Stand Watie
Stand Watie was a prominent Cherokee leader and military figure born on December 12, 1806, in northwestern Georgia. Initially named Degataga, his family adopted the name Watie after converting to Christianity. Watie became involved in significant political actions early in his life, including signing the controversial Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which led to the forced relocation of the Cherokee people known as the Trail of Tears. Following this traumatic period, during which many Cherokees died, Watie emerged as a leader of the anti-Ross faction after losing family members to violence.
During the American Civil War, Watie became the first Native American brigadier general in the Confederate Army, leading the Cherokee Mounted Rifles and participating in key battles such as Pea Ridge and Wilson's Creek. His military efforts were marked by personal motivations, including a desire for revenge against adversaries from the Cherokee political factions. After the war, Watie was recognized as the last Confederate general to surrender in June 1865. He later participated in a Cherokee delegation to Washington, D.C., and returned to farming until his death on September 9, 1871. Watie's legacy is complex, highlighting both his commitment to the Cherokee nation and the divisive choices he made during a tumultuous period in U.S. history.
Subject Terms
Stand Watie
Native American Leader
- Born: December 12, 1806
- Birthplace: Near Rome, Georgia
- Died: September 9, 1871
- Place of death: Indian Territory (now in Oklahoma)
Tribal affiliation: Cherokee
Significance: Stand Watie helped establish the Cherokee Phoenix, was a signer of the treaty accepting removal to Indian Territory, and was a Confederate brigadier general in the Civil War
Born on December 12, 1806, in northwestern Georgia, to a full-blooded Cherokee father and half-blood mother, Watie was called Degataga, but when his parents converted to Christianity, they changed their name from Oo-wa-tie to Watie and renamed their second son Isaac S., which he later turned to Stand. With his older brother Galegina (“Buck”), he attended the Moravian mission schools at Spring Place, Georgia, and Brainerd, Tennessee. While Buck went on to study in Connecticut at the Foreign Mission School and to change his name to Elias Boudinot (one of the school’s benefactors), Stand took up farming. At the age of twenty-two, he also became clerk of the Cherokee Supreme Court, and later he became a lawyer. When Boudinot became editor of the Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, Stand Watie sometimes assisted him, and in 1835, he joined him, their cousin John Ridge, and their uncle Major Ridge in signing the Treaty of New Echota, which required the Cherokees to give up their lands in Georgia and “remove” to comparable land in what is now Oklahoma. The signers were liable to the “blood law,” which decreed death for anyone selling Cherokee land without the full consent of the nation, and Principal Chief John Ross and his followers, not at New Echota, repudiated the treaty. After President Martin Van Buren had the Eastern Cherokees rounded up and removed west in 1838-1839 on the Trail of Tears, a death march that killed one-third of the tribe, militant followers of Ross murdered the Ridges and Watie’s brother Boudinot. Watie himself was marked for death but escaped, offered $10,000 for the murderers of his brother, and became leader of the anti-Ross party.
Before removal, Watie had several wives but no children; in 1843, the widower married Sarah Caroline Bell, by whom he had five children. When the Cherokees joined the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War, Watie raised the first regiment of Cherokee volunteers, the “Cherokee Mounted Rifles.” As a daring cavalry commander along the border of Indian Territory and at the battles of Pea Ridge and Wilson’s Creek, Watie became the most outstanding Indian soldier in history and was promoted to brigadier general. During the war, he got revenge on his enemy John Ross by burning Ross’s house. When the majority party of the Cherokees broke their alliance with the Confederate states in 1863, Watie remained loyal to the Confederacy and was elected principal chief by the tribe’s southern faction. At the war’s end, Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender, on June 23, 1865. After the war, Watie was a member of a Cherokee delegation to Washington, and he then went home to resume farming until his death on September 9, 1871.