Annie Heloise Abel describes the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, a bloody disaster for the Confederates but a glorious moment for Colonel Stand Watie and his Cherokee Mounted Rifles. The Indians were soon enough swept by the war into a vortex of confusion and chaos. Abel makes clear that their participation in the conflict brought only devastation to Indian Territory.

Born in England and educated in Kansas, Annie Heloise Abel (1873–1947) was a historical editor and writer of books dealing mainly with the trans-Mississippi West. They include The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist (1915), also reprinted as a Bison Book. Abel's distinguished career is noted in an introduction by Theda Perdue, the author of Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society (1979), and Michael D. Green, whose Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (1982) was published by the University of Nebraska Press.