Black Civil War heroes in Indian Territory
Union Civil War victories in July 1863 were a welcome occurrence at Vicksburg and Gettysburg on July 4, and at Port Hudson, LA, on the lower Mississippi on July 9, yet another victory and perhaps even bloodier battles were developing in the region known as Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma in 1907.
Last Saturday, October 5, members of the Rock Creek Civil War Roundtable and their guests devoted two hours of intensive discussion and reflection on the July 17, 1863, Battle of Honey Springs, which was also called the Battle of Elk Creek by the Confederates.
Retired history professor and college administrator Art Burton, a prolific writer on Black adventurers in the Indian Territory and the Wild West, was the guest speaker.
After the secession of Texas and Arkansas, the Indian Territory was claimed by the Confederacy and was defended by their allies among the Five Civilized Tribes – the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles. But large segments of all the tribes were opposed to joining the South and opted to fight on the side of the Union. All five tribes had a substantial contingency of Africans among them, mostly slaves but also many free men and women.
“The Creek Indians had the highest percentage of African blood of all the five nations. Prior to removal, the Creek Nation, besides African slaves, had free Blacks and intermarried with Blacks living among its people. Some of the Creeks who held Africans in bondage themselves had African ancestry. The Seminoles claimed their Black people as slaves to protect them from slave catchers, but never practiced chattel slavery. The Black Seminoles were always free and able to bear arms prior to the Civil War,” Burton said in an online interview with History Net in 2018.
ABSENT FROM HISTORY
Burton said his mother’s family had deep roots in Oklahoma. But he had learned nothing about the role of the Black and Indian warriors who fought in the Indian Territory during the Civil War.
“I had never heard of Civil War battles as a kid in Oklahoma,” he said. “I did my last two years of high school in Oklahoma, and there was no discussion about the Civil War in Oklahoma.”
The Civil War engagement at Honey Springs, Burton discovered through his extensive research, was the pivotal battle in trying to decide who was going to control the territory, be it the Union or the Confederacy. The highest percentage of loss of life, livestock, and property during the Civil War was in Indian Territory. And this was not taught in schools at all.
“Honey Springs was a Union victory. I found out about this battle before the movie ‘Glory’ was shown,” he said. “But a movie about the Battle of Honey Springs, I thought, would have been much better. In the Battle of Honey Springs, you have the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment basically defeating two white regiments out of Texas. That was key to the victory of the Union. I thought that would have made a much better movie than ‘Glory.’”
OPPOSING FORCES
The victories on the Mississippi gave full control of the river to the Union, a changed situation that prompted the North to make a move toward capturing the Indian Territory.
On the Union side, Gen. James G. Blunt’s command consisted of the 1st Kansas (Colored) Infantry, 2nd Colorado Infantry, 6th Kansas Cavalry, 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry, along with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Regiments of the Indian Home Guard. Research indicates that Bass Reeves, a future U.S. Deputy Marshal, fought in the Civil War in the Indian Territory.
Confederate forces under the command of CSA Brig. Gen. Douglass H. Cooper were the 1st and 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles led by CSA Gen. Stand Watie, 1st and 2nd Creek Mounted Rifles, 1st Chickasaw Regiment of Mounted Rifles, 1st Choctaw Regiment of Mounted Rifles, as well as three Texas cavalry regiments.
The Oklahoma Historical Society’s account of the Battle of Honey Springs gives the number of Confederate soldiers in the battle as 6,000 and Federal soldiers as 3,000. The Union’s advantage lay with its available artillery, consisting of 12 cannons, while the Rebels had only four, according to Gordon. The Confederates were preparing to move on to the Union’s longstanding frontier post at Fort Gibson.
“White soldiers were the minority in both Union and Confederate fighting forces. Native Americans made up a significant portion of each of the opposing armies and African Americans fought with the Union force,” according to the Wikipedia entry on the Battle of Honey Springs, known in Confederate history as the “Affair at Elk Creek.”
KANSAS COLORED
The men of the First Kansas Colored Regiment, said Burton, were “the first African Americans to fight in the Civil War for the North. The regiment consisted of many runaway former slaves of Missouri and Arkansas who had gone to the free state of Kansas. There were approximately 800 men in the ranks of the First Kansas Colored regiment.
Two Black officers, Captain William Matthews and Lieutenant Patrick Minor, commanded the regiment while it remained under Kansas state authority. But when the regiment was mustered into U.S. service in January 1863, the Black officers were reduced in rank to sergeants because the War Department did not commission Black officers, Gordon said.
The Honey Springs battleground was 15 miles south of Muskogee, 4.5 miles northeast of what is now Checotah, Oklahoma, and 20 miles southwest of Fort Gibson.
Blunt began to move south from Kansas into the Indian Territory. He had under his command the First Kansas Colored Infantry that had proven itself, as Kansas state volunteers, in the battle of Island Mound, Missouri, Oct. 29, 1862, seven months before the United States officially allowed Black troops to join the Union ranks.
Blunt forced the retreat of the Confederates who had been concentrated near Elk Creek (Honey Springs).
The Black members of the Five Tribes played a critical role in translating the discussions between the U. S. commanders and the troops from the Native American tribes.
After 1866, said Burton, the United States rewrote all the treaties with the tribes. The new treaties banished slavery and ordered the tribes to grant equality to the Blacks among them, Burton said. The Cherokee Nation was the only tribe to give Black Freedmen equal rights. There had been about 6,000 slaves in the Cherokee Nation, he pointed out.
FOUR BOOKS
Burton is listed as one of the leading authorities on the admixture of African American and Native American cultures. He was the first to author a book on Black lawman Bass Reeves and followed that up with his book on the most infamous Black outlaw of the Indian Territory, Cherokee Bill, aka Crawford.
Burton wrote four important books on the Black West: In 1991, he wrote “Black, Red and Deadly: Black and Indian Gunfighters of the Indian Territory, 1870-1907,” the first book on African American and Native American outlaws and lawmen in the Wild West. In 1999, he wrote “Black Buckskin and Blue: African American Scouts and Soldiers on the Western Frontier” about African Americans who served as U.S. Army scouts and soldiers in Indian Territory and the Wild West. The first scholarly biography on Black Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves came from Burton’s pen in 2007. The book is titled “Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves.” And in August 2023, his book on one of the most notorious outlaws of the Indian Territory, a mixed-blood Black-Cherokee who has been left out of most historic accounts – “Cherokee Bill: Black Cowboy, Indian Outlaw” – was released by the Wild Horse Media Group.
Bass Reeves served with the Union Army in the Battles of Cabin Creek and Honey Springs, both Union victories. For the rest of the war, Reeves was a Union irregular and scout in the Indian Territory. In 1875, Reeves worked out of the Federal court that was now located in Fort Smith, in Arkansas. And it was here that Reeves was commissioned as deputy U.S. marshal under Judge Isaac C. Parker.
About 50 Black lawmen worked as U.S. Deputy Marshals in the Oklahoma Territory, Burton says. And Bass Reeves was “the greatest frontier hero of the United States”
OUTLAWS, TOO
Nationally known Black history researcher Bennie McRae, a regular contributor to the Rock Creek Roundtable, commented on the outlaw “Cherokee Bill,” the subject of Burton’s last book.
Crawford “Cherokee Bill” Goldsby (1876-1896) was the son of Civil War veteran George Goldsby and Ellen Beck, a mixed-blood African American and Cherokee.
In the annals of outlaws in the Indian Territory, “Cherokee Bill was the toughest of them all, tougher even than Billy the Kid, the Cole and Younger Bros, and even Frank and Jesse James,” said McRae.
George Goldsby passed for white and joined the Union Army in Pennsylvania, McRae said in a phone interview Monday evening. After the Civil War ended, Goldsby enlisted in the 10th Cavalry Regiment (Buffalo Soldiers) and was promoted to sergeant major. He re-enlisted after five years, and gained the rank of first sergeant of Company D, 10th Cavalry.
In trouble with local Texas authorities, Sgt. Goldsby apparently knew that the Army could not or would not protect him from the local authorities. He went AWOL from his Texas post into Indian Territory in 1878.
Ellen Beck Goldsby placed their son Crawford in the care of a Black “Auntie” Amanda Foster and moved to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. The boy was sent to the Catholic Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but left there at age 12.
He was a good-natured, hard-working boy, well-liked by all who knew him, McRae said.
But Cherokee Bill’s serious trouble began at age 18.
“One night, he and Jake Lewis, a 35-year-old Black man, had a confrontation over his younger brother, and he was severely beaten by Lewis,” McRae said. Two days later, Crawford confronted Lewis with a six-shooter and threatened to kill him. Shortly afterwards, he shot Lewis twice, left him for dead, mounted his horse and fled to the Cherokee Nation.”
Crawford became known as “Cherokee Bill” after he joined up with two brothers of mixed Cherokee heritage, and they all were identified as members of the Cook Gang in 1894.
“Most of the members were Black men, some being Cherokee Freedmen,” says McRae. “Cherokee Bill was credited with most of the murders that occurred during the gang’s rampage. Many times, he killed for no cause or reason. The number ranges from seven to thirteen.”
BETRAYAL AND DEATH
“Bill would sometime meet one of his girlfriends, Maggie Glass, at the cabin of Ike Rogers, just east of Nowata. Maggie was described as being of African and Cherokee descent and was the niece of Ike Rogers’ wife. Ike was also of African-Cherokee descent.
“Deputy (U.S. Marshall W.C.) Smith contacted Ike Rogers and developed a plan to lure Cherokee Bill into a trap by using an unsuspecting Maggie Glass to bait the trap with Clint Scales casually dropping over to spend the night. Ike held a deputy marshal’s commission; however, he had a bad reputation, and he helped capture Cherokee Bill.
Even after Bill was arrested, taken to court, and sentenced to death, he was still able to cause havoc from inside the jail with a pistol that was smuggled in to him, McRae said.
The hanging was scheduled for 11 a.m. on March 17, 1896, but was delayed until 2 p.m. in order for one of his sisters living out of town to arrive and witness her brother’s execution. She was scheduled to arrive at 1 p.m. on the eastbound train.
McRae wrote that while on the gallows, Cherokee Bill was asked if he had anything to say and he replied, “I came here to die, not make a speech.”
He was executed by hanging, thereby ending at age 20 the life of one of the most notorious outlaws to roam the Indian Territory and perhaps the entire Western Frontier.
Crawford “Cherokee Bill” Goldsby is buried in the Cherokee National Cemetery, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.
