Reviewed by: Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay A. Yarbrough Christine A. Rizzi Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country. By Fay A. Yarbrough. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. [xii], 268. $32.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-6511-5.) Fay A. Yarbrough’s latest book, Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country, provides a much-needed corrective to scholarship on Native experiences during the Civil War era. Yarbrough’s research does not focus on land loss, military tactics, or outside factors that influenced Native alliances with either the United States or the Confederacy. Rather, this new work highlights the internal debates and decisions that led to the Choctaw Nation’s early and consistent alliance with the Confederate States of America. Informed by sources ranging from military records to Choctaw policy, personal correspondence, and oral histories, Yarbrough’s study compellingly demonstrates that internal demands for the maintenance of slavery and the strengthening of tribal sovereignty drove the nation to support the Confederate war effort in 1861. The book provides important context by opening with two chapters that examine the role of slavery in the Choctaw Nation both before and after removal. Yarbrough demonstrates that, rather than feeling exclusively outside pressure to take on Euro-American ideas about property, race, and enslavement, Choctaws “adopted the practice of racialized slavery . . . in a manner that preserved Choctaw identity,” maintaining certain aspects of their traditional livelihoods while also building bonds with white southerners that they [End Page 149] hoped would insulate the nation from land theft (p. 48). Even after that possibility faded in the wake of removal, the Choctaws strengthened the institution of slavery in order to enshrine their own sovereignty and distinctiveness. According to Yarbrough, Choctaws’ demands for the protection of slavery and sovereignty directly informed their enthusiastic support for the Confederacy. The linchpin of her book is arguably the third chapter, which examines the internal debates within the nation regarding a potential Confederate alliance. Yarbrough’s close examination of Choctaw and Confederate treaty negotiations shows that the decision to form this alliance was far from “a foregone conclusion” (p. 111). Instead, Choctaw leaders saw “that the Confederacy proposed principles that were more in line with Choctaw goals than with federal ones” (p. 91). Yarbrough also shows that “the concrete benefits offered by the Confederate government” proved far more compelling to the Choctaws (p. 112). She demonstrates that ordinary Choctaw men and women enthusiastically supported the alliance, providing martial and material support to the Confederate war effort. Enlistment records, government policies, and personal correspondence suggest that Choctaw men willingly enlisted in the Confederate forces, especially in response to crises that threatened the status quo of slavery and sovereignty. Yarbrough further argues that Choctaw men were able to preserve traditional ideas about masculinity through their service in the war effort. The book closes with a chapter examining Reconstruction in Indian Country, comparing and contrasting the Choctaw experience with that of the larger postwar South. While the Choctaws similarly resisted efforts to incorporate freedpeople into the body politic, freedpeople within the nation had more immediate access to land than did their counterparts in the former Confederate states. According to Yarbrough, issues of kinship, sovereignty, and traditional ideas of labor and land led to the creation of complex policies regarding freedpeople in the Choctaw Nation. Choctaw Confederates succeeds mostly because of the careful use of oral histories and “side-streaming” in order to flesh out a story many considered difficult to tell due to a dearth of sources (p. 9). Using oral histories from the Indian Pioneer History Collection and ex-slave narratives recorded by the Works Progress Administration in Oklahoma, Yarbrough is able to tell this story from multiple perspectives, including those of enslaved people in Indian Territory. She uses sources from other Indian nations to supplement sources from the Choctaw Nation itself, allowing her to build a more detailed and nuanced understanding of how slavery and sovereignty informed decision making among Native peoples in the Civil War era. Christine A. Rizzi Broward College Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association