 In March of 1863, the Legion was operating in the mountains along the border between East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, and many Confederates, including Thomas, thought that his soldiers, because of their Indian ethnicity, were intrinsically better prepared for irregular warfare. Interestingly enough, you see this on the Union Army side, too, with African Americans believing that they will do better at hunting white Confederate guerrillas in swamps for the same sort of reasoning and ideology.