Photograph of General Douglas H. Cooper. No date. From the collections at the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.

Dozens of University of Virginia alumni served with the U.S. Army in the Mexican War. Several of these veterans later commanded Confederate troops in the Civil War including generals Carnot Posey, Lafayette McLaws, John B. Magruder, and Douglas H. Cooper. The latter was a planter from Mississippi and a captain of the 1st Mississippi Rifles in Mexico. After the war President Franklin Pierce appointed him U.S. agent in the Indian Territory where his service was so exemplary that he was officially adopted as a member of the Chickasaw tribe.

Photocopy of autograph document, "Enactment by the Legislature for the Chickasaw Nation" adopting Cooper as a member of the Chickasaw tribe. 1861 May 25. From the collections at the Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

In 1861 the Confederate government requested Cooper to secure the allegiance of the Indian tribes and commissioned him a Colonel of the 1st Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles. He commanded his Native American troops in several engagements including Pea Ridge, where the Indians were falsely accused of scalping fallen Federal soldiers, and General Sterling Price's second invasion of Missouri. After the war Cooper prosecuted the claims of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes against the Federal government over the infamous Indian removals.