Long before[569] the conclusion of this treaty, authority was given by
General McCulloch to raise a battalion of Cherokees for the service
of the Confederate States. Under this authority a regiment was raised
in December, 1861, and commanded by Stand Watie, the leader of the
anti-Ross party. A regiment had also been previously raised, ostensibly
as home guards, the officers of which had been appointed by Chief Ross
and the command assigned to Colonel Drew.[570] After the conclusion
of the treaty this regiment was also placed at the service of the
Confederate States, and in December[571] following, in an address to
them, Ross remarked that he had raised the regiment "to act in concert
with the troops of the Southern Confederacy."
These two regiments actively participated and co-operated in the
military operations of the Confederates until after the battle of Pea
Ridge, in which they were engaged.[572] In the summer of 1862,[573]
following this battle, Colonel Weir, of the United States Army,
commanding a force partly composed of loyal Indians on the northern
border of the Cherokee country, sent a proposition to John Ross
urging that the Cherokees should repudiate their treaty with the
Confederacy and return to their former relations with the United
States, offering at the same time a safe conduct to Ross and such
of his leading counselors as he should designate through the Union
lines to Washington, where they could negotiate a new treaty with
the authorities of the United States. This proposition was declined
peremptorily by Ross, who declared that the Cherokees disdained an
alliance with a people who had authorized and practiced the most
monstrous barbarities in violation of the laws of war; that the
Cherokees were bound to the Confederate States by the faith of treaty
obligations and by a community of sentiment and interest; that they
were born upon the soil of the South and would stand or fall with the
States of the South.[574]