f Kansas and Missouri. Stand Watie, who became a Confederategeneral, was a leader of the Treaty Party and personally hated John Ross. After Rossswitched in 1862 and went east, Stand Watie was elected principal chief of the CherokeeNation in August. He captured the Cherokee capital at Tahlequah and ordered Ross' homeburned. The fighting produced hatreds that, added to the earlier differences, endured longafter the war was over. Many Oklahoma Indians fled north to escape the fighting. Kansaseventually had more than 7,000 refugees from the Indian Territory which it could nothouse or feed. Many froze to death or starved. Heavily involved in the fighting throughoutthe war, the Cherokee Nation lost more than 1/3 of its population. No state, north orsouth, even came close to this. On June 23, 1865, Stand Watie was the last Confederategeneral to surrender his command to the United States. Afterwards, the victorious federal government remembered the services of General StandWatie to the Confederacy. It also remembered the 1861 vote by the Cherokee legislatureto secede from the United States. These provided the excuse to invalidate all previoustreaties between the Cherokee and United States. John Ross died in 1866, and in newtreaties imposed in 1866 and 1868, large sections of Cherokee lands were taken forrailroad construction, white settlement (1889), or the relocation of other tribes. TheCherokee Nation never recovered to the prosperity it had enjoyed before the Civil War.As railroads were built across Cherokee lands, outlaws discovered that the Indianterritory, especially the Cherokee Nation, was a sanctuary from federal and state laws.Impoverished by the war, the Cherokee also began to lease lands to white tenant farmers.By 1880, whites outnumbered the Indians in the Indian Territory. In 1885 a well-intentioned, but ill-informed, Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusettsdecided that holding of land in common was delaying the progress of Indians to...
