, what category do they fall into? And I don't know if they fall into any category except for complex human being. One of the most interesting components of the Civil War for me is trying to understand why individual people and different groups of people fought.

We're about to explore the reasons why and learn about some unique groups. And it's going to get personal quick as I learned some stuff about my family, the Newcoms that I didn't know. and we're going to spend the second half of the podcast diving into an unlikely group. We're going to try to understand why the Native Americans fought. They're hardly mentioned in the recounting of the war, but they did fight, and they were significant.

And J.D. Hewitt and I are going to go on a field trip to visit the graves of some union soldiers who were scalped. The plot thickens, and I hope that you will join me on my first. my personal exploration of the Civil War. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Brought to you by Tukovas boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Tocovas for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. J.D. Hewitt of the History Underground YouTube channel has been dropping some serious knowledge on us in the last two episodes. He's mentioned some of his direct descendants

who fought for the Union and some more distant who fought for the Confederates. And he's going to ask me a question that I ashamedly wasn't ready for. I mentioned my ancestor. Do you know, do you have any ancestors in the Civil War? I'm ashamed to say I know little about it. I know that we had people, the short answer is no. Okay. I don't really have. That's, I mean, that's fine. Most, most people, right. Most people don't. I did a little research before I came out. One of the individuals who was in Company H of the 23rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment was a guy by the name of Thomas Newcomb, who is your third great-grandfather. So you're, I,

Wow. You just totally bushwhacked me. This is awesome. I mean, I know Thomas Newcomb. I know that I'm a seventh generation, Arkansas. Yeah. So Thomas Newcomb is going to be part of the second battle of Corinth to try and retake that. How did you find this out? So here is a copy. Can you believe this, Josh? That's pretty cool. Well, see, I know my ancestry back, Gary, Lewin, Oscar, Robert, Thomas, Thomas. Yeah. That's the seven.

Yeah. So the original Thomas that came to Arkansas was in the early 1830s. Yes. This is his son. Yeah, this is the second Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. So what you're holding there, that's a copy of his Confederate military service record.

So they had to keep. a document. That's from the, you know, the Civil War. They had to keep a document of when they had roll call and, you know, if they were present and all kinds of stuff like that. So we have a paper trail of where Thomas Newcomb was. I'm astonished, J.D. Yeah. So it gets better. I'm taken aback when things highlight how recently the Civil War was. My grandfather used to take me to the crumbling oak home place of his grandfather, Robert Newcomb, in the community of Bumblebee in Montgomery County in southwest Arkansas. The Thomas Newcomb who fought in the Civil War was Robert's father. Thomas would die in his 60s in 1895, 24 years before my grandfather would be

born in 1919. So this man who impacted my life so much, my grandfather, Lewin Newcomb, bird dog trainer and pastor, was within arms of my mom. reach of veterans of the Civil War and many of them would live well into his lifetime. For instance, Hulk Collier lived until 1936. But here's where we're at in this grandiose feat of attempting to dip a pail of water out of the ocean of the Civil War. I've talked about how intimidating it is to do this. But this war began in earnest with the Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run or Manassas, which shattered the hopes of both sides that the conflict would be short. Over the next two years, the war expanded into a vast struggle across the eastern and

western theaters. The Battle of Corinth took place in late April 1862 when Union forces took the railroad junction at Corinth, Mississippi. The capture gave the Union control of one of the most important transportation hubs in the Confederacy. In the second Battle of Corinth, where Thomas Newcomb was, occurred in October of 62 when Confederate forces tried to retake the town, but they lost. So like a band of thieves, the Confederates took to the river and headed south. Sorry to say, the Confederates aren't able to retake Corinth. But Thomas was there.

Thomas was there. He's 100% part of that action. Wow. They're trying to take Corinth from. from the northwest. They're going to be sent down to Port Hudson. So this is another one of those key points along the Mississippi River. 23rd, Arkansas Infantry is going to have to guard this spot.

So you got that, and then you got Vicksburg. So again, just to keep everything kind of general, Vicksburg ends up falling on July 4th of 1863. Even though they had taken Vicksburg, they still had Port Hudson. that had to be taken in order to get a complete control of the Mississippi River. These poor guys at Port Hudson were in about as awful of a shape as you can possibly imagine. They are completely surrounded. It's the longest siege of the Civil War, just a day longer than the siege at Vicksburg.

They are reduced to eating rats. I'm sorry, they have to eat the mules. So they're in a bad spot. So he's there. He's at Port Hudson. He's at Port Hudson. Yeah. Wow.

Now, they surrender. And the guys in the 23rd Arkansas, the officers go to a prisoner of war camp. The enlisted men are just placed on parole. So they're allowed to go home. As far as a paper trail with him specifically, That's where, that's all that I could find. So Thomas Newcomb would have been 24 years old in 1961, which would have been the perfect age for fighting.

Yeah. I mean, you think about ultimately the sovereignty of God in terms of when you're born and kind of what you're, the time period you're on this earth kind of leads you into. And golly, a man in his early 20s in 1860s, he's probably going to war. Most likely. He definitely did. I'm sitting here looking at images of the headstone of Thomas J. Newcomb and his Confederate paperwork. I knew my family fought, as most did down here, but I'm still kind of just blown away, just hovering here.

I've got so many questions. Did he suffer at Port Hudson? Did he have to eat mule meat and rats? But really what I'm interested in is why did my ancestor, with the last name, just like my why did he fight? I honestly don't know if he owns slaves. But based upon where he lived in evidence of his financial situation,

I'd say it's quite unlikely. But I think I need to understand more about Vicksburg and Port Hudson to put Thomas J. Newcomb's service in the Confederate War into context. By the summer of 1863, Port Hudson and Vicksburg were the last major Confederate strongholds on Mississippi River.

At this time the union had gained control of much of the river system, crippling Confederate mobility in the West, and these victories would help seal the war for the Union. Grant would say the fate of the Confederacy was sealed at Vicksburg. When Port Hudson 240 miles south of Vicksburg fell, Lincoln said, The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. The Confederacy was, quote, cut in twain,

just like the union's anaconda plan had scripted. That's right, they had a plan called the Anaconda Plan, which was designed to surround the South via water, along the Mississippi River, the Gulf Coast, and the Atlantic Coast, and basically constricted, choking out supplies, and gradually moving into the heart of the South. These Union victories marked the turning point in the war, and this is where the paper trail of Thomas J. Newcomb ends.

But as I'm looking at his service papers, I noticed something peculiar. So can you tell me what these other papers are in here? Yeah. So here's the role of the prisoners of war. Look how they spelled their name. He spelled his name, N-E-W-K-H-A-M. Did he spell it that way? Yeah.

Yeah. So you see that quite a bit. These guys were maybe like functionally literate. So maybe he just couldn't spell his name that well. Hey, you can stop with the illiterate southern jokes, J-D, all right, all right. N-E-W-K-H-A-M. Yeah. We've never been good spellers.

Still aren't. So. Here's where he's, okay. Wow, he was captured at Port Hudson on July 9, 1863. Yeah. Most of those guys, or a decent portion of those guys, were so weak and famished they couldn't even stand in order to, to be. be counted. Prisoner of war. So here's the muster rule where he's mustered into service. So initially it's for a period of 12 months and then later it gets... He was mustered in in

Arkadelphia. Yep. Yep. March 6th, 1862. Our last name is spelled N-E-W-C-O-M-B. And it's spelled that way on Thomas's headstone. But on his Confederate paperwork, he spelled at N-E-W-K-H-A-M. Thomas had just been married for a little over a year when he mustered into the Confederacy, and he married my great, great, great grandmother, Lydia Markham. But here, J.D. is going to make a wild connection. The 23rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment kind of ceases to exist at this point, but they are going to reform. Now, let's say you're Thomas Newcomb and you've been paroled. and you get sent back to Arkansas.

Bumblebee Arkansas. To Bumblebee Arkansas. Yeah. Civil War's not over yet. What do you think he would have done? You tell me, brother. I'm on the edge of my seat. I don't know.

I don't know. A lot of these guys, even though they've been paroled and weren't supposed to, sometimes they change their name, sometimes they jump back into the fight. The 23rd Arkansas regiment is going to be reformed. They end up linking us.

back with Sterling Price. And in 1864, the fall of 1864, Sterling Price is going to launch an invasion into Missouri. They're going to make basically a loop that goes through. They're trying to recruit new troops, and they are wrecking stuff as they go. So they make this big circle. They're going to go up. They're going to hit the Missouri River. They're going to go over to Kansas City. They're going to fight the Battle of Westport. And they're going to have a big loss there, and then they're going to start making their way back to Arkansas. If Thomas Newcomb was part of that group, which there's a likelihood that he is, we don't know for sure.

But if he was, your third great-grandpa fought directly against my third-great-grandpa in the 10th Missouri Cavalry. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible, man. Yeah. Yeah.

So all kinds of cool little personal connections and stuff like that. once you start digging a little. Man, it's, it's, I'm always astonished at how little people know about their history, including me. I'm still learning. All kinds of stuff about mine, yeah. Just in the last 15 years have I started asking my dad questions, who started asking people that knew more than him about our family history.

And like, he wouldn't have grown up even knowing that much about the Newcoms. Just in my generation, have we been like, oh, dang, we've been here since the 1830s. Yeah. And there is this paper trail of where people came from. But I'm astonished how quickly we forget, but also how, I mean, this explains like the unintentional impact of the Civil War even on my life. Like I started off this series by talking about how as a kid growing up in Meena, Arkansas, there was this, like the Civil War was a thing. Yeah. I wasn't until I was an adult that I realized it and thought it was peculiar that this war 170 years ago still people were talking about it.

But three, my point in that is that third great-grandfather seems like a long ways away, but really wasn't that far. It's not that far. Time is so deceptive, but it just wasn't that long ago. No, and that helps us to understand why people are still passionate about the war today. This whole series is my personal exploration into the Civil War. And one of the most perplexing questions is what was the motivation of the people who fought? It's actually one of the most important questions. And JD's going to address it right here.

So again, going back to my original analogy of looking at history from 30,000 feet and looking at it on the ground. From 30,000 feet, this is a conflict. that comes about because of the institution of slavery. It's not a war of abolition in the beginning. Now, the war aims are going to change as things progress. But when you get down on the ground, a common objection that I hear when people say that it wasn't about slavery, you know, my ancestor didn't own slaves. So I have an ancestor, my three-time great-grandfather, who was in the 15th,

Texas cavalry. Have a photo of him. Rough-looking old dude. He is a rugged-looking man. He didn't own slaves. Did he go to war to protect the institution of slavery? Probably not. In Ken Burns' series on the Civil War, Shelby Foote recounts a story where a union man is talking to a Confederate prisoner, and he says, why are you fighting? he says, because you're down here. So for the guy on the ground, that might be why he is fighting, but there's something that is bigger that is going on in a larger context that has put him into that place. On the same token, is it a war of abolition? The guy from, you know, the farm in Iowa who signs up and is fighting with the third Iowa regiment, is he fighting to free the

slaves? Probably not. What he's fighting for is the union to keep the country together. So it is possible for two things to be true at the same time. It's possible that from the founding of our country all the way up to the firing on Fort Sumter, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, that this country is wrestling over slavery. And it's also true that on an individual level, these guys have lots of different reasons why they are fighting in the Civil War. Some might view assigning any moderate or reasonable reason for a Confederate to fight as an attempt to give shade to racist, terrorist traitors. But I don't think that's entirely fair. I'm just actually trying to understand them, which I have good reason to. And I'd be fine with admitting that my ancestors were evil people,

and they may have been. As a matter of fact, I know they weren't saints. But what I do know is that my grandfather, Lewin, accepted the forgiveness of Christ and his life was radically transformed in the late 1940s after he attended a tent revival, and it forever shifted him in the generations of Newcombs beyond them. To this day. Pride months, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada. Your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations.

Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. IHart Radio. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what first light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use. No shortcuts. Hardwearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters, built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right

way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. I've made many references to the book Battle Crive Freedom by James McPherson, and I'd like to read an excerpt highlighting the complexity of why people fought. We'll start off with a union. And I quote from the book, scholars who have examined thousands of letters and diaries written by union soldiers found them expressing similar motives. Fighting to maintain the best government on earth was a common phrase. It was a great struggle for the union constitution and law wrote a New Jersey soldier. Quote, our glorious institutions are likely to be destroyed. We will be held responsible before God if we don't do our part in helping to transmit this boon of civil and religious

liberty down to succeeding generations. A Midwestern recruit enlisted as a duty I owe to my country and to my children to do what I can to preserve this government as I shuddered to think what is ahead for them if this government should be overthrown. Americans of 1861 felt responsible to their forebears as well as to God and posterity. I know. how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the revolution wrote a New England private to his wife on the eve of the first battle of Bull Run from Manassas. Quote, I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt. That's what the guys from the union were

saying. Here's what some others said. And again, I quote from the book, Jefferson Davis said repeatedly that the South was fighting for the same sacred right of self-government that the Revolutione fathers had fought for. In his first message to Congress after the fall of Sumter, Davis proclaimed that the Confederacy would seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated. All we ask is to be let alone. Both sides believe they were fighting to. preserve the heritage of Republican liberty. But Davis's last phrase, all we ask is to be let alone, specified the most immediate, tangible Confederate war aim, defense against invasion. Regarding Union soldiers as vandals been on plundering the South and liberating the slaves, many Southerners literally believed they were fighting to defend home, hearth, wives, and sisters.

Our men must prevail in combat or lose their property, country, freedom, everything, wrote a Southern diarist. On the other hand, the enemy in yielding the contest may retire into their own country and possess everything they enjoyed before the war. A young English immigrant to Arkansas enlisted in the army after he was swept off his feet by a recruitment meeting. He later wrote that his southern friends said they would welcome a bloody grave rather than survive to see the proud foe violating their altars and their hearths. Southern women brought irresistible pressure on men to enlist. Quote, if every man did not hasten the battle, they vowed they themselves would rush out and

meet the Yankee vandals. In a land where women were worshipped by the men, such language made them war mad. A Virginian was avid to be in the front rank of the first brigade that marches against the invading foe who now pollute the sacred soil of my beloved native state with their unholy tread. A Confederate soldier captured early in the war put it more simply. His tattered homespun uniform and even more homespun speech made it clear that he was not a member of the planner class. His captors asked why he, a non-slaveholder, was fighting to uphold slavery.

He replied, I'm fighting because you're down here. For this soldier, as for many other southerners, the war was not about slavery. But without slavery, there would have been no black Republicans. to threaten the South's way of life. No special southern civilization to defend against Yankee invasion. This paradox plagued southern efforts to define their war aims.

End of quote from the book Battle Cry of Freedom. I don't know why Thomas J. Newcomb fought. If I had to guess, he'd probably fall into the category of, this is my home, it's being invaded. And the cultural pressure to join the Confederacy was probably so strong he felt it his civic duty, but I'll never know. And I recognize that I'm

giving him a generous benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was a slave owner. But the South has never been a monolith. And still today, it's divided into two main groups. And it's really simplified. This is oversimplified. But the plantation belt is the most fertile lowland regions with large-scale ag that heavily relied on slavery. And then the Highland South, or the upcountry south of Appalachia and the Ozarks, where yeoman subsistence farmers lived, often with very low numbers of slaves in these regions, but most of the upcountry folks sided with the Confederacy,

constituting the bulk of the Confederate soldiers, but were often upset claiming that this was a rich man's war. By the end of the war, over 100,000 Confederate soldiers would desert, And one officer observed that they were the poorest class of non-slaveholders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families. Many were upset by the unprecedented conscription or draft of the Confederacy. Men's families were starving, but they had to fight, many for a cause that they didn't believe in. A mother of three children whose husband was fighting wrote to Jefferson Davis in 1862 and said, if I and my little children suffer and die while their father is in service, I invoke God

Almighty that our blood rest upon the South. Inflation in the South was exorbitant, and one newspaper said, the whole South stinks with the lust of extortion. The North had it rough, too, but their economy fared better, and the war just wasn't being fought there. Wealthy Southerners were also legally able to hire a substitute to go to war for them and those positions were paying as much as $6,000, which was equivalent to a three-year's annual wage. And because of all this, there was a rise of what they called upcountry unionism. This became significant. And we've said it before, but there was a secret society in the Ozarks that supplied 8,000 men to the unions. This also took place in East Tennessee.

In 1865, a journalist defined upcountry unionism. as a hatred for all those who went into the rebellion. So these are Southerners who hated people that brought them into this. But this brings up another interesting group that we haven't addressed. And that's the 130,000 blacks that fought for the Union, which was 10% of the Union Army. In 1862, before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Congress passed an act. freeing slaves who had owners in the Confederate Army. Lincoln was concerned, though, that allowing them to enlist in the U.S. military would entice

the border states to secede, so he didn't let him join the army right off. But in 63, after the proclamation, they began to recruit blacks to join the Union Army. These were the first blacks to serve in the U.S. military since legislation in 1792 outlawed them from serving. Thousands of blacks served in the Revolutionary War. But in May of 1863, the Bureau of Colored Troops was formed to help manage them. Some of these people were already living as free men in the North. Some were runaway slaves, and they fought to solidify their future rights as full citizens.

And I'm certain that their reasons were personal and varied, just like everyone else. 40,000 African Americans would die in the Civil War. It's estimated that 30,000 were lost to disease. I'd love to talk with the black person that knows their family history and had something to add to our conversation about the Civil War. I'm certain there are many who know their family history as slaves and then as free people. It's kind of a touchy subject, but I invite you to email us at bare grease at the meat eater.com. but this brings us to a crossroads in our bucket dip into the civil war

I'd like to learn about a unique group of unlikely people who also fought most of which who served in the Confederacy you wouldn't have thought they'd have a dog in this fight but J.D. Hewitt and I are going on a field trip It is a beautiful day in northwest Arkansas. I'm here with J.D. Hewitt. Hey, how's it going? I thought you were talking to me, not to your microphone. Oh, I just got out of my car. I'm talking to the microphone.

We're at the Fadeville National Cemetery. Yeah. And you told me something that was shocking to me that I did not know before about some of the men that are buried here. The Fayetteville National Cemetery was established in 1867, and it sits on 15 acres that today holds over 10,000 graves. The first interred into the cemetery were from the Battle of Pea Ridge, 20 miles north. I'm told it's the biggest Civil War battle west of the Mississippi.

But by 1871, there were 1,200 people buried here, most of them unidentified, and their headstones simply marked as unknown soldier. Yeah. Yeah, so typically after a battle, what would happen is they would bury the dead in a field grave, and then they would come back later and exhumed the grave and then move them to a more permanent location. That's a lot of work. Sometimes, I mean, they don't have dog tags at this point. So sometimes they might have a letter that,

is tucked in their pocket that has their name on it. Okay, so that's how we know that this is William Quick or that this is Dan Ringbolt or something like that. Sometimes you'll see an unknown soldier and then it'll tell what state he was from or what regiment he was from. Maybe we can identify that by the button. So yeah, it's just kind of all over the map.

But the guys that we're trying to find, we know exactly how they died and exactly who they were. Yeah. anxiously looks at a map on his phone trying to get his bearings in this cemetery. It's quiet here. There's no one in sight. We're wandering across probably two acres of graves. We're looking for a specific name, a union soldier, which I'm interested in,

but I'm really mainly interested in the guys who killed him. I see it. Here we go. Here's Elisha Ham. Elisha Ham. Elisha Ham. Okay, so Elisha Ham was a native of Illinois, but joined up with an Iowa regiment. And this man right here at the age of 20 was at the Battle of Pea Ridge and is going to be one of the members of the third Iowa regiment who is going to be scalped by one of the men from the Cherokee mounted rifles at the Battle of Pea Ridge. So these guys that were in this battle were, to your knowledge, the only men scalped in the Civil War.

At the hands of someone from one of the Indian regiments, to my knowledge, yes. There are eight Union soldiers buried here that were scalped by the Cherokees. I had no idea that this was here. than 15 miles from my house. I've got to learn more, and I know JD can tell me what's going on. Remember, we're still exploring the question of why people fought,

and specifically, why did these Native Americans get involved? The Civil War invokes a lot of different people onto the battlefield for a lot of different reasons, and one of the most interesting groups of people that entered the Civil War, were Native Americans who if just they many of the native tribes out of the southeast had been relocated into Oklahoma territory in the 1830s on what we know is the trail of tears and and these these Native American tribes what we saw is that

they sided with the Confederacy and why did they do this and begin to tell me about this thing that's really interesting Native Americans fighting for the Confederacy. The Civil War starts in April of 1861. What a lot of people may not know is there had already been another Civil War that had been raging for over 25 years before that. That was in the Indian Territory. So in 1860, you have about 100,000 Native Americans in present-day Oklahoma.

most of them are from what we're called the five civilized tribes. So this is going to be the Cherokee, the Chalkita, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole. These are individuals who had been relocated out to Oklahoma from areas like Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Florida in the Indian Removal Act. We have a tendency to view our history as being very black and white. There's good guys, there's bad guys. There's oppressors and there are the oppressed. History is way more nuanced than that, though. So in 1835, you have the U.S. government who has passed the Indian removal act.

which authorizes them to make treaties and agreements with the Native Americans of the southeast. Andrew Jackson is president at this time. So he's part of wars against the Creek Indians. What people may not know is that it wasn't just U.S. soldiers who were fighting against the Creek. there was another element of the Creek tribes that were fighting with him and also the Cherokee. The Creek War had been all the way back in 1813 and 1814, but the Cherokees had a major division ever since they left their native homelands in the 1830s. The breaking up of these societies just made it really hard to keep people unified.

What's interesting is one of the things that caused a lot of the people. of tensions when they made it back to Oklahoma. A lot of people know about the Trail of Tears and this relocation of the people of what we're called the five civilized tribes from the southeast all the way out to Oklahoma. What they may not realize is that it's not just Creek and Cherokee and Seminole and Chautau and Chickasaw who are being moved. With them are also their black slaves. So slavery is something that is deeply embedded in the culture of these Native American people. Do you have any sense of how many or how common it was? Yeah, so in 1860, out in the Indian territory, again, present day Oklahoma, the Cherokee had about 2,500 slaves in their population.

Oh, African slaves. Yeah, yeah. The Choctaw was about 2,300. Creek, you're looking at about 1600. Chickasaw had a smaller number. They had about a thousand slaves in their population, and the Seminole didn't have slaves at all. Help me make sense of this, because it feels like that these people would have been these,

they were moved Indian territory. So you would feel like they were these completely disenfranchised people, even economically separate in many ways from this nation that was growing up around them. I mean, is that true, though? Because if they had the money to have African slaves, they would have bought them. Yeah. So it's, we have cotton being one of the most profitable enterprises in the South during this period of time. So there's... So the Native Americans were growing cotton.

Yeah. So it's used in agriculture and things like that. A lot of people today, when they think Native Americans, they think dances with wolves. The Cherokee and the Choctaw and these tribes, it was very, very different. They had actually adopted kind of a lot of Western ways. By this time. By this time.

Yeah. So even after the relocation out to the Indian territory, like there are some of these Native Americans who are wealthy and are living in, you know, very luxurious homes. Now, the war is going to tear all of that apart. So after the Confederates secede from the Union, there is a very concerted effort on the part of the Confederacy to court these Native Americans into joining with them in this fight.

if you look at the geography of where Oklahoma lies today, it kind of makes sense. If the union moves into the Indian territory, well, now you have access to Texas. You can flank Arkansas so they don't want that. They want to kind of maintain that as a buffer zone between Kansas and Texas. And also for many of the. Native Americans. They kind of have common cause with the Confederacy in wanting to preserve the institution of slavery. Now, the Indian nation was kind of separate in a lot of ways because they were their own thing. But Benjamin McCulloch is originally going to be sent to try and

and recruit some of these Native Americans from the five civilized tribes into the Confederacy. There's also going to be a guy named Albert Pike. When you look at him, he looks like a mountain man. But he's a lawyer. He's very, very intelligent. He speaks multiple languages. He had a lot of experience with them.

Were they also disenfranchised with the U.S. government and just felt like if the Confederacy became its own, recognized nation that they would be dealt with better by the Confederates than they would of the United States government? Some of them. The tribes are going to be split. Right. I mean, they're going to be split just like the United States is. So it's not like we're dealing with a monolith where they all think one thing or they all think the other. It's not known how many Native Americans fought for the Confederacy, but it's safe to say a minimum of 5,000 and maybe as many as 10,000.

A smaller number of Native Americans fought for the union, whose assumed motivation was to preserve the union so the U.S. government would uphold their treaties. According to the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Institution, more Native people fought for the Confederacy than the Union. But the details are very hazy. My SUV is worth more than ever. Time to upgrade? There's never been a better time. At Plaza Auto Group locations, get top value for your trade and shop hundreds of new and pre-owned vehicles across 11 locations. And if you can't come to us, we'll come to you.

With best in class pricing, unbeatable trade values, and 70 years of trust. It's easy to see why families choose the Plaza Auto Group. Plaza Auto Group, celebrating 70 years family owned and operated. Visit Plaza Auto Group.com. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. scouting hanging cameras cutting lanes fixing fences packing practice prep the stuff that doesn't get noticed but that makes the difference that's what first light fieldware is designed for fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends every piece is built for real use no shortcuts hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way.

If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. You told me that the research that you had to do to find this information out was really hard to find. And that, again,

west of the Mississippi River, the Civil War starts to get less, historians are less certain about exactly what happened. but even more so uncertain with the Native Americans involved. Am I right? You had to do a bunch of going back to source documentation. So in this book right here that's as big as Appalachian Family Bible,

there is less than a paragraph about the Native American regiments in the Civil War. And you're telling me that there were thousands. I mean, we're talking about two regiments right now that were. Of Cherokee. of just Cherokee in the realm of a thousand each. Yeah. So it's not like there were like 20 Cherokees that were fighting in this war. No, no.

They were quite a pretty big involvement. Yeah. Yeah, it's a significant presence of the, that warrants more attention than what they typically get. So yeah, you look at Trans-Mississippi Theater. It doesn't get a whole lot of, it gets the least amount of attention of any theater in the war. and then you look at these Indian regiments. They were there and they were significant. And they get even less attention than the other.

Why is that? Just because the documentation of it is difficult? I mean, it's like it's a different government. I mean, they were nations that were not the Confederacy and not the United States. So maybe just like record keeping was different. Yeah, that's. Or they marginalized just like people. People didn't care, people didn't, hard to say.

Yeah, it's hard to say. It's hard to say. Are these guys outfitted like a standard Confederate regiment? They were supposed to be. But what ends up happening is if you look at the Indian territory, I mean, this is like the frontier for both the north and the south. These guys are way the heck out there. And initially they're promised, yeah, we'll send you weapons, we'll send you this, we'll send you that. But as the war really starts cranking up, the demands of the war keep a lot of those supplies from reaching these Native American regiments.

A Cherokee man that rose to the top was Stan Wadi, not Stan, S-T-A-N, but Stan, S-T-A-N-D. He's going to be an interesting player in the scalping at Pea Ridge. He was born in 1806 in Georgia. His mother was a full-blood Cherokee and his father was of European descent. His birth name was Dagga Doga Doga, which means he stands. His English name was simplified to stand. He would live a tumultuous life but moved to Oklahoma in 1835. Waddy's name appears on the highly controversial,

Treaty of Akota, which essentially ceded all Cherokee land east of Mississippi to the United States in exchange for $5 million in land in Oklahoma. Once Wadi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt from inside the tribe only to later kill the man responsible for the plot in Arkansas, but he would be acquitted for the murder and a plea of self-defense. Stand Wati would be the only Native American elevated to the title of general in the Confederacy or the Union. So he was a general. And we know that Elisha Ham was killed and scalped at the Battle of P. Ridge and Stan Wadi

and another Cherokee guy are leading the Confederate Cherokees there. J.D. is going to explain their involvement. The Battle of P. Ridge is going to be their first major, major engagement. So like I said there at the beginning, these guys come rolling in and hit the third Iowa infantry regiment and then just kind of get after it. Now, there are two different regiments and both of them blame each other for the scalping incident. So John Ross's party blames Stan Wadis. There was a consensus that they didn't feel like that was okay. I mean, I would have thought they would have been proud of that.

Yeah, what ends up happening is like Albert Pike is horrified at what he sees. The union, when they get a hold of this story, this is propaganda gold for them. Okay. Because they're like, hey, look at what these Confederates are doing. They're bringing in these wild, untamed, you know, savages. and they're scalping our men on the battlefield and they're killing the wounded and everything like that. You know, it seems like it could be used as well

in the other direction of just like fear. Wow, these guys are serious. These guys are bad to the bone. But I guess it ended up being a negative for the Confederates in terms of propaganda. Yeah, it doesn't go well for them. As a matter of fact, Samuel Curtis is going to, send a message to Earl Van Dorn, who's commanding the Confederate Army in that region, saying,

hey, this is what happened. This is out of bounds. Like, this is not how we're going to. For some reason that's surprising to me that scalping someone, I mean, I'm not saying I'm pro-scalping, but it's like this is the civil war. There is like incredible human atrocities happening at every level. Yeah. So you can atomize them with grape shot from a cannon, but scalping is... And when we say scalping, were these guys alive and they're cutting their hair off?

Or is it just like they're scalping a dead body? We don't know that for sure. That I don't think we have a clear answer on. but the practice itself is seen as an act of savagery that has no place on the battlefield. And it would have even had more sting to it in the 1860s than today we hear about this practice and it's this sensational act of war that's so far removed, we don't really, it doesn't seem that consequential to us. Like probably no one that we know is ever going to be scalped.

Right. Back in 1860, this was like much closer to the surface. Yeah. The American frontier. Well, there were still Indian wars yet to come in the West. Yeah. Where, you know, there would be some scalping going on. Sure.

Anyway, yeah, I guess I'm just trying to understand the psychology of this happening in the Civil War. Yeah. They're like, this is not supposed to be happening. We can kill each other and brothers fight against brothers. And people die of cholera, but don't scalp anybody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No need to be uncivilized in the way that we maim each other. Well, it also is, this is also like one of the last wars that was, in a way, like a gentleman's war. And again, the civil war turned into something much different than that. But at the beginning, I mean, you know, they're lining up in regiments. They're, you know, generals are communicating some with each other at different times. I don't know. It was just different than a modern war.

And so for this to happen, just off the chart, not only like. Yeah, it's definitely not something that you associate with the Civil War. Yeah. For sure. So how, where was this? So this happened in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, which is about 30 miles from where we sit. Yep. Where else were people scalped in the Civil War?

There are going to be scalpings that occur elsewhere, but that's going to be up in Missouri in the guerrilla war. There's going to be a guy by the name of Bloody Bill Anderson, who is an absolute psychopath, savage of a man. That might be a conversation for a different time, but he does a lot of scalping and... No, is he a Native American or is he... No, he's just...

No, he's just a straight-up psychopath. Yeah, yeah. So it only happens in this at P. Ridge? It's, to my knowledge, this is the one incident where it happens with the Native American regiments. Stan Wadi and his Confederate forces would be defeated at the Battle of P. Ridge. But here's an interesting story involving him in the lone Civil War naval battle in Oklahoma. When you think of Oklahoma, you don't think of there being any naval operations. Like you follow, baby.

Big Lake. Wasn't in existence then. Man-made reservoir. Yeah. So in June of 1864, there's going to be a steamboat called the J.R. Williams that is going to be making its way up the Arkansas River. I was going to guess the Arkansas River. Yeah. Yeah.

They're taking supplies from Fort Smith and going to Fort Gibson. Fort Gibson. Fort Gibson became like a refugee center for a lot of the Indians. in Indian territory. So they are bringing supplies up. And Stan Wadi and his men are going to be positioned on the south side of the river. There's a force of about 25 or 26 union men who are armed and guarding this steamboat. And Wadi's men opened up on them with cannon.

So they're firing from the bank. the men from the steamship are firing back the the steamboat uh the the the steamboat uh the steamboat is going to end up running the ground on the north bank of the Arkansas river they have a little bit of a shootout and then these guys who are guarding the boat end up fleeing and trying to get to a camp to get reinforcements and stand waddy's men are going to go in and and raid the food and the weapons and everything off of here so So, yeah, that's the... Naval battle.

The lone naval battle in Oklahoma history. Yeah, right there. Wow. Probably the greatest victory that Stan Wadi and the Indian Brigade has is at the second battle of Cabin Creek. So again, I mentioned that there's this north-south route that is connecting Kansas to Fort Gibson. and Wadi and his men are going to ambush this supply that is traveling to Fort Gibson. They're going to end up with like a million dollars worth of equipment and clothing and food and things like that. What's kind of really interesting about Stan Wadi and something that makes him, I don't know,

know, a little bit different, is we typically look at the Civil War as ending at Appomattox Courthouse with the surrender of Robert E. Lee. Stan Wadi is actually going to be the last Confederate general of the Civil War to surrender. Yeah, he's going to hold out until June of 1865. So, so yeah, a couple of months after, you know, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia have wrapped it up. What was he thinking? Like, why would he do that? I mean, did he think he stood a chance of, like, holding out for his people? It just seems like if your main guy, you know, Robert E. Lee had surrendered, it would be like a sign. This is probably over. Yeah. He is an exceptionally stubborn. He is an exceptionally stubborn.

man, I think. And, and, yeah, is going to hold out until June. And something else that is kind of interesting is that, you know, we think of slavery ending in the United States with the 13th Amendment in 1865. Legally, it's going to persist in the Indian territory all the way until the summer of 1866. So that's That's actually the last holdout of slavery as well is the Indian territories. Wow. So there were thousands of African slaves in Indian territory owned by Native Americans, and that was the last holdout of slavery on this continent. Yeah.

It's astonishing. I love digging into this and looking at it because it's so messy and not clear cut because again

typically we look at things in very black and white terms and in this victimizer and victim matrix or oppressor and oppressed. So people typically look at the Native Americans who were relocated out to

present-day Oklahoma, and they say, okay, federal government is the oppressor. The five civilized tribes are the oppressed. And then we'll also look and say, okay, slave owner is oppressor, slave is the oppressed. Well, what do you do when you have an oppressed people who are oppressing people? You know, what category do they fall into? And I don't know if they fall into any category except for complex human being. The Cherokee Stand Wadi was the last Confederate general to surrender, months after Robert Lee surrendered the Confederacy. That's wild.

An Indian territory was the last holdout of slavery in North America. There were a minimum of 5,000 slaves in Oklahoma prior to the Civil War. Some sources say 10,000. And as we're exploring why people fought in the Civil War, we're exploring why people fought in the Civil war. I'm not trying to paint the picture that the only reason Native Americans fought was to preserve slavery. That wouldn't be true at all. The individual reasons were likely as varied as everyone else's. It's just interesting and surprising. Let's step back into the Fayetteville National Cemetery, where Elijah Hamm, this young man who has scout, is buried. I've got a closing thoughts.

I continue to be amazed at the amount of history that is just right at your fingertips. I would have never known that right here, you know, basically 10 miles from where I live, are the soldiers buried that were the only ones scalped in the Civil War. I mean, just kind of obscure information, but unique nonetheless. Yeah, there's a saying that all history is local. So it doesn't matter where you live. There's something interesting that happened, close to where you live, whether you're in New York or Maine or out in California or Oregon

or here in the south or in the Midwest. There's always something to be explored and something to learn. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece. I hope these conversations about the Civil War that are fueled by my curiosity about it have been informative to you. I can't thank J.D. Hewitt enough for his insight into all this. Thank you for listening. Leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Share this podcast with a friend. Email us at bear grease at the meat eater.com. And thank you for listening to this feed. Thank you for taking our survey. It really helped out Brent and Lake. Thank you for listening to their

podcast, Brent's This Country Life and Lakes Backwoods University. Hey, I'm dead set on these longer historical series. I just think we learned so much. I learned so much. I love them. And there's more to come. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. If you do off-season work, you know what beats up gear.

Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First light fieldware is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose-built, durable. hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters, it supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Lights new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.