“A much-needed corrective to scholarship on Native experiences during the Civil War era. . . . Yarbrough’s study compellingly demonstrates that internal demands for the maintenance of slavery and the strengthening of tribal sovereignty drove the nation to support the Confederate war effort in 1861.”—Journal of Southern History
“Deeply researched and cogently written history. . . . Yarbrough’s empathetic use of anecdotal material form the Indian Pioneer History Collection allows readers to experience events of the period through Indian eyes.”—Civil War Times
“An award-worthy feat of research and writing. Its wide-ranging treatment of the Choctaw offers much needed expansion to a literature of Civil War-era Indian Territory that remains disproportionately focused on the Cherokee.”—Civil War Books & Authors
“An important work that demands attention from Native and Civil War scholars. . . . [Yarbrough’s] conclusions will without doubt inspire new research for years to come.”—American Indian Culture and Research Journal
“Insightful. . . . Choctaw Confederates tells an important history that has too long been told from the vantage point of white outsiders.”—Civil War History
“Yarbrough’s volume is a sorely needed historical accounting of the Choctaw and . . . centers ideas of indigeneity for further examination. . . . [V]aluable reading for faculty and others responsible for guiding readers through the history and entanglements of cultural identity of the peoples in the Americas who were here long before Europeans invaded and imported enslaved Africans to increase the land’s profitability, with little regard for humanity.”—Indigenous Religious Traditions
“A highly impressive book that breaks important new ground both in the history of the Choctaw Nation and Native American nations’ participation in the U.S. Civil War more broadly. Specialists on the Civil War, American slavery, and Native American history will find it essential reading, but Yarbrough’s lucid prose also makes this book easily assignable in advanced undergraduate classes.”—American Nineteenth Century History
“Yarbrough’s excellent monograph brings to the fore several critical and important debates in the larger scholarship of the Native South, particularly the development of racialized thinking and emergent anti-Blackness. Scholars of gender in Native North America will want to read this book for the author’s innovative analysis of Choctaw masculinity. In sum, this book is a must-read for those interested in the history of the Civil War, Choctaws, the Native South, ideologies of race in Indian Country, gender roles, and tribal sovereignty.”—Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
“Choctaw Confederates is the first book to spotlight the Choctaw Nation’s participation in the Civil War. . . . Yarbrough builds on [existing] scholarship and fills important gaps in the story of a tribal nation that committed itself to the Confederate cause.”—Arkansas Historical Quarterly
“Yarbrough’s study is an important contribution to the literature on Indigenous peoples and the Civil War era.”—New Mexico Historical Review