Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 103

Price Realized: $ 1,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CIVIL WAR--INDIAN TERRITORY.) W.L.G. Mills. Letter offering a Unionist Cherokee perspective on the war. Autograph Letter Signed to Charles R. Gourd of the 3rd Indian Regiment at Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation. 3 pages, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches, on one folding sheet; minor dampstaining and wear. Osawatomie, KS, 3 February 1865
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This letter's author had fled Cherokee territory for Kansas, and remained loyal to the Union in defiance of the Cherokees' Confederate leadership. The letter's recipient Charles R. Gourd was also one of the Cherokees who remained loyal to the Union in defiance of the Confederate leadership; he had joined a special regiment to help retake Cherokee land for the Union. Mills wrote: "We are in a strange land, as refugees from our fair homes. . . . I would prefer to spend my means and time amongst our people, rather than among this. . . . We opposed the Lane faction, on last election, and as that party succeeded, it does me no good. . . . I firmly believe the Lane party has done the Indians much injury, and I think him unscrupulous enough to attempt to do us more. . . . I am of those who do not believe in making any concessions to any rebel state, and far less to our infernal neighbors the Choctaws, who I believe should be made to disgorge the plunder taken from the loyal Indians, at least. . . . I think that there will be an effort in the coming spring to carry the war into the Choctaw Nation . . . based on a conversation I had with General Blunt."