biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1806–71)
|
| biography:
| Cherokee leader and Confederate soldier, born near Rome, Georgia, USA, the brother of Elias Boudinot. He published a Cherokee newspaper with his brother, and when they and two others signed the treaty in which SE Cherokees agreed to resettle W of the Mississippi, Watie alone escaped being killed 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), and later 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. |
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