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348Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary Griffin-Pierce's book is dioroughly enjoyable and illuminating from beginning to end. I look forward to her future works. Alamo Community CollegeDistrictDr. Al Carroll TL· Cherokee Nation in tL· Civil War. By Clarissa Confer. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. 212. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0806138033. $24.95, cloth.) The past decade has witnessed a renaissance of scholarship on the southeastern Indians. Until recendy, diis literature primarily revealed a nuanced look at the responses to colonialism in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-centuryAmerica. TL· CherokeeNation in tL· Civil Warjoins a group ofrecent monographs diat have followed this story into the late-nineteenth-century West. Confer starts in the pre-removal East with die internal debates over removal and illuminates the continuity between die eastern and western political and social experiences. TL· Cherokee Nation in tL· Civil War offers an overview of events and wartime experiences for die Cherokee people in Indian Territory. Scholars familiar with the basic narrative of the Cherokee Nation will find few new interpretations here—divisions that predated removal continued in the West and shaped wartime factions; Native Americans suffered politically and socially as a result of the war; and Cherokees used the Civil War to pursue ambitions of their own in addition to the issues related to the national story of slavery and sectionalism. Confer also explores refugee life in Texas and Kansas, demonstrates how the war divided elites and exacerbated pre-existing tensions, and includes brief discussions of diseases, food shortages, malnutrition, and other realities ofwartime civilian life. Confer infuses this story widi an understanding that Cherokee behavior during the war had as much to do with protecting tribal sovereignty and lands as it did with die issues diat defined the warforwhite Americans. Throughout die volume, Confer demonstrates how the experiences ofCherokees both mirrored and differed from experiences elsewhere in the United States. The division of the Cherokees, into Unionists and Confederates, paralleled divisions elsewhere, especially in the western territories. Similarly, Conferstresses how die resulting fear ofretaliation and violence among neighbors created an atmosphere ofanarchy among the Cherokeesjust as it did in Missouri and elsewhere. Also, like many enlisted soldiers, Cherokee men were unprepared to live a soldier's life. Cherokee troops were "the greenest ofgreen troops due to dieir unfamiliarity with conventional military training" (p. 69). Although Confer cites many recent ethnohistorical monographs, she does not use these methods to uncover die experiences ofnon-elite Cherokees. Instead, TL· Cherokee Nation focuses on the decisions and experiences of elites like John Ross, Major Ridge, Stand Watie,John Drew, and Hannah Hicks. "It is to this group," she explains, "diat we must look to find the motivations, rationales, and realities of the Cherokee experience" (p. 10). The result is a social history diat is told through the assumptions and words ofelites, and one that betrays much of the recent advances in Native American and Civil War social history. 2??8Book Reviews349 Throughout die volume, Confer touches on several interpretive areas diat will undoubtedly be explored by future scholars. For example, she suggests diat nonacculturated Cherokee women, because die absence of men would have had litde impact on their agricultural practices, may have had a less tumultuous time during die Civil War. Confer explains diat she cannot explore this insight more fully because "unfortunately, we have scant historical evidence ofdieir lives. Probably illiterate, they did not leavejournals, diaries, or letters as records of dieir experience" (p. 135). Scholars interested in understanding die experiences ofNative Americans during the Civil War will undoubtedly want to read diis syndietic look at the Cherokee story. In clear and concise prose, TL· CherokeeNation examines both the military and civilian experiences for one ofthe most well-known Indian nations and reminds us that the war was truly a "brodier's war" (p. 6). Florida State UniversityAndrew K. Frank Rue and Fall of tL· Confederacy: The Memoir of Senator Williamson S. Oldham, CSA. Edited with an introduction by Clayton E. Jewett. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. 312. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780826216854. $39.95, cloth.) Williamson Simpson Oldham stated in the introduction to his unpublished book "A History of aJourney from Richmond to die Rio...

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