thej were sent
hack to their homes under an 1 escort to give them an opportunity
to put in a crop, seeds and tools being furnished for the purpose, hut
had hardly begun work when they were forced to retire by the
approach of Stand Watie and his regiment of Confederate Cherokee,
estimated at seven hundred men. Stand Watie and his men. with the
( !onfederate ( Ireeks and others, scoured the country at will, destroying
or carrying off everything belonging to the loyal Cherokee, who had
now. to the number of nearly seven thousand, taken refuge at Fort
Gibson. Refusing to lake sides againsl a government which was still
unable to protect them, they were forced to see all the prosperous
accumulations of twenty years of industry swept off in this guerrilla
warfare. In stock alone their losses were5,000 Indians of the southern ■
i erokee, under command of General Albert Pike.
- l:, >yce • in, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnolog; i
p.331.
150 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
had been occupied by their settlements was distinguishable from the
virgin prairie only by the scorched and blackened chimneys and the
plowed but now neglected fields." 1
After rive years of desolation the Cherokee emerged from the war
with their numbers reduced from 21,000 to 14,000, a and their whole
country in ashes. On July 19, 1866, by a treaty concluded at Tahle-
quah. the nation was received back into the protection of the United
States, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and all confiscations on
account of the war prohibited; slavery was abolished without compen-
sation to former owners, and all negroes residing within the Nation
were admitted to full