A Confederate Officer Earns His Command: Chickasaw Diplomacy during the Sectional Crisis

Abstract

A Confederate Officer Earns His Command: Chickasaw Diplomacy during the Sectional Crisis Daniel Flaherty (bio) Albert Pike, the principal Confederate emissary for Indian Territory, arrived at North Fork Town in the Creek Nation on June 25, 1861, to negotiate treaties of alliance with the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians. Despite Confederate desires simply to assume the role of guardian previously occupied by the federal government, Pike treated his counterparts as sovereign diplomats. 1 Pike recognized that the nations' representatives wanted their troops to fight only for the protection of their own territory, and the treaties his government offered often satisfied this demand. And yet, the Indian forces also had to fit into the overarching Confederate plans. Thus, when the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles rode into battle in November 1861, they followed the orders of Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, the Mississippi-born man who had served as their US Indian Agent for the previous five years. Like many of his contemporaries, Cooper had earned his position as a commanding officer in the Confederate army due to political expediency more than his aptitude as a soldier. 2 As a young army officer in the Mexican War he had won the confidence of Colonel Jefferson Davis during the Monterrey and Buena Vista campaigns, and it is likely that Davis used his political influence as secretary of war to facilitate Cooper's appointment as the agent to the Choctaws in May 1853. But Cooper's personal relationship with Davis alone could not have secured his position as the commanding officer of the First Regiment of Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles. Unlike many of his counterparts, Douglas Cooper owed his initial position as a Confederate commanding officer more to the political maneuvering of Chickasaw political elites than to those of his American patrons. Although the Confederate treaty with [End Page 82] the Chickasaws and Choctaws stated that the president of the Confederate States would appoint the commanding officer for their troops, Article 49 also guaranteed that the troops from those nations would serve only to protect their respective territories. 3 Whoever commanded these troops, therefore, had to enjoy the confidence of all governing bodies concerned, especially because the Chickasaws and Choctaws questioned the motives of both federal and state interests in the years preceding the Civil War. Before cannons ever fired on Fort Sumter, the events of "bloody Kansas" imperiled the Union in the 1850s by exposing national fears about the expansion of slavery into western territories. Chickasaws and Choctaws, however, worried more about their continued ownership of their lands because the Kansas-Nebraska Act that had resolved the crisis had reduced the amount of territory reserved for removed Indians in order to stave off sectional confrontation over western expansion. Although neither nation was directly affected by the settlements, the act and its aftermath provided multiple opportunities for the two nations to become intricately aware of the growing sectional divide among Americans. 4 As the sectional crisis unfolded, therefore, both nations responded early to the break-up of the United States. Chickasaws and Choctaws pursued diplomatic activities designed to assert their autonomous sovereignty by aligning with the Confederacy. However, both nations maintained a cautious attitude regarding both Confederate and Union desires for land in Indian Territory. During the May session of the Chickasaw Legislature, elected officials declared their independence from the United States and officially invited an alliance with the Confederacy. Determined to demonstrate autonomy, the Chickasaws appointed Cooper "major General of the Chickasaw Nation." 5 Further, they adopted him as a member of their nation, an action that blended traditional native and modern Western concepts of diplomacy. 6 The adoption of Cooper into the Chickasaw Nation resembled a form of kinship diplomacy used among colonial-era southern Indians to ensure the Confederacy's primary diplomat to the Chickasaw would protect their own interests as well as those of his own government. Further, the act helped push his position as commanding officer of the initial combined Choctaw and Chickasaw forces past the Choctaw government, whose members may have questioned Cooper's growing influence in their national affairs. [End Page 83] From his first appointment as Choctaw Agent in 1853, Cooper became intimately involved...