Today in History -- On today’s date 157 years ago during the War Between the States on Friday, June 23, 1865 at Fort Towson near the town of Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation (present-day Oklahoma), & four days after the “Juneteenth” reading of General Order № 3 to the people of Galveston, Texas, famous Cherokee Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie (1806-1871) surrendered the last sizable Confederate army -- thus becoming the last Confederate general in the field to stand down.
☞General Stand Watie, C.S.A. was also known as Degataga (Cherokee for “Stands Firm”), Standhope Uwatie, & Isaac S. Watie.
☞Note: In the 1976 Clint Eastwood movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” the fictional character Lone Watie, portrayed by Chief Dan George (1899-1981), is identified as a nephew of General Stand Watie. Upon meeting Josey Wales, portrayed by Clint Eastwood (born 1930), Lone Watie delivers the following monologue:
I wore this frock coat to Washington before the War. We wore them because we belonged to the Five Civilized Tribes. We dressed ourselves up like Abraham Lincoln.
You know, we got to see the Secretary of the Interior, & he said, “Boy, you boys sure look civilized.”
He congratulated us & he gave us medals for looking so civilized.
We told him about how our land had been stolen & how our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands & said: “Endeavor to persevere!”
They stood us in a line: John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, & me -- I am Lone Watie. They took our pictures. And the newspapers said, “Indians vow to endeavour to persevere.”
We thought about it for a long time. “Endeavour to persevere.” And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.
