Warriors for the Union - Cover Page: February 1997 Civil War Times Feature

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BY DEBORAH NICHOLS and LAURENCE M. HAUPTMAN

It was April 16, 1861, four days after secessionists bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Colonel William H. Emory, commander of Union forces in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), began to fear attacks on his forts by nearby Arkansas and Texas secessionists. So he withdrew his troops from Forts Washita and Arbuckle on the Texas border, and Fort Smith in Arkansas, and concentrated them at Fort Cobb, far enough to the northwest to reduce the risk of an ambush. From there, without any orders to engage secessionist troops, he struck out at an approaching contingent of Texas Mounted Rifles. His swift action preempted a would-be Confederate assault.

Emory could not take credit himself for seizing the initiative. He would not have known in advance about the approaching Rebels had it not been for Black Beaver, a Delaware Indian scout who had volunteered his services to the Union. Black Beaver, reported Emory, “gave me the information by which I was enabled to capture the enemy’s advance guard, the first prisoners captured in the war.”

The Delaware scout then guided Emory’s troops and their Confederate prisoners to Fort Leavenworth in northeastern Kansas. They finally completed the 500-mile march across open prairie on May 31. Despite the danger of the mission, the force arrived at the fort “without the loss of a man, horse, or wagon, although two men deserted on the journey.” Emory again had Black Beaver to thank.

Black Beaver and other Delaware Indians of Kansas and Indian Territory made significant contributions to the Union war effort in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Although some bands of Delawares had fought against the United States in the past, the Delawares had a long history of allegiance to the government. Now, uncertain conditions faced by Delawares in southwestern Indian Territory and eastern Kansas led their men to enlist in the Union army. Of a total of 201 eligible Delaware males between the ages of 18 and 45, 170 volunteered for service in 1862.

Enlistment meant joining forces with local civilian and military personnel who desired and plotted the Delawares’ removal from Kansas. For the Delaware recruits, the situation became tolerable only because they often went into battle under the command of their own outstanding leaders, chief among them being Black Beaver and a man known as Captain Falleaf. Both are mentioned frequently in the records of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West, but their remarkable exploits are little known to students of the Civil War.

The Delaware, also known as the Lenape or Lenni Lenape, were originally a Mid-Atlantic coastal people. Their homelands included what is now New Jersey, Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and southeastern New York. From their first contact with Europeans in the early 1600s, their existence was threatened by disease, wars, and Colonial and U.S. policies. Delaware communities were relentlessly uprooted and forced to move west through Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas. Some Delawares went to Wisconsin, and others to Ontario, Canada.

By the time of the Civil War, two distinct Delaware communities had evolved. A band of nearly 500 “Absentee Delawares,” who had broken away from the main group in the late 1700s, drifted southwestward through Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. A second, larger band that represented the main historic body of the tribe was removed from southwestern Missouri in 1829 to lands near Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

The Absentee Delawares were moved in 1859 to land known as the “Leased District” in the Wichita Indian Agency in Indian Territory. Black Beaver was a member of the Kansas tribe, but acted as chief of the Absentee band. Falleaf was a member of the Kansas community. (Both tribes exist today in Oklahoma; one is headquartered at Anadarko, and the other at Bartlesville).

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