Watie, Stand

orig. De Gata Ga

(born Dec. 12, 1806, Rome, Ga., U.S.—died Sept. 9, 1871) American Indian leader. He learned English at a mission school and helped publish the Cherokee Phoenix, a tribal newspaper. In 1835 he joined three other Cherokee chiefs to sign the Treaty of New Echota, which surrendered Cherokee lands in Georgia and forced the tribe to move to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. In the American Civil War he raised a mounted Cherokee rifle regiment and joined the Confederate army. He directed cavalry raids on the fields and other property of Indians who backed the Union. Promoted to brigadier general (1864), he remained loyal to the Confederacy even after the tribe ended its alliance. After the war, he went to Washington, D.C., as a representative of the southern Cherokee.

Watie, Stand (1806–71) Cherokee leader, Confederate soldier; born near the site of Rome, Ga. (brother of Elias Boudinot). He published a Cherokee newspaper with his brother, and when they and two others signed the treaty in which southeastern Cherokees agreed to resettle west of the Mississippi, Watie alone escaped killing by angry tribesmen. Siding with the Confederacy, he was appointed colonel of the Cherokee Mounted Rifles and fought in many engagements including Wilson's Creek (1861) and Pea Ridge (1862); later he served as a raider and light cavalry commander. When most of his people decided to support the Union in 1863, he led those Cherokee who stayed with the Confederacy and was among the last Confederate officers to surrender. He spent his final years as a planter and tobacco processor.