George Washington Grayson straddled two worlds as a Confederate officer and a Creek chieftain.
Well after midnight in the early morning hours of September 19, 1864, the Confederate forces and their Indian allies held an excellent position. They commanded an elevated prairie that descended to the Union army’s encampment on Cabin Creek in northeastern Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Just before the battle commenced, some of the Indians passed around an herbal concoction of war medicine, which they rubbed on themselves and their clothing with the belief that it protected them from danger. When one Indian soldier offered the same treatment to Captain George Washington Grayson, he declined. He felt an urgent need “to prove to these men that I was willing to risk myself in the presence of danger under the impulses of my innate courage without resorting to the supposed protection afforded by medicines or talismans, and to prove to them that I could meet risks as coolly as the bravest soldier under me.”
Grayson, a Creek Indian of mixed ancestry, would one day look back on his Civil War experiences as some of the most formative of his life. The war offered him an opportunity to demonstrate his manhood by exceptional bravery under fire like a Creek warrior of old, but in terms that a contemporary white man could understand. Grayson fought with Creek units attached to the Confederate Army and participated in virtually all the major engagements in Indian Territory after 1862. After the war, he held several public offices in the government of the Creek Nation and finally became principal chief in 1917. In retirement he recorded his adventures in an evocative autobiography. As far as we know, this detailed narrative of multiple campaigns in Indian Territory by a single participant is unique in the literature of the Civil War.
When the conflict between North and South erupted at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Grayson faced unexpected responsibilities at home. As able-bodied men began enlisting in the many military organizations being formed, Grayson ignored his first impulse and declined to join the army. He had just returned home in March 1861 from Arkansas College in Fayetteville when his father, James, suddenly died. “I could not see how Mother and the children could possibly support themselves without my assistance, who was the oldest of the flock, and now quite useful as a bread earner,” Grayson explained. He took a job as a salesman in a general merchandise store at North Fork Town, near the present-day city of Eufaula, Okla.
At the same time, the other young men who had enlisted looked upon Grayson with scorn. He heard that “in some quarters it was said, ‘Here is Wash Grayson who is a well educated young man, capable of making a useful soldier in the army as a commissioned officer or otherwise, and yet he declines to join the army.’” This kind of talk, as well as remarks questioning his courage, convinced Grayson “to enter the field and show my critics, if occasion offered, the stuff I was made of, even if it cost my life to make the exhibition.”
Although no official record has been found, Grayson probably enlisted in late 1862 or early 1863, at the age of 19 or 20. He joined Company K of the 2nd Creek Regiment under Colonel D.N. McIntosh. These and other troops of the Confederate Creeks were initially attached to the Department of Indian Territory commanded by Colonel Douglas H. Cooper. Grayson was determined to enter the service as a private soldier. “I sought not the ease and immunities supposedly belonging to the position of a commissioned officer,” he explained. Within a short time, however, his company, in need of a man with superior education and ability, promoted him to first lieutenant. His increased rank also allowed him to send more aid to his family.
Like the majority of Creeks of mixed blood, Grayson felt strong ties to the Southern cause through family and culture. Both of his parents had Southern white ancestors. Grayson could trace his origins to “Robert Grierson [who] left his native land of Scotland for the new world of America.” By 1796, Grierson could be found “living in the Indian country, subsequently the state of Alabama, married to a Creek Indian woman of the name of Sin-o-gee.” By trade and good management, the old Scotsman became wealthy in land, livestock and slaves.
In the early 19th century, forced the Creeks and the other southeastern tribes to relinquish their ancient homelands and go west, the family, now when the U.S. government called Grayson, removed to the Creek reserve in east-central Indian Territory. They settled sometime before 1832 near what is now Eufaula, where G.W. Grayson was born on May 12, 1843. As a boy, he attended mission schools established among the Creeks by the Baptists and Methodists. At age 16 he entered Arkansas College with an academic scholarship granted to him by the Creek Nation. Although proud of his Creek heritage, throughout his upbringing and education Grayson believed that the future lay with Indians who could assimilate into the white man’s world.
Young Lieutenant Grayson plunged into the Civil War in Indian Territory as it approached its most critical juncture. Forced by events to choose sides, the Creek people, numbering about 14,000, had divided into two factions along social and cultural lines. The Southern party, largely educated mixed bloods, had been offered favorable treaties by the Confederacy and signed an alliance in July 1861. They soon raised troops for service in Indian Territory. In response, about 6,000 Loyal Creeks, mostly full-blood traditionalists, fled north to Union-held Kansas for protection from attacking Confederates. Federal forces invaded Indian Territory in 1862, attempting to return the Loyal refugees to their homes. They defeated the Confederates at Cowskin Prairie in June, Locust Grove in July and Old Fort Wayne in October. In April 1863, units under Colonel William A. Phillips occupied strategically located Fort Gibson in the Cherokee Nation in northeast Indian Territory. Union forces stood ready to crush Confederate resistance.
The climactic engagement took place on the eastern border of the Creek Nation. Grayson recalled, “The first time I with my Company came anywhere near taking part in a scrap with the enemy…was at the battle of Honey Springs.” Just as the fall of Vicksburg and Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg the same day marked the turning point in the white man’s Civil War, the Battle of Honey Springs on July 17, 1863, was decisive in Indian warfare. Cooper, now a brigadier general, commanded about 6,000 troops, including units of Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Creeks and a squadron of Texas cavalry. He intended to move north along the Texas Road and attack Fort Gibson. While Cooper paused at Honey Springs to await reinforcements from Fort Smith, Ark., Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt, the Union commander at Fort Gibson, advanced with 3,000 troops to attack the Confederates before the reinforcements could arrive.
The 1st and 2nd Creek regiments occupied Cooper’s left flank. As Grayson remembered, “With my own men and a picked body of others from the 2nd Creek regiment, with our own colonel Chilly McIntosh in immediate command, we were ordered to occupy a certain position in a dense bottom of the creek.” They were to remain out of sight under cover of the foliage of the trees until ordered to take an active part.
On this occasion Colonel McIntosh delivered a fine speech in the Creek language, urging the men to fight bravely. “The sun that hangs over our heads has no death, no end of days,” the colonel explained. “It will continue indefinitely to rise and set: but with you it is different. Man must die sometime, and since he must die, he can find no nobler death than that which overtakes him while fighting for his home, his fires and his country.” Upon hearing such inspiring words, Grayson observed that “the morale of our men was the best.”
After an intense morning battle that resulted in 134 casualties, General Cooper, blaming faulty Mexican ammunition and enemy artillery superiority, abandoned his position. Grayson regarded the Confederate defeat at Honey Springs as a fiasco. He blamed Cooper, saying, “By what I have always confidently believed to be bad management, we lost the day here when the enemy came up and engaged us, for our General Cooper did not even get all his men out on the firing line, or into any engagement with his adversary before he ordered his forces to retire.” Honey Springs opened the way for the Federals to capture Fort Smith the following September and assured Union control of the Indian Territory.
By the end of 1863, Grayson had good reason to be pessimistic. Since the Union controlled the Mississippi River, Indian Territory was separated from the remainder of the Confederacy, making it increasingly difficult for the Indians to procure provisions and arms. The Confederates could no longer offer full-scale resistance and slowly withdrew south toward the border with Texas, leaving the civilians of the Cherokee and Creek nations without protection. Now the Southern Indians became refugees. From the retreating army Grayson came home briefly to help his mother and the children pack a few belongings into a wagon and sent them south with other families to camps along the Red River.
With the demise of organized military resistance, the Confederate Indians relied more and more on guerrilla warfare. Cooper suggested the Indian troops be reorganized to better utilize their fighting strength. In the spring of 1864 the 1st and 2nd Creek regiments were attached to the 1st Indian Cavalry Brigade, commanded by the Cherokee General Stand Watie, an expert at daring raids and ambushes.
Ordered to watch and challenge Federal forces at Fort Smith, Watie’s brigade occupied a position at Pleasant Bluffs, on the south bank of the Arkansas River, in early June 1864. Grayson was furnished with a detachment of 300 men and a battery of light artillery.
He recalled, “General Stand Watie…ordered me to occupy the place at once and so dispose my guns on the banks of the river as to be concealed from, while [still] commanding, any possible enemy craft as had been known lately to have passed loaded with supplies from Ft. Smith for the Federal forces at Ft. Gibson, and ‘take it out of the wet’ as it were.” This was the first time that such a detachment of men had been placed under Grayson’s charge, and, at 21, he was determined to prove himself worthy of the trust placed in him by his superiors.
On June 15, 1864, the Federal steamboat J.R. Williams, loaded with supplies for Fort Gibson, plied up the river beneath Pleasant Bluffs, within easy reach of the Confederate artillery. “We opened up on him in fine style,” Grayson wrote, “and soon filled the air with the roar of cannon and the rattle of small arms.” Grayson’s artillery struck the smokestack, the pilothouse and the boiler, disabling the vessel, which soon ran aground on a sandbar. The Union escort of 25 men aboard jumped into the water and fled into the bush on the other side.
Overjoyed at their victory, the Confederate Indians swarmed over the vessel and looted its cargo. They found 150 barrels of flour, 16,000 pounds of bacon and a large quantity of clothing, for a total value of $120,000. The destitute Indians gathered anything that might be of use to them or their families and started home with their booty. Watie, with only a few of his men remaining and no wagons with which to transport the supplies, was forced to burn the remaining stores lest they fall into the hands of the enemy.
Soon Watie received news from his scouts that a Federal detachment of superior strength was approaching his location on the south bank of the Arkansas River. He had no choice except to escape. Grayson took great pride in being one of the few Creeks left to act as a sentinel, guarding the rear of Watie’s retreat until sundown. The daring capture of J.R. Williams greatly strengthened Confederate morale in Indian Territory. The Federals soon replaced their losses, however, while time and manpower continued to wane for the Confederacy.
As war-weariness mounted on both sides, any engagement was likely to degenerate into brutality and senseless bloodshed. Grayson vividly described one such incident. In September 1864, the Indian Brigade, numbering about 800 men commanded by General Watie and 1,200 men of the Texas Cavalry commanded by Colonel Richard M. Gano, advanced north from their base in the Choctaw Nation to a point 15 miles northwest of Fort Gibson, seeking to disrupt Union supply lines. On September 16, near the mouth of Flat Rock Creek, they discovered a small detachment of Federal troops guarding hay-cutting operations that were supplying Fort Gibson. The Union officer, Captain E.A. Barker, commanded about 125 men, including a small unit of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry and a detachment of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. “One of two cannon shots of grape from our guns, however, caused a stampede, when we charged the encampment,” Grayson recalled. “The defenders disappeared among the thickets and very high weeds that covered the banks of the creek.” It appeared to Grayson that there was nothing left to do there but burn the camp and the great ricks of hay that stood about the field.
“Presently, however, some of our men discovered a negro hiding in the weeds near the creek and shot and killed him,” Grayson remembered. Another one was found and shot, and the men proceeded to hunt them out of the weeds “much as sportsmen do quails.” In a panic, “some of the negroes, finding they were about to be discovered, would spring up from the brush and cry out, O! master spare me. But the men were in no spirit to spare the wretched unfortunates and shot them down without mercy.”
Grayson took no part in the slaughter, saying, “I confess this was sickening to me, but the men were like wild beasts and I was powerless to stop them from this unnecessary butchery.” The rules of war had fallen by the wayside. Any encounter meant a chance to even the score with the enemy. The Union forces suffered 100 casualties, the loss of all their equipment, including the haying machines, and approximately 3,000 tons of hay.
From the few prisoners taken at Flat Rock Creek, the Confederates learned that the large Union wagon train they hoped to find was expected soon at Fort Gibson from Fort Scott, Kan. On September 18, 1864, Watie and Gano discovered its location. It consisted of 360 wagons escorted by 260 men of the 2nd, 6th and 14th Kansas cavalry and 300 Union Cherokees commanded by Major Henry Hopkins, all camped at Cabin Creek. During the night the Confederates occupied the position on an elevated portion of the prairie overlooking the Federals at the bottom of the rise on the south bank of the river. At about 3 a.m. on September 19, in full moonlight, sporadic firing broke out and the Confederates advanced.
Grayson, who had been promoted to captain, and his unit were stationed on the extreme left flank of the Confederate line with the other Indian troops. As he remembered, “I stood in front of my men talking to them in terms of encouragement, and the flash and smoke of their guns would at some moments quite cover me and sometimes hide me from view.” One soldier quietly warned Grayson that the men were fighting under much excitement and some were liable to shoot him accidentally, suggesting that he had better fall back into the ranks. Grayson recalled, however, earlier comments that he had been “tardy about enlisting because of fear of danger,” and he was determined to prove the contrary to his detractors here “where there was real danger…come what may.”
The battle extended into the morning daylight. “The fighting seemed to wax hotter than at any other time,” Grayson observed, “causing me to realize the very striking fact that a large number of bullets were not striking me.” The Confederates then ordered a charge and took the Union stockades at about 9 a.m. Major Hopkins’ force fled, leaving the Confederates in possession of 130 wagons and 740 mules of the Union train worth several hundred thousand dollars. Twenty Union and nine Confederate soldiers were killed.
The engagement at Cabin Creek marked an unqualified victory, one of the few bright spots in a disappointing year for the Confederacy. Grayson believed that he had shown exceptional bravery under fire. He remembered one evening shortly thereafter when he and his men were seated around the campfire exchanging yarns. One soldier remarked as he lit his pipe: “When under our former captain we made loud complaints of his lack of courage to lead us to battle. We charged that he was cowardly. I am sure we have nothing to complain of now.” Grayson recalled that this remark “was meant for a compliment to me, and was so understood by all….I know now that I had fully cleared away all possible grounds for anyone to think that I lacked courage to face danger in battle as had at one time been intimated, and I was highly pleased.”
Grayson’s innate bravery in battle could not protect him from a silent, invisible enemy, however. While stationed at winter quarters in southern Indian Territory in February 1865, he contracted the dreaded smallpox. He recalled: “My skin was literally a rotten mass from the top of my head to my toes, no part of my body escaping. My face was swollen and puffed up beyond recognition, my eyes closed so I could not see.” His hair fell out in clumps and he lost 70 pounds. The doctors who worked on him, powerless to change the course of the disease and fully expecting him to die soon, summoned his mother. Then Grayson began to slowly recover. He left the sick room after a month’s confinement and convalesced at his family’s cabin in the Creek camps along the Red River.
“About when I thought I might in a feeble way be able to resume my place in the service, it was rumored that the war was over,” Grayson wrote. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. In Indian Territory, however, Watie did not surrender the troops under his command, including the Creek regiments, until June 25.
At the end of the war, most of the eastern part of Indian Territory was a vast wasteland due to the ravages of guerrilla-type military activity and looting by brigands. Homes were burned, crops destroyed and livestock butchered or scattered. The population of the Five Tribes declined by more than 25 percent due to deaths and mortal wounds in battle, exposure, disease or starvation. Indian Territory suffered as much or more from the Civil War as any comparable area in the North or South. The Indians who had made an alliance with the Confederacy had acted in vain. The favorable treaties and grand promises of Southern agents had all come to naught.
With peace restored, the Creek people began their own process of reconciliation and reconstruction. The Northern and Southern factions of the tribe met in council in November 1865, restored amicable relations and elected a new chief of the nation. People of both parties then began returning to their homesteads. On June 14, 1866, Creek delegates and Federal commissioners signed a treaty reestablishing relations with the United States, but on disadvantageous terms for the Indians. Among other concessions, the treaty obliged them to allow U.S. court jurisdiction in their nation, and forced them to cede the western half of their domain to the United States for the resettlement of western Indians. In October 1867, the united Creeks adopted a new constitution patterned after that of the United States.
Like other returning veterans, Grayson worked hard to restore security for his family. In early 1866 he returned his mother and the younger children to the North Fork Town area and rebuilt their home. On July 29, 1869, Grayson married Georgeanna Stidham. The couple eventually had nine children and enjoyed a marriage that lasted 51 years. Building upon his experience as a clerk in several North Fork Town firms, Grayson and his brother Sam organized a company called Grayson Brothers, a venture that prospered in real estate, retail, cattle and agricultural ventures. Grayson matured into a tall, dignified figure, known by his associates for his learned conversation and polished manners.
In the postwar years, Grayson rose to prominent status in the Creek government, exerting important influence upon administration policy and the shaping of public opinion. He always stressed, however, that he did not seek public office, but that office came to him because of his ability to provide leadership. “Having given me extra school advantages by sending me to the Arkansas College elsewhere noted, the chiefs and headmen of the nation seemed to feel as if they had some sort of right to my services,” Grayson explained, “…and when my services were needed, expressed that right by calling and setting me to work in that capacity.”
As a public official, Grayson strove to maintain the Creeks’ status as a sovereign nation and, like most educated mixed bloods, he staunchly supported constitutional government over customary law as the best means to ensure the independence of the tribe. For 10 years Grayson served as treasurer of the tribe, and for 12 years as a representative in the House of Warriors, one of the two Creek legislative bodies. He acted as a Creek delegate to Washington, D.C., on 17 occasions, representing Creek interests before Congress and the U.S. Department of the Interior, serving with integrity and great diplomatic skill. Most of his work involved urging Congress “not to violate the terms of its treaties and agreements with our people and pass a territorial form of government over them.”
In the last decades of the 19th century, however, the sovereignty of the Creeks and all of the Five Tribes came under heavy attack. The most serious threat came from the influx of white settlers. By 1890, more than 70 percent of the population of Indian Territory consisted of non-Indians who advocated the elimination of tribal governments and the incorporation of the territory into the U.S. political system. For a time the Creeks’ opposition efforts succeeded, but the federal government took up the settlers’ cause. In 1900 the United States forced all of the Five Tribes to accept allotment of tribal lands to individual Indians, with the surplus land opened to white settlers. On March 4, 1906, the Creek national government was dissolved by congressional act. On November 16, 1907, Indian Territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Oklahoma.
With sad eloquence and smoldering resentment, Grayson described his reaction when the Creek Nation, to which he had devoted his life, was no more:
Here we, a people who had been a self-governing people for hundreds and possibly a thousand years, who had a government and administered its affairs ages before such an entity as the United States was ever dreamed of, are asked and admonished that we must give up all idea of local government, change our system of landholding to that which we confidently believed had pauperized thousands of white people—all for why; not because we had violated any treaties with the United States which guaranteed in solemn terms our undisturbed possession of these….but simply because regardless of the plain dictates of justice and Christian conscience, the ruthless restless white man demanded it….
For Grayson, the disappearance of tribal government marked the end of Creek tribal history. Perhaps that is why he began to write his autobiography in 1908, 12 years before he died. It was time to pause and reflect on the value of his career and on the historical significance of his people. He performed one more official duty, however. In 1917, in recognition for a life of service to his people, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Grayson principal chief of the tribe. In this capacity he attended for two years to details associated with the dissolution of Creek government. George Washington Grayson died on December 2, 1920.
Eloise G. Smock, Grayson’s daughter, placed a handwritten text of his autobiography in the Western History Collection of the University of Oklahoma, hoping to have it published. Various plans for publication were made but did not materialize until W. David Baird, professor of history at Pepperdine University, edited and organized it, and arranged for its publication in 1988. Grayson’s manuscript appeared as A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy: The Autobiography of Chief G.W. Grayson.
For American Indians, the Civil War marked one of the most unfortunate events in their tragic history. When caught between the two forces in this conflict, they chose sides and fought heroically. Grayson’s autobiography provides an intimate view of the hidden history of the war that should not be overlooked. Grayson saw the Civil War as an opportunity to prove his manhood in battle like a warrior of old. The leadership skills that he acquired from his experience were applied with telling effect in his life of service to the Creek Nation. Ironically, his reward for such dedication was to see the dissolution of Creek sovereignty. But the Creek people still live. The life of George Washington Grayson stands as an inspiration to them and a witness to Indians’ contribution to American history.
Patrick T. Seccia writes from Solon, Ohio. For additional reading, see: A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy: The Autobiography of Chief G.W. Grayson; and General Stand Watie’s Confederate Indians, by Frank Cunningham.
Originally published in the September 2006 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
