Pin Indians

The Civil War was a cruel sword dividing both the white and Indian nations. Stand Watie and his Indian Regiment stood staunchly for the South throughout. Indian Chief John Ross and his followers fought with the Federals but he defected to the South at one time.

A third faction, the Pin Indians, were Northern Sympathizers. The harassed citizens of the boarder area of Northwest Arkansas and Indian Territory divided their invective between "Stand Waitie's men" and the Pins, according to their sympathies.

During this period the sound of hoof beats on the rocky roads could mean the cavalry of either the Federals or Confederates -- or a private band of Pin Indians on a raid. Either one sent the residents scurrying to hide food and valuables, sometimes to take them to the woods and hide there with them until the danger was past.

History gives scant mention of these mysterious raiders. Information is gleaned mostly from Civil War records, Oklahoma Chronicles and handed-down stories from the ancestry of the present residents of the area in which they operated.

Their history is so closely woven with the Keetoowahs some have mistaken them for the same society but their is a distinction. Many Keetoowahs were Pins but not all Pins were Keetoowahs, and one historian says, "I have known of some who claimed to be Pins who were no more Pins than I am."

Many Keetoowahs enlisted in the Union Home Guard Brigade at Ft. Gibson, serving under white officers. Civil War records list Indians as serving in the Battle of Prairie Grove, involving Cane Hill, and in other area battles, in great numbers. Some of them took their squaws and children along. Some Pins were employed as scouts of the army and others ran in private bands, devoted to their own desires.

The Keetoowah Society, composed of full-blood Cherokees, was organized in 1859 in the Cherokee nation (Indian Territory), with purpose of developing higher individualism and to preserve tribal history.

They met at night in the woods (later they were called Night Hawk Keetoowahs) and had secret rituals and signs by which they could identify each other in the dark or beyond speaking distance. Their badge of identification was two crossed pins, worn on the front of their hunting shirts.

Rev. Evan Jones, Baptist missionary, who brought a party of Cherokees from Georgia in the removal of the Indians, and his son, John, were active in this organization. Jones is thought to have organized it on the basis of an old society (Keetoowahs) originating in the South. But during the war he put emphasis on creating abolitionists.

A corroboration of this is found in a wartime newspaper called "Buck & Ball" after the ammunition used by the Union troops -- three buckshot and a 72-caliber ball. The advance of the Union army in the Battle of Prairie Grove arrived at Cane Hill and found a small printing press in a log cabin. Maj. Preston B. Plumb employed some newspapermen in his company to set up the type and one issue of the paper -- 1,500 copies -- was run off, then the troops moved on.
   *A footnote by the author of the paper states that the press belonged to the Jones Mission, a few miles west of Cincinnati, Arkansas. 
When the war broke out, these missionaries went north, leaving their press to the Cane Hill merchants as security for their debts. As the type was about equal in English and Cherokee characters, it is probable that this was the press used by the missionaries in Indian Territory for several years. Sequoyah is alleged to have worked at this press and to have been a Pin. (Editors' note: Other area historians contend that Sequoyah was never in Northwest Arkansas.)
Relative to the Pins, the note states the Jones Mission trained the Indians to be abolitionists and when one was converted he was given a badge of identification -- two crossed pins.

The Baptist Mission church with its inscription "Old Baptist Mission Church Moved From Georgia Over The Trail of Tears in 1835", near Westville, Okla., is still in use, its logs covered with siding. It stands "a few miles west of Cincinnati", the old border town where many Pins bought their supplies, including "firewater" and ammunition. It is claimed to be the Jones Mission referred to in the annals of the Civil War, the organization of which was moved from Georgia.

Irregardless  [sic] of the original principles of the society the name "Pin" became synonymous with violence throughout the Civil War period. Like the white bushwhackers, in the name of the army, private bands roved the country, pillaging, burning and murdering indiscriminately, whether their victims were Southerners or not.

The women, children and old men left at home lived in terror of a knock on the door at night or a glimpse of an Indian (or white) lurking in the woods, watching the house. When given what they wanted, they often murdered the occupants and burned the house, anyway

These depredations continued for some time after the war.

The Keetoowah Society is still in existence today, although split into factions, each with its own chief and head man. The largest and possibly the oldest is the Red Bird Smith that owns the seal of the original society and the sacred wampum belt related to the history of the tribe. In the breaking up of the Cherokee government and the allotment of tribal land, they became active politically, opposed to the closing of the government.

The term "Pin" was applied only to the full-blood Cherokee guerrilla bands in the Civil War and since has faded into obscurity.

Justice demands the admission that not all the deeds laid to them were theirs. Many times white bushwhackers painted their faces and masqueraded as Indians to do their own.

*Reprinted from Arkansas Democrat Magazine, January 4, 1970
**Taken from the Washington County Historical Society's November 1983 issue Volume 33 Number 4 publication of FLASHBACK