...“The Choctaw and Cherokee Indians who were Confederate soldiers came the second day. We gave them something to eat; they only asked for bread and sat on the ground to eat it. They were riding their Indian ponies and had their hats ornamented with gray peafowl’s feathers, they were very quiet, yet the Negroes were afraid of them.” 

Virginia McCollum Stinson from her memoirs on the welcome relief of Confederate soldiers whose arrival forced the Yankee’s to abandon Camden Arkansas in April 1864

Period paper slip behind image with inscription Jim Iyl(?) killed Honey Springs July 1863 Col. Coopers Command. The Battle of Honey Springs, on July 13, 1863 was the most important Civil War engagement to take place in Indian Territory, and the most important engagement during the Civil War in which the majority of the combatants were not white. 

"Col." Cooper refers to Brigadier General Douglas H. Cooper, who commanded the combined forces of the First and Second Cherokee Mounted Rifles, the First and Second Creek Mounted Rifles, the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment of Mounted rifles, and several units from Texas. The combined Confederate force -- estimated variously between 3400-5100 troops -- met 3000 Union troops from Kansas, Colorado and Wisconsin under the command of Brigadier General James Cabell.