The American Indian as Slaveholder and Seccessionist / An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy

by Annie Heloise Abel

PREFACE

This volume is the first of a series of three dealing with the slaveholding Indians as secessionists, as participants in the Civil War, and as victims under reconstruction. The series deals with a phase of American Civil War history which has heretofore been almost entirely neglected or, where dealt with, either misunderstood or misinterpreted. Perhaps the third and last volume will to many people be the most interesting because it will show, in great detail, the enormous price that the unfortunate Indian had to pay for having allowed himself to become a secessionist and a soldier. Yet the suggestiveness of this first volume is considerably larger than would appear at first glance. It has been purposely given a sub-title, in order that the peculiar position of the Indian, in 1861, may be brought out in strong relief. He was enough inside the American Union to have something to say about secession and enough outside of it to be approached diplomatically. It is well to note, indeed, that Albert Pike negotiated the several Indian treaties that bound the Indian nations in an alliance with the seceded states, under the authority of the Confederate State Department, which was a decided advance upon United States practice—an innovation, in fact, that marked the tremendous importance that the Confederate government attached to the Indian friendship. It was something that stood out in marked contrast to the indifference manifested at the moment by the authorities at Washington; for, while they were neglecting the Indian even to an extent that amounted to actual dishonor, the Confederacy was offering him political integrity and political equality and was establishing over his country, not simply an empty wardship, but a bona fide protectorate.

Granting then that the negotiations of 1861 with the Indian nations constitute a phase of southern diplomatic history, it may be well to consider to what Indian participation in the Civil War amounted. It was a circumstance that was interesting rather than significant; and the majority will have to admit that it was a circumstance that could not possibly have materially affected the ultimate situation. It was the Indian country, rather than the Indian owner, that the Confederacy wanted to be sure of possessing; for Indian Territory occupied a position of strategic importance, from both the economic and the military point of view. The possession of it was absolutely necessary for the political and the institutional consolidation of the South. Texas might well think of going her own way and of forming an independent republic once again, when between her and Arkansas lay the immense reservations of the great tribes. They were slaveholding tribes, too, yet were supposed by the United States government to have no interest whatsoever in a sectional conflict that involved the very existence of the “peculiar institution.” Thus the federal government left them to themselves at the critical moment and left them, moreover, at the mercy of the South, and then was indignant that they betrayed a sectional affiliation.

The author deems it of no slight advantage, in undertaking a work of this sort, that she is of British birth and antecedents and that her educational training, so largely American as it is, has been gained without respect to a particular locality. She belongs to no section of the Union, has lived, for longer or shorter periods in all sections, and has developed no local bias. It is her sincere wish that no charge of prejudice can, in ever so small a degree, be substantiated by the evidence, presented here or elsewhere.

Annie Heloise Abel.
Baltimore, September, 1914

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I. THE GENERAL SITUATION IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY, 1830-1860

Veterans of the Confederate service who saw action along the Missouri-Arkansas frontier have frequently complained, in recent years, that military operations in and around Virginia during the War between the States receive historically so much attention that, as a consequence, the steady, stubborn fighting west of the Mississippi River is either totally ignored or, at best, cast into dim obscurity. There is much of truth in the criticism but it applies in fullest measure only when the Indians are taken into account; for no accredited history of the American Civil War that has yet appeared has adequately recognized certain rather interesting facts connected with that period of frontier development; viz., that Indians fought on both sides in the great sectional struggle, that they were moved to fight, not by instincts of savagery, but by identically the same motives and impulses as the white men, and that, in the final outcome, they suffered even more terribly than did the whites. Moreover, the Indians fought as solicited allies, some as nations, diplomatically approached. Treaties were made with them as with foreign powers and not in the farcical, fraudulent way that had been customary in times past. They promised alliance and were given in return political position—a fair exchange. The southern white man, embarrassed, conceded much, far more than he really believed in, more than he ever could or would have conceded, had he not himself been so fearfully hard pressed. His own predicament, the exigencies of the moment, made him give to the Indian a justice, the like of which neither one of them had dared even to dream. It was quite otherwise with the northern white man, however; for he, self-confident and self-reliant, negotiated with the Indian in the traditional way, took base advantage of the straits in which he found him, asked him to help him fight his battles, and, in the selfsame moment, plotted to dispossess him of his lands, the very lands that had, less than five and twenty years before, been pledged as an Indian possession “as long as the grass should grow and the waters run.”

From what has just been said, it can be easily inferred that two distinct groups of Indians will have to be dealt with, a northern and a southern; but, for the present, it will be best to take them all together. Collectively, they occupied a vast extent of country in the so-called great American desert. Their situation was peculiar. Their participation in the war, in some capacity, was absolutely inevitable; but, preparatory to any right understanding of the reasons, geographical, institutional, political, financial, and military, that made it so, a rapid survey of conditions ante-dating the war must be considered.

It will be remembered that for some time prior to 1860 the policy[1] of the United States government had been to relieve the eastern states of their Indian inhabitants and that this it had done, since the first years of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, by a more or less compulsory removal to the country lying immediately west of Arkansas and Missouri. As a result, the situation there created was as follows: In the territory comprehended in the present state of Kansas, alongside of indigenous tribes, like the Kansa and the Osage,[2] had been placed various tribes or portions of tribes from the old Northwest[3]—the Shawnees and Munsees from Ohio,[4] the Delawares, Kickapoos, Potawatomies, and Miamies from Indiana, the Ottawas and Chippewas from Michigan, the Wyandots from Ohio and Michigan, the Weas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, and Piankashaws from Illinois, and a few New York Indians from Wisconsin. To the southward of all of those northern tribal immigrants and chiefly beyond the later Kansas boundary, or in the present state of Oklahoma, had been similarly placed the great[5] tribes from the South[6]—the Creeks from Georgia and Alabama, the Cherokees from Tennessee and Georgia, the Seminoles from Florida, and the Choctaws and Chickasaws from Alabama and Mississippi.[7] The population of the whole country thus colonized and, in a sense, reduced to the reservation system, amounted approximately to seventy-four thousand souls, less than seven thousand of whom were north of the Missouri-Compromise line. The others were all south of it and, therefore, within a possible slave belt.

This circumstance is not without significance; for it is the colonized, or reservation, Indians[8] exclusively that are to figure in these pages and, since this story is a chapter in the struggle between the North and the South, the proportion of southerners to northerners among the Indian immigrants must, in the very nature of things, have weight. The relative location of northern and southern tribes seems to have been determined with a very careful regard to the restrictions of the Missouri Compromise and the interdicted line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was pretty nearly the boundary between them.[9] That it was so by accident may or may not be subject for conjecture. Fortunately for the disinterested motives of politicians but most unfortunately for the defenceless Indians, the Cherokee land obtruded itself just a little above the thirty-seventh parallel and formed a “Cherokee Strip” eagerly coveted by Kansans in later days. One objection, be it remembered, that had been offered to the original plan of removal was that, unless the slaveholding southern Indians were moved directly westward along parallel lines of latitude, northern rights under the Missouri Compromise would be encroached upon. Yet slavery was not conscientiously excluded from Kansas in the days antecedent to its organization as a territory. Within the Indian country, and it was all Indian country then, slavery was allowed, at least on sufferance, both north and south of the interdicted line. It was even encouraged by many white men who made their homes or their living there, by interlopers, licensed traders, and missionaries;[10] but it flourished as a legitimate institution only among the great tribes planted south of the line. With them it had been a familiar institution long before the time of their exile. In their native haunts they had had negro slaves as had had the whites and removal had made no difference to them in that particular. Since the beginning of the century refuge to fugitives and confusion of ownership had been occasions for frequent quarrel between them and the citizens of the Southern States. Later, when questions came up touching the status of slavery on strictly federal soil, the Indian country and the District of Columbia often found themselves listed together.[11] Moreover, after 1850, it became a matter of serious import whether or no the Fugitive Slave Law was operative within the Indian country; and, when influenced apparently by Jefferson Davis, Attorney-general Cushing gave as his opinion that it was, new controversies arose. Slaves belonging to the Indians were often enticed away by the abolitionists[12] and still more often were seized by southern men under pretense of their being fugitives.[13] In cases of the latter sort, the Indian owners had little or no redress in the federal courts of law.[14]

In point of fact, during all the years between the various dates of Indian removal and the breaking out of the Civil War, the Indian country was constantly beset by difficulties. Some of the difficulties were incident to removal or to disturbances within the tribes but most of them were incident to changes and to political complications in the white man’s country. Scarcely had the removal project been fairly launched and the first Indian emigrants started upon their journey westward than events were in train for the overthrow of the whole scheme.

[Larger Image]

Map showing free Negro Settlements in the Creek country
[From Office of Indian Affairs]

When Calhoun mapped out the Indian country in his elaborate report of 1825, the selection of the trans-Missouri region might well have been regarded as judicious. Had the plan of general removal been adopted then, before sectional interests had wholly vitiated it, the United States government might have gained and, in a measure, would have richly deserved the credit of doing at least one thing for the protection and preservation of the aborigines from motives, not self-interested, but purely humanitarian. The moment was opportune. The territory of the United States was then limited by the confines of the Louisiana Purchase and its settlements by the great American desert. Traders only had penetrated to any considerable extent to the base of the Rockies; but experience already gained might have taught that their presence was portentous and significant of the need of haste; that is, if Calhoun’s selection were to continue judicious; for traders, as has been amply proved in both British and American history, have ever been but the advance agents of settlers.

Unfortunately for the cause of pure philanthropy, the United States government was exceedingly slow in adopting the plan of Indian removal; but its citizens were by no means equally slow in developing the spirit of territorial expansion. Their successful seizure of West Florida had fired their ambition and their cupidity. With Texas annexed and lower Oregon occupied, the selection of the trans-Missouri region had ceased to be judicious. How could the Indians expect to be secure in a country that was the natural highway to a magnificent country beyond, invitingly open to settlement! But this very pertinent and patent fact the officials at Washington singularly failed to realize and they went on calmly assuring the Indians that they should never be disturbed again, that the federal government would protect them in their rights and against all enemies, that no white man should be allowed to intrude upon them, that they should hold their lands undiminished forever, and that no state or territorial lines should ever again circumscribe them. Such promises were decidedly fatuous, dead letters long before the ink that recorded them had had time to dry. The Mexican War followed the annexation of Texas and its conquests necessitated a further use of the Indian highway. Soldiers that fought in that war saw the Indian land and straightway coveted it. Forty-niners saw it and coveted it also. Prospectors and adventurers of all sorts laid plans for exploiting it. It entered as a determining factor into Benton’s great scheme for building a national road that should connect the Atlantic and Pacific shores and with the inception of that came a very sudden and a very real danger; for the same great scheme precipitated, although in an indirect sort of way, the agitation for the opening up of Kansas and Nebraska to white settlement, which, of course, meant that the recent Indian colonists, in spite of all the solemn governmental guaranties that had been given to them, would have to be ousted, for would not the “sovereign” people of America demand it? Then, too, the Dred Scott decision, the result of a dishonorable political collusion as it was,[15] militated indirectly against Indian interests. It is true that it was only in its extra-legal aspect that it did this but it did it none the less; for, if the authority of the federal government was not supreme in the territories and not supreme in any part of the country not yet organized into states, then the Indian landed property rights in the West that rested exclusively upon federal grant, under the Removal Act of 1830, were virtually nil. It is rather interesting to observe, in this connection, how inconsistent human nature is when political expediency is the thing at stake; for it happened that the same people and the same party, identically, that, in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, had tried to convince the Indians, and against their better judgment too, that the red man would be forever unmolested in the western country because the federal government owned it absolutely and could give a title in perpetuity, argued, in the fourth and fifth decades, that the states were the sole proprietors, that they were, in fact, the joint owners of everything heretofore considered as national. Inferentially, therefore, Indians, like negroes, had no rights that white men were bound to respect.

The crucial point has now been reached in this discussion. From the date of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the sectional affiliation of the Indian country became a thing of more than passing moment. Whatever may have been John C. Calhoun’s ulterior and real motive in urging that the trans-Missouri region be closed to white settlement forever, whether he did, as some of his abolitionist enemies have charged, plan thus to block free-state expansion and so frustrate the natural operations of the Missouri Compromise, certain it is, that southern politicians, after his time, became the chief advocates of Indian territorial integrity, the ones that pleaded most often and most noisily that guaranties to Indians be faithfully respected. They had in mind the northern part of the Indian country and that alone; but, no doubt, the circumstance was purely accidental, since at that time, the early fifties, the northern[16] was the only part likely to be encroached upon.[17] Their interest in the southern part took an entirely different direction and that also may have been accidental or occasioned by conditions quite local and present. For this southern part, by the way, they recommended American citizenship and the creation of American states[18] in the Union, also a territorial organization immediately that should look towards that end. Such advice came as early as 1853, at least, and was more natural than would at first glance appear; for the southern tribes were huge in population, in land, and in resources. They were civilized, had governments and laws modelled upon the American, and more than all else, they were southern in origin, in characteristics, and in institutions.

The project for organizing[19] the territories of Kansas and Nebraska caused much excitement, as well it might, among the Indian immigrants, even though the Wyandots, in 1852, had, in a measure, anticipated it by initiating a somewhat similar movement in their own restricted locality.[20] Most of the tribes comprehended to the full the ominous import of territorial organization; for, obviously, it could not be undertaken except at a sacrifice of Indian guaranties. At the moment some of the tribes, notably the Choctaw and Chickasaw,[21] were having domestic troubles that threatened a neighborhood war and the new fear of the white man’s further aggrandizement threw them into despair. The southern Indians, generally, were much more exercised and much more alarmed than were the northern.[22] Being more highly civilized, they were better able to comprehend the drift of events. Experience had made them unduly sagacious where their territorial and treaty rights were concerned, and well they knew that, although the Douglas measure did not in itself directly affect them or their country, it might easily become the forerunner of one that would.

The border strife, following upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, disturbed in no slight degree the Indians on the Kansas reservations, which, by-the-by, had been very greatly reduced in area by the Manypenny treaties of 1853-1854. Some of the reserves lay right in the heart of the contested territory, free-state men intrenching themselves among the Delawares and pro-slavery men among the Shawnees,[23] the former north and the latter south of the Kansas River. But even remoteness of situation constituted no safeguard against encroachment. All along the Missouri line the squatters took possession. The distant Cherokee Neutral Lands[24] and the Osage and New York Indian reservations[25] were all invaded.[26] The Territorial Act had expressly excluded Indian land from local governmental control; but the Kansas authorities of both parties utterly ignored, in their administration of affairs, this provision. The first districting of the territory for election purposes comprehended, for instance, the Indian lands, yet little criticism has ever been passed upon that grossly illegal act. Needless to say, the controversy between slavocracy and freedom obscured and obliterated, in those years, all other considerations.

As the year 1860 approached, appearances assumed an even more serious aspect. Kansas settlers and would-be settlers demanded that the Indians, so recently the only legal occupants of the territory, vacate it altogether. So soon had the policy of granting them peace and undisturbed repose on diminished reserves proved futile. The only place for the Indian to go, were he indeed to be driven out of Kansas, was present Oklahoma; but his going there would, perforce, mean an invasion of the property rights of the southern tribes, a matter of great moment to them but seemingly of no moment whatsoever to the white man. Some of the Kansas Indians saw in removal southward a temporary refuge—they surely could not have supposed it would be other than temporary—and were glad to go, making their arrangements accordingly.[27] Some, however, had to be cajoled into promising to go and some had to be forced. A few held out determinedly against all thought of going. Among the especially obstinate ones were the Osages,[28] natives of the soil. The Buchanan government failed utterly to convince them of the wisdom of going and was, thereupon, charged by the free-state Kansans with bad faith, with not being sincere and sufficiently persistent in its endeavors to treat, its secret purpose being to keep the free-state line as far north as possible. The breaking out of the Civil War prevented the immediate removal of any of the tribes but did not put a stop to negotiations looking towards that end.

All this time there was another influence within the Indian country, north and south, that boded good or ill as the case might be. This influence emanated from the religious denominations represented on the various reserves. Nowhere in the United States, perhaps, was the rivalry among churches that had divided along sectional lines in the forties and fifties stronger than within the Indian country. There the churches contended with each other at close range. The Indian country was free and open to all faiths, while, in the states, the different churches kept strictly to their own sections, the southern contingent of each denomination staying close to the institution it supported. Of course the United States government, through its civilization fund, was in a position to show very pointedly its sectional predilections. It will probably never be known, because so difficult of determination, just how much the churches aided or retarded the spread of slavery.[29]

Among the tribes of Kansas, denominational strength was distributed as follows: The Kickapoos[30] and Wyandots[31] were Methodists; but, while the former were a unit in their adherence to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the latter were divided and among them the older church continued strong. The American Baptist Missionary Union had a school on the Delaware reservation and, previous to 1855, had had one also on the Shawnee, which the political uproar in Kansas had obliged to close its doors. These same Northern Baptists were established also among the Ottawas, as the Moravians were among the Munsees and the Roman Catholics[32] among the Osages and the Potawatomies. The Southern Baptists were likewise to be found among the Potawatomies[33] and the Southern Methodists among the Shawnees. The Shawnee Manual Labor School, under the Southern Methodists, was, however, only very grudgingly patronized by the Indians. Its situation near the Missouri border was partly accountable for this as it was for the selection of the school as the meeting-place of the pro-slavery legislature in 1855. The management of the institution was from time to time severely criticized and the superintendent, the Reverend Thomas Johnson, an intense pro-slavery agitator,[34] was strongly suspected of malfeasance,[35] of enriching himself, forsooth, at the expense of the Indians. The school found a formidable rival, from this and many another cause, in a Quaker establishment, which likewise existed on the Shawnee Reserve but independently of either tribal or governmental aid.

If church influences and church quarrels were discernible among the northern tribes, they were certainly very much more so among the southern. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational) that had labored so zealously for the Cherokees, when they were east of the Mississippi, extended its interest to them undiminished in the west; and, in the period just before the Civil War,[36] was the strongest religious force in their country. There it had no less than four mission stations[37] and a flourishing school in connection with each. The same organization was similarly influential among the Choctaws[38] or, in the light of what eventually happened, it might better be said its missionaries were. Both Southern and Northern Baptists and Southern Methodists likewise were to be found among the Cherokees;[39] Presbyterians[40] and Southern Methodists among the Chickasaws and Choctaws; and Presbyterians only among the Creeks and Seminoles. In every Indian nation south, except the Creek and Seminole,[41] the work of denominational schools was supplemented, or maybe neutralized, by that of public and neighborhood schools.

True to the traditions and to the practices of the old Puritans and of the Plymouth church, the missionaries of the American Board,[42] so strongly installed among the Choctaws and the Cherokees, took an active interest in passing political affairs, particularly in connection with the slavery agitation. On that question, they early divided themselves into two camps; those among the Choctaws, led by the Reverend Cyrus Kingsbury,[43] supporting slavery; and those among the Cherokees, led by the Reverend S. A. Worcester,[44] opposing it. The actions of the former led to a controversy with the American Board and, in 1855, the malcontents, or pro-slavery sympathizers, expressed a desire to separate themselves and their charges from its patronage.[45] When, eventually, this separation did occur, 1859-1860, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (Old School) stepped into the breach.[46]

The rebellious conduct of the Congregational missionaries met with the undisguised approval of the Choctaw agent, Douglas H. Cooper,[47] formerly of Mississippi. It was he who had already voiced a nervous apprehension, as exhibited in the following document,[48] that the Indian country was in grave danger of being abolitionized:

☞ If things go on as they are now doing, in 5 years slavery will be abolished in the whole of your superintendency.

(Private) I am convinced that something must be done speedily to arrest the systematic efforts of the Missionaries to abolitionize the Indian Country.

Otherwise we shall have a great run-away harbor, a sort of Canada—with “underground rail-roads” leading to & through it—adjoining Arkansas and Texas.

It is of no use to look to the General Government—its arm is paralized by the abolition strength of the North.

I see no way except secretly to induce the Choctaws & Cherokees & Creeks to allow slave-holders to settle among their people & control the movement now going on to abolish slavery among them.

C—

Cooper sent this note, in 1854, as a private memorandum to the southern superintendent, who at the time was Charles W. Dean. In 1859, it was possible for him to write to Dean’s successor, Elias Rector, in a very different tone. The missionaries had then taken the stand he himself advocated and there was reason for congratulation. Under such circumstances, Cooper wrote,

I cannot close this report without calling your attention to the admirable tone and feeling pervading the reports of superintendents of schools and missionaries among the Choctaws, and particularly to that of the Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin, one of the oldest missionaries among the Choctaws, who, in referring to past political disturbances, says: “We have looked upon our rulers as the ‘powers that be, are ordained of God,’ and have respected them for this reason. ‘Whomsoever, therefore, resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God’ (Romans, xiii, 2). This has been our rule of action during the political excitement. We believe that the Bible is the best guide for us to follow. Our best citizens are those most influenced by Bible truth.”

I rejoice to believe the above sentiments are entertained by most, if not all, the missionaries now among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and that they entirely repudiate the higher-law doctrine[49] of northern and religious fanatics. It is but lately, as I learn, that the Choctaw mission, for many years under the control of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (whose headquarters are at Boston) has been cut off, because they preferred to follow the teachings of the Bible, as understood by them, rather than obey the dogmas contained in Dr. Treat’s letter and the edicts of the parent board.

It is a matter of congratulation among the friends of the old Choctaw missionaries, who have labored for thirty years among them, and intend to die with armor on, that all connection with the Boston board has been dissolved. If it had been done years ago, when their freedom of conscience and of missionary action was attempted to be controlled by the parent board, much of suspicion, of ill-feeling, and diminished usefulness, which attached to the Choctaw missionaries in consequence of their connection with and sustenance by a board avowedly and openly hostile to southern institutions, would have been prevented.[50]

In the next year, 1860, Cooper was still sanguine as to affairs among the Indians of his agency and he could report to Rector, unhesitatingly, as if confident of official endorsement both at Forth Smith and at Washington,[51]

Great excitement has prevailed along the Texas border, in consequence of the incendiary course pursued in that State by horse thieves and religious fanatics; but I am glad to say, as yet, so far as I am informed, no necessity has existed in this agency for the organization of “vigilance committees” ... No doubt we have among us free-soilers; perhaps abolitionists in sentiment; but, so far as I am informed, persons from the North, residing among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who entertain opinions unfriendly to our system of domestic slavery, keep their opinions to themselves and attend to their legitimate business.[52]

George Butler, the United States agent for the Cherokees, seems to have been, no less than Cooper, an adherent of the State Rights Party and an upholder of the institution of slavery. In 1859, he ascribed the very great material progress of the Cherokees to the fact that they were slaveholders.[53] Slavery, in Butler’s opinion, had operated as an incentive to all industrial pursuits. To an extent this may have been true, since all Indians, no matter how high their type, have an aversion for work. As Professor Shaler once said, they are the truest aristocrats the world has ever known. But the slaveholders among the great tribes of the South were, for the most part, the half-breeds, the cleverest and often, much as we may regret to have to admit it, the most unscrupulous men of the community.

Butler’s commission as Indian agent expired in March, 1860, and he was not reappointed, Robert J. Cowart of Georgia[54] being preferred. This man, illiterate and unprincipled, immediately set to work to perform a task to which his predecessor had proved unequal. The task was the removal of white intruders from the Cherokee country. For some time past, the southern superintendent and the agents under him, to say nothing of Commissioner Greenwood and Secretary Thompson, the one a citizen of Arkansas and the other of Mississippi, had resented most bitterly the invasion of the Cherokee Neutral Lands by Kansas free-soilers and the division of it into counties by the unlawfully assumed authority of the Kansas legislature. The resentment was thoroughly justifiable; for the whole proceeding of the legislature was contrary to the express enactment of Congress; but no doubt, enthusiasm for the strict enforcement of the federal law came largely from political predilections, precisely as the Kansan’s outrageous defiance of it came from a deep-rooted distrust of the Buchanan administration.

There were, however, other intruders that Cowart and Rector and Greenwood designed to remove and they wanted to remove them on the ground that they were making mischief within the tribe and interfering with its institutions, or, more specifically, with slavery. The intruders meant were principally the missionaries against whom Greenwood had even the audacity to lay the charge of inciting to murder. Newspapers of bordering slave states were full of criticism,[55] just before the war, of these same men and, notably, of the Reverend Evan[56] and John Jones, the reputed ringleaders. The official excuse for removing them is rather interesting because it is so similar to that given, some thirty years earlier, in connection with the removal from Georgia. Ulterior motives can so easily be hidden under cold official phrase.

That the cause of slavery within the Cherokee country was in jeopardy in the spring and summer of 1860 can not well be denied. To the men of the time the evidence was easily obtainable. Almost as if by magic, a “search organization” started up among the full-bloods, an organization profoundly secret in its membership and in its purposes, but believed to be for no other object than the overthrow of the “peculiar institution.” Its existence was promptly reported to the United States government and, as was to be expected, the missionaries were held responsible for both its inception and its continuance. It was then that Greenwood made[57] his most serious charge against these men and prepared, under color of law, to have them removed. Later, in this same year of 1860, Quantrill, the Hagerstown, Maryland man of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, who afterwards became such a notorious frontier guerrilla in the interests of the Confederate cause, leagued himself with some abolitionists for the sake of making an expedition to the Cherokee country and rescuing negroes, there held in bondage.[58] The timely distrust of Quantrill, however, caused the enterprise to be abandoned even before its preliminaries had been thoroughly well arranged; yet, had the rescue been carried to completion, it would not have been entirely without precedent[59] and its very contrivance indicated an uncertainty and a precariousness of situation south of the Kansas line.

Ever since their compulsory removal from Georgia under circumstances truly tragic, the Cherokees had been much given to factional strife. This was largely in consequence of the underhand means taken by the state and federal authorities to accomplish removal. The Cherokees had, under the necessities of the situation, divided themselves into the Ross, or Anti-removal Party, and the Ridge, or Treaty Party.[60] Removal took place in spite of the steady opposition of the Rossites and the Cherokees went west, piloted by the United States army. Once in the west a new division arose in their ranks; for, as newcomers, they came into jealous contact with members of their tribe who had emigrated many years previously and who came to figure, in subsequent Cherokee history, as the Old Settlers’ Party.[61] In 1846, the United States government attempted to assume the role of mediator in a settlement of Cherokee tribal differences but without much success.[62] The old wrongs were unredressed, so the old divisions remained and formed nuclei for new disintegrating issues. Thus, in 1857, there were no less than three factions created in consequence of a project for selling the Cherokee Neutral Lands[63]. Each faction had its own opinion how best to dispose of the proceeds, should a sale take place. In 1860, there were two factions, the selling and the non-selling[64]. This tendency of the Cherokees perpetually to quarrel among themselves and to bear long-standing grudges against each other is most important; inasmuch as that marked peculiarity of internal politics very largely determined the unique position of the tribe with reference to the Civil War.

The other great tribes had also occasions for quarrel in these same critical years. The disgraceful circumstances of their removal had widened the gulf, once simply geographical, between the Upper and the Lower Creeks. They were now almost two distinct political entities, in each of which there were a principal and a second chief. In 1833, provision had been made for the accommodation of the Seminoles within a certain definite part of the Creek country[65]—just such an arrangement, forsooth, as worked so ill when applied to the Choctaws and Chickasaws; but it took several years for the Seminoles to be suited. At length, when their numbers had been considerably augmented by the coming of the new immigrants from Florida, they took up their position, for good and all, in the southwestern corner of the Creek Reserve, a politically distinct community. By that time, the Creeks seem to have repented of their generosity,[66] so, perhaps, it was well that the United States government had not yielded to their importunity and consented to a like settlement of the southern Comanches.[67] It had taken the Chickasaws a long time to reconstruct their government after the political separation from the Choctaws; but now they had a constitution,[68] all their own, a legislature, and a governor. The Choctaws had attempted a constitution, likewise, first the Scullyville, then the Doaksville, set up by a minority party; but they had retained some semblance of the old order of things in the persons of their chiefs.[69]

There were other Indians within the southern division of the Indian country that were to have their part in the Civil War and in events leading up to it or resulting from it. In the extreme northeastern corner, were the Quapaws, the Senecas, and the confederated Senecas and Shawnees, all members, with the Osages and the New York Indians of Kansas, of the Neosho River Agency which was under the care of Andrew J. Dorn. In the far western part, at the base of the Wichita Mountains, were the Indians of the Leased District, Wichitas, Tonkawas,[70] Euchees, and others, collectively called the “Reserve Indians.” Most of them had been brought from Texas,[71] because of Texan intolerance of their presence, and placed within the Leased District, a tract of land west of the ninety-eighth meridian, which, under the treaty of 1855, the United States had rented from the Choctaws and Chickasaws. It was a part of the old Chickasaw District of the Choctaw Nation. Outside of the Wichita Reserve and still wandering at large over the plains were the hostile Kiowas and Comanches, against whom and the inoffensive Reserve Indians, the Texans nourished a bitter, undying hatred. They charged them with crimes that were never committed and with some crimes that white men, disguised as Indians, had committed. They were also suspected of manufacturing evidence that would incriminate the red men and of plotting, in regularly-organized meetings, their overthrow.[72]

Although the plan for colonizing some of the Texas Indians had been completed in 1855, the Indian Office found it impossible to execute it until the summer of 1859. This was principally because the War Department could not be induced to make the necessary military arrangements.[73] In point of fact, the southern Indian country was, at the time, practically without a force of United States troops, quite regardless of the promise that had been made to all the tribes upon the occasion of their removal that they should always be protected in their new quarters and, inferentially, by the regular army. Even Fort Gibson had been virtually abandoned as a military post on the plea that its site was unhealthful; and all of Superintendent Rector’s recommendations that Frozen Rock, on the south side of the Arkansas a few miles away, be substituted[74] had been ignored, not so much by the Interior Department, as by the War. Secretary Thompson thought that enough troops should be at his disposal to enable him to carry out the United States Indian policy, but Secretary Floyd demurred. He was rather disposed to dismantle such forts as there were and to withdraw all troops from the Indian frontier,[75] a course of action that would leave it exposed, so the dissenting Thompson prognosticated, to “the most unhappy results.”[76]

It happened thus that, when the United States surveyors started in 1858 to establish the line of the ninety-eighth meridian west longitude and to run other boundary lines under the treaty of 1855,[77] they found the country entirely unpatrolled. Troops had been ordered from Texas to protect the surveyors; but, pending their arrival, Agent Cooper, who had gone out to witness the determination of the initial point on the line between his agency and the Leased District, himself took post at Fort Arbuckle and called upon the Indians for patrol and garrison duty.[78] It would seem that Secretary Thompson had verbally authorized[79] Cooper to make this use of the Indians; but they proved in the sequel very inefficient as garrison troops. On the thirtieth of June, Lieutenant Powell, commanding Company E, First United States Infantry, arrived at Fort Arbuckle from Texas and relieved Cooper of his self-imposed task. The day following, Cooper set out upon a sixteen day scout of the Washita country, taking with him his Indian volunteers, Chickasaws[80] and a few Cherokees;[81] and for this act of using Indian after the arrival of white troops, he was severely criticized by the department. One thing he accomplished: he selected a site for the prospective Wichita Agency with the recommendation that it be also made the site[82] of the much-needed military post on the Leased District. The site had originally been occupied by a Kechie village and was admirably well adapted for the double purpose Cooper intended. It lay near the center of the Leased District and near the sources of Cache and Beaver Creeks. It was also, so reported Cooper, “not very distant from the Washita, & Canadian” (and commanded) “the Mountain passes through the Wichita Mountains to the Antelope Hills—to the North branch of Red River and also the road on the South side of the Wichita Mountains up Red River.”

The colonization of the Wichitas and other Indians took place in the summer of 1859 under the excitement of new disputes with Texas, largely growing out of an unwarranted and brutal attack[83] by white men upon Indians of the Brazos Agency. That event following so closely upon the heels of Van Dorn’s[84] equally brutal attack upon a defenceless Comanche camp brought matters to a crisis and the government was forced to be expeditious where it had previously been dilatory. The Comanches had come in, under a flag of truce, to confer in a friendly way with the Wichitas. Van Dorn, ignorant of their purpose but supposing it hostile, made a forced march, surprised them, and mercilessly took summary vengeance for all the Comanches had been charged with, whether justly or unjustly, for some time past. After it was all over, the Comanches, with about sixty of their number slain, accused the Wichitas of having betrayed them. Frightened, yet innocent, the Wichitas begged that there be no further delay in their removal, so the order was given and arrangements made. Unfortunately, by the time everything was ready, the season was pretty far advanced and the Indians reached their new home to find it too late to put in crops for that year’s harvest. Subsistence rations had, therefore, to be doled out to them, the occasion affording, as always, a rare opportunity for graft. Instead of calling for bids, as was customary, Superintendent Rector entered into a private contract[85] with a friend and relative of his own, the consequence being that the government was charged an exorbitant price for the rations. Soon other troubles[86] came. The Leased District proved to be already occupied by some northern Indian refugees[87] and became, as time went on, a handy rendezvous for free negroes; but, as soon as Matthew Leeper[88] of Texas became agent, the stay of such was extremely short.[89]

Such were the conditions obtaining among the Indians west of Missouri and Arkansas in the years immediately antedating the American Civil War; and, from such conditions, it may readily be inferred that the Indians were anything but satisfied with the treatment that had been and was being accorded them. They owed no great debt of gratitude to anybody. They were restless and unhappy among themselves. Their old way of living had been completely disorganized. They had nothing to go upon, so far as their relations with the white men were concerned, to make them hopeful of anything better in the future, rather the reverse. Indeed at the very opening of the year 1860, a year so full of distress to them because of the great drouth[90] that ravaged Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the worst that had been known in thirty years, there came occasion for a new distrust. Proposals were made to the Creeks,[91] to the Choctaws,[92] and to the Chickasaws to allot their lands in severalty, notwithstanding the fact that one of the inducements offered by President Jackson to get them originally to remove had been, that they should be permitted to hold their land, as they had always held it, in common, forever. The Creeks now replied to the proposals of the Indian Office that they had had experience with individual reservations in their old eastern homes and had good reason to be prejudiced against them. The Indians, one and all, met the proposals with a downright refusal but they did not forget that they had been made, particularly when there came additional cause for apprehension.

The cause for apprehension came with the presidential campaign of 1860 and from a passage in Seward’s Chicago speech,[93] “The National Idea; Its Perils and Triumphs,” expressive of opinions, false to the national trust but favorable to expansion in the direction of the Indian territory, most inopportune, to say the least, and foolish. Seward probably spoke in the enthusiasm of a heated moment; for the obnoxious sentiment, “The Indian territory, also, south of Kansas, must be vacated by the Indians,” was very different in its tenor from equally strong expressions in his great Senate speech[94] on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, February 17, 1854. It soon proved, however, easy of quotation by the secessionists in their arguments with the Indians, it being offered by them as incontestable proof that the designs of the incoming administration were, in the highest degree, inimical to Indian treaty rights. At the time of its utterance, the Indians were intensely excited. The poor things had had so many and such bitter experiences with the bad faith of the white people that it took very little to arouse their suspicion. They had been told to contract their domain or to move on so often that they had become quite super-sensitive on the subject of land cessions and removals. Seward’s speech was but another instance of idle words proving exceedingly fateful.

Two facts thus far omitted from the general survey and reserved for special emphasis may now be remarked upon. They will show conclusively that there were personal and economic reasons why the Indians, some of them at least, were drawn irresistibly towards the South. The patronage of the Indian Office has always been more or less of a local thing. Communities adjoining Indian reservations usually consider, and with just cause because of long-established practice, that all positions in the field service, as for example, agencies and traderships, are the perquisites, so to speak, of the locality. It was certainly true before the war that Texas and Arkansas had some such understanding as to Indian Territory, for only southerners held office there and, from among the southerners, Texans and Arkansans received the preference always. It happened too that the higher officials in Washington were almost invariably southern men.

The granting of licenses to traders rested with the superintendent and everything goes to show that, in the fifties and sixties, applications for license were scrutinized very closely by the southern superintendents with a view to letting no objectionable person, from the standpoint of southern rights, get into the territory. The Holy See itself could never have been more vigilant in protecting colonial domains against the introduction of heresy. The same vigilance was exercised in the hiring of agency employees, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and the like. Having full discretionary power in the premises, the superintendents could easily interpret the law to suit themselves. They could also evade it in their own interests and frequently did so. One notorious case[95] of this sort came up in connection with Superintendent Drew, who gave permits to his friends to “peddle” in the Indian country without requiring of them the necessary preliminary of a bond. Traders once in the country had tremendous influence with the Indians, especially with those of a certain class whom ordinarily the missionaries could not reach. Then, as before and since, Indian traders were not men of the highest moral character by any means. Too often, on the contrary, they were of degraded character, thoroughly unscrupulous, proverbial for their defiance of the law, general illiteracy, and corrupt business practices. It stands to reason that such men, if they had themselves been selected with an eye single to the cause of a particular section and knew that solicitude in its interests would mean great latitude to themselves and favorable reports of themselves to the department at Washington, would spare no efforts and hesitate at no means to make it their first concern, provided, of course, that it did not interfere with their own monetary schemes.

To cap the climax, the last and greatest circumstance to be noted, if only because of the great weight it carried with the Indians when it was brought into the argument by the secessionists, is that practically all of the Indian money held in trust for the individual tribes by the United States government was invested in southern stocks;[96] in Florida 7’s, in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee 6’s, in North Carolina and Tennessee 5’s, and the like. To tell the truth, only the merest minimum of it was secured by northern bonds. The southerners asserted for the Indians’ benefit, that all these securities would be forfeited[97] by the war. Sufficient is the fact, that the position of the Indians[98] was unquestionably difficult. With so much to draw them southward, our only wonder is, that so many of them stayed with the North.

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II. INDIAN TERRITORY IN ITS RELATIONS WITH TEXAS AND ARKANSAS

For the participation of the southern Indians in the American Civil War, the states of Texas and Arkansas were more than measurably responsible. Indian Territory, or that part of the Indian country that was historically known as such, lay between them. Its southern frontage was along the Red River; and that stream, flowing with only slight sinuosity downward to its junction with the Mississippi, gave to Indian Territory a long diagonal, controlled, as far as situation went, entirely by Texas. Texas lay on the other side of the river and she lay also on almost the whole western border of Indian Territory.[99] She was, consequently, in possession of a rare opportunity, geographically, for exercising influence, should need for such ever arise. Running parallel with the Red River and northward about one hundred miles, was the Canadian. Between the two rivers were three huge Indian reservations, the most western was the Leased District of the Wichitas and allied bands, the middle one was the Chickasaw, and the eastern, the Choctaw.[100] The Indian occupants of these three reservations were, therefore, and sometimes to their sorrow, be it said, the very next door neighbors of the Texans. The Choctaws were, likewise, the next door neighbors of the Arkansans who joined them on the east; but the relations between Arkansans and Choctaws seem not to have been so close or so constant during the period before the war as were the relations between the Choctaws and the Texans on the one hand and the Cherokees and the Arkansans on the other.

The Cherokees dwelt, like the Choctaws, over against Arkansas but north of the Canadian River and in close proximity to Fort Smith, the headquarters of the Southern Superintendency.[101] Their territory was not so compactly placed as was the territory of the other tribes; and, in its various parts, it passes, necessarily, under various designations. There was the “Cherokee Outlet,” a narrow tract south of Kansas that had no definite western limit. It was supposed to be a passage way to the hunting grounds of the great plains beyond. Then there was the “Cherokee Strip,” the Kansas extension of the outlet, and for most of its extent originally and legally a part of it. The territorial organization of Kansas had made the two distinct. Finally, as respects the more insignificant portions of the Cherokee domain, there were the “Cherokee Neutral Lands,” already sufficiently well commented upon. They were insignificant, not in point of acreage but of tribal authority operating within them. They lay in the southeastern corner of Kansas and constituted, against their will and against the law, her southeastern counties. They were separated, to their own discomfiture and disadvantage, from the Cherokee Nation proper by the reservation of the Quapaws, of the Senecas, and of the confederated Senecas and Shawnees. This Cherokee Nation lay, as has already been indicated, over against Arkansas and north of the northeastern section of the Choctaw country. The Arkansas River formed part of the boundary between the two tribal domains. So much then for the location of the really great tribes, but where were the lesser?

Colonel Downing, Cherokee
[From Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology]

The Quapaws, the Senecas, and the confederated Senecas and Shawnees, the most insignificant of the lesser, occupied the extreme northeastern corner of Indian Territory and, therefore, bordered upon the southwestern corner of Missouri. The Creeks lived between the Arkansas River, inclusive of its Red Fork, and the Canadian River, having the Cherokees to the east and north of them, the Choctaws and Chickasaws to the south, and the Seminoles to the southwest, between the Canadian and its North Fork. The Indians of the Leased District have already been located.

In the years preceding the Civil War, the interest of Texas and of Arkansas in Indian Territory manifested itself, not in a covetous desire to dispossess the Indians of their lands, as was, unfortunately for national honor, the case in Kansas, but in an effort to keep the actual country true to the South, settled by slaveholders, Indian or white, as occasion required or opportunity offered. When sectional affairs became really tense after the formation of the Republican Party, they redoubled their energies in that direction, working always through the rich, influential, and intelligent half-breeds, some of whom had property interests and family connections in the states operating upon them.[102] The half-breeds were essentially a planter class, institutionally more truly so than were the inhabitants of the border slave states. It is therefore not surprising that, during the excitement following Abraham Lincoln’s nomination and election, identically the same political agencies worked among them as among their white neighbors and events in Indian Territory kept perfect pace with events in adjoining states.

The first of these that showed strong sectional tendencies came in January, 1861, when the Chickasaws, quite on their own initiative apparently, met in a called session of their legislature to consider how best the great tribes might conduct themselves with reference to the serious political situation then shaping itself in the United States. There is some evidence that the Knights of the Golden Circle had been active among the Indians as they had been in Arkansas[103] during the course of the late presidential campaign. At all events, the red men knew full well of passing occurrences among their neighbors and they certainly knew how matters were progressing in Texas. There the State Rights Party was asserting itself in no doubtful terms. For the time being, however, the Chickasaws contented themselves with simply passing an act,[104] January 5, suggesting an inter-tribal conference and arranging for the executive appointment of a Chickasaw delegation to it. The authorities of the other tribes were duly notified[105] and to the Creek was given the privilege of naming time and place.

The Inter-tribal Council assembled at the Creek Agency,[106] February 17, but comparatively few delegates were in attendance. William P. Ross, a graduate[107] of Princeton and a nephew of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokees, went as the head of the Cherokee delegation. It was he who reported the scanty attendance,[108] saying that there were no Chickasaws present, no Choctaws, but only Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees. Why it happened so can not now be exactly determined but to it may undoubtedly be ascribed the outcome; for the council did nothing that was not perfectly compatible with existing friendly relations between the great tribes and the United States government. John Ross, in instructing his delegates, had strictly enjoined caution and discretion[109]. William P. Ross and his associates seem to have managed to secure the observance of both. Perchance it was Chief Ross’s[110] known aversion to an interference in matters that did not concern the Indians, except very indirectly, and the consciousness that his influence in the council would be immense, probably all-powerful, that caused the Chickasaws to draw back from a thing they had themselves so ill-advisedly planned. It is, however, just possible that, between the time of issuing the call and of assembling the council, they crossed on their own responsibility the boundary of indecision and resolved, as most certainly had the Choctaws, that their sympathies and their interests were with the South. It might well be supposed that in this perilous hour their thoughts would have travelled back some thirty years and they would have remembered what havoc the same state-rights doctrine, now presented so earnestly for their acceptance, although it scarcely fitted their case, had then wrought in their concerns. Strangely enough none of the tribes seems to have charged the gross injustice of the thirties exclusively to the account of the South. On the contrary, they one and all charged it against the federal government, against the states as a whole, and so, rightly or wrongly, the nation had to pay for the inconsistency of Jackson’s procedure, a procedure that could so illogically recognize the supremacy of federal law in one matter and the supremacy of state law in another matter that was precisely its parallel.

The decision of the Choctaws had found expression in a series of resolutions under date of February 7. They are worthy of being quoted entire.

February 7, 1861.

Resolutions expressing the feelings and sentiments of the General Council of the Choctaw Nation in reference to the political disagreement existing between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union.

Resolved by the General Council of the Choctaw Nation assembled, That we view with deep regret and great solicitude the present unhappy political disagreement between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union, tending to a permanent dissolution of the Union and the disturbance of the various important relations existing with that Government by treaty stipulations and international laws, and portending much injury to the Choctaw government and people.

Resolved further, That we must express the earnest desire and ready hope entertained by the entire Choctaw people, that any and all political disturbances agitating and dividing the people of the various States may be honorably and speedily adjusted; and the example and blessing, and fostering care of their General Government, and the many and friendly social ties existing with their people, continue for the enlightenment in moral and good government and prosperity in the material concerns of life to our whole population.

Resolved further, That in the event a permanent dissolution of the American Union takes place, our many relations with the General Government must cease, and we shall be left to follow the natural affections, education, institutions, and interests of our people, which indissolubly bind us in every way to the destiny of our neighbors and brethren of the Southern States upon whom we are confident we can rely for the preservation of our rights of life, liberty, and property, and the continuance of many acts of friendship, general counsel, and material support.

Resolved further, That we desire to assure our immediate neighbors, the people of Arkansas and Texas, of our determination to observe the amicable relations in every way so long existing between us, and the firm reliance we have, amid any disturbance with other States, the rights and feelings so sacred to us will remain respected by them and be protected from the encroachments of others.

Resolved further, That his excellency the principal chief be requested to inclose, with an appropriate communication from himself, a copy of these resolutions to the governors of the Southern States, with the request that they be laid before the State convention of each State, as many as have assembled at the date of their reception, and that in such as have not they be published in the newspapers of the State.

Resolved, That these resolutions take effect and be in force from and after their passage.

Approved February 7, 1861.[111]

These resolutions of the Choctaw Council are in the highest degree interesting in the matter both of their substance and of their time of issue. The information is not forthcoming as to how the Choctaws received the invitation of the Chickasaw legislature to attend an inter-tribal council; but, later on, in April, 1861, the Choctaw delegation in Washington, made up of P. P. Pitchlynn, Samuel Garland, Israel Folsom, and Peter Folsom, assured the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that the Choctaw Nation intended to remain neutral,[112] which assurance was interpreted to mean simply that the Choctaws would be inactive spectators of events, expressing no opinion, in word or deed, one way or the other. The Chickasaw delegation gave the same assurance and at about the same time and place. Now what is to be concluded? Is it to be supposed that the Act of January 5, 1861 in no wise reflected the sentiments of a tribe as a whole and similarly the Resolutions of February 7, 1861, or that the tribal delegations were, in April, utterly ignorant of the real attitude of their respective constituents? The answer is to be found in the following most interesting and instructive letter, written by S. Orlando Lee to Commissioner Dole from Huntingdon, Long Island, March 15, 1862:[113]

Thinking you and the government would like to hear something about the state of affairs among the Choctaws last summer and the influences which induced them to take their present position I will write you what I know. I was a missionary teacher at Spencer Academy for two years and refer you to Hon. Walter Lowrie Gen. Sec. of the Pres. Board of Foreign Missions for information as to my character &c. I left Spencer June 13th & the nation June 24th but have heard directly from there twice since, the last time as late as Sept 6th. So that I can speak of occurrences as late as that.

After South Carolina passed her secession ordinance in Dec. 1860 there was a public attempt to excite the Choctaws and Chickasaws as a beginning hoping to bring in the other tribes afterwards. Many of the larger slaveholders (who are nearly all half breeds) had been gained before and Capt. R. M. Jones was the leader of the secessionists. The country was full of lies about the intentions of the new administration. The border papers in Arkansas & Texas republished from the New York & St. Louis papers a part of a sentence from Hon. W. H. Seward’s speech at Chicago during the election campaign of 1860 to this effect “And Indian Territory south of Kansas must be vacated by the Indian” (These words do occur in the report of Mr. Seward’s Chicago speech as published in New York Evening Post Weekly for I read it myself). This produced intense excitement of course and to add to the effect the Secessionist Journals charged that another prominent republican had proposed to drive the indians out of Indian Ter. in a speech in congress. “This” they were told “is the policy of the new administration. The abolitionists want your lands—we will protect you. Your only safety is to join the South.” Again they were told “that the South must succeed in gaining their independence and the money of the indians being invested in the stocks of Southern states the stocks would be cancelled & the indians would lose their money unless they joined the south, if they did that the stocks would be reissued to the Confederate States for them.” Their special commissioners Peter Folsom &c., who came to Washington to get the half million of dollars for claims, reported that they got along very well until they were asked if they had slaves after that they said they could do nothing. Sampson Folsom said however that he thought they would have succeeded had it not been for the attack on Sumpter—He said President Lincoln then told them “He would not give them a dollar until the close of the war.” An interesting fact in relation to these commissioners is that they came to Washington by way of Montgomery & were when they reached Washington probably all, except Judge Garland, secessionists. Thus all influences were in favor of the rebels—Where could the indians go for light—The former indian agent Cooper was a Col. in the rebel service. The oldest missionary who has undoubtedly more influence with the Choctaws than any other white man is an ardent secessionist believing firmly both in the right & in the final success of the rebel cause—He (Dr. Kingsbury) prays as earnestly & fervently for the success of the rebels as any one among us does for the success of the Union cause. The son of another, Mr. Hodgkin, is a captain in the rebel service—another Mr. Stark actively assisted in organizing a company acted as sec. of secessionist meetings &c. Even Mr. Reid superintendant of Spencer was confident the rebels could never be subdued and thought when the treaty should be made they ought in justice to have Ind. Territory. Again when Fort Smith was evacuated the rebel forces were on the way up the Ark. river to attack it & the garrison evacuated it in the night which looked to the Indians (if not to the white men) as if the northerners were afraid. The same was true of Fort Washitaw where our forces left in the night and were actually pursued for several days by the Texans. Thus matters stood when Col. Pitchlynn the resident Com. of the Choctaws at Washington returned home. He gave all his influence to have the Choctaws take a neutral position. The chief had called the council to meet June 1st. & Col. P. so far succeeded as to induce him to prepare a message recommending neutrality. Col. P. was promptly reported as an abolitionist and visited & threatened by a Texas Vigilance committee.

The Council met at Doaksville seven miles from Red River & of course from Texas. It was largely attended by white men from Texas our Choctaw neighbors who attended said the place was full of white men.

The Council did not organize until June 4th or 5th (I forget which). In the meanwhile the white men & half bloods had a secession meeting when it leaked out through Col. Cooper that the Chief Hudson had prepared a message recommending neutrality at which Robert M. Jones was so indignant that he made a furious speech in which he declared that “any one who opposed secession ought to be hung” “and any suspicious persons ought to be hung.” Hudson was frightened and when the Council was organized sent in a message recommending that commissioners be appointed to negotiate a treaty with the Confederates and that in the meantime a regiment be organized under Col. Cooper for the Confed. army.

This was finally done but not for a week for the Choctaws were reluctant. They feared that their action would result in the destruction of the nation. Said Joseph P. Folsom, a member of the council & a graduate of Dartmouth College New Hampshire, “We are choosing in what way we shall die.” Judge Wade said to me, “We expect that the Choctaws will be buried. That is what we think will be the end of this.” Judge W. is a member of the Senate (for the Choctaw Council is composed of a Senate & lower house chosen by the people in districts & the constitution is modeled very much after those of the states.) & he has been a chief. Others said to me “If the north was here so we could be protected we would stand up for the north but now if we do not go in for the south the Texans will come over here and kill us.” Mr. Reid told me a day or two before we left that he had become convinced during a trip for two or three days through the country that the full bloods were strongly for the north. I am sure it was so then & it was the opinion of the missionaries that if we had all taken the position, that we would not leave, some of us had been warned to do so by Texan vigilance committees, we could have raised a thousand men who would have armed in our defence—Our older brethren told us that this would hasten the destruction of the indians as they would be crushed before any help could come.—We thought this would probably be the case and the missionaries who were most strongly union in sentiment left.

One of the number Rev. John Edwards had been hiding for his life from Texan & half blood ruffians for two weeks & we at Spencer had had the honor to be visited by a Texas committee searching for arms.

I continue my narrative from a letter from one of our teachers who was detained when we left by the illness of his wife & who left Spencer Sept. 5th & the Nation Sept. 9th. He says Col. Coopers regiment was filled up with Texans “The half breeds after involving the full bloods in the war have rather drawn back themselves and but few of them have enlisted & gone to the war.” This indicates that the full bloods have at last yielded to the pressure and joined the rebels. The missionaries who remained would generally advise them to do this.

The Choctaw commissioners met Albert Pike rebel commissioner & made a treaty with him, with reference to this he says “The Choctaws rec’d quite a bundle of promises from the rebel government. Their treaty gives their representative a seat in the rebel congress, acknowledges the right of the Choctaws to give testimony in all courts in the C. S., exempts them from the expences of the war, their soldiers are to be paid 20$ a month by the C. S. during the war, the C. S. assume the debts due the Choctaws by the U. S., they have the privilege of coming in as a state into the Confederacy with equal rights if they wish it, or remain as they are, the C. S. to sustain their schools after the war, they guarantee them against all intrusion on their lands by white men, allow them to garrison the forts in their territory with their own troops if they wish it said troops to be paid by the C. S.”—Here is a list of promises and when I think of these, of the belief of their oldest missionaries in the final success of the rebels, of the fact that all the old Officers of the U. S. government were in the service of the rebels, of the occupation of the forts there by rebels, of the activity of a knot of bitter disunionists led by Capt. Jones, who has long been a very influential man, of the Texas mob law which considered it a crime for a young man to refuse to volunteer, of the fact that there was no way for them to hear the truth as to the designs of the U. S. government concerning them, except through Col. Pitchlyn who was soon silenced & of the falsehoods told them as to the designs of the Government, I do not wonder that they have joined the rebels.

I saw strong men completely unmanned even to floods of tears by the leaving of Dr. Hobbs and the thoughts of what was before them. I heard men say they did not want to fight but expected to be forced to do it.

I trust the government will consider the circumstances of the case & deal gently, considerately with the indians. I do not like to write such things of my brother missionaries but they are I believe facts & though I love some of them very much I still must say that, except Rev. Mr. Byington who was doubtful & Rev. Mr. Balantine a missionary to the Chickasaws who was union, all the ordained missionaries belonging to the Choctaw & Chickasaw Mission of the Presbyterian Board who remain there were victims of the madness which swept over the South, were secessionists—One or two of the three Laymen who remained were union men—Cyrus Kingsbury son of Rev. Dr. K. being one....

The failure of the United States government to give the Indians, in season, the necessary assurance that they would be protected, no matter what might happen, can not be too severely criticized. It indicated a very short-sighted policy and was due either to a tendency to ignore the Indians as people of no importance or to a lack of harmony and coöperation among the departments at Washington. Such an assurance of continued protection was not even framed until the second week in May and then the Indian country was already threatened by the secessionists. Moreover, it was framed and intended to be given by one department, the Interior, and its fulfilment left to another, the War. It went out from the Indian Office in the form of a circular letter,[114] addressed by Commissioner William P. Dole to the chief executive[115] in each of the five great tribes. It assured the Indians that President Lincoln had no intention of interfering with their domestic institutions or of allowing government agents or employees to interfere and that the War Department had been appealed to to furnish all needed defense according to treaty guaranties. The new southern superintendent, William G. Coffin of Indiana, was made the bearer of the missive; but, unfortunately, quite a little time elapsed[116] before the military situation[117] in the West would allow him to assume his full duties or to reach his official headquarters,[118] and, in the interval, he was detailed for other work. The Indians, meanwhile, were left to their own devices and were obliged to look out for their own defense as best they could.

To all appearances neither the legislative action of the Chickasaws and of the Choctaws nor the work of the inter-tribal council was, at the time of occurrence, reported officially to the United States government or, if reported officially, then not pointedly so as to reveal its real bearings upon the case in hand. All the agents within Indian Territory were as usual southern men;[119] but may not have been directly responsible or even cognizant of this particular action of their charges. The records show that practically all of them, Cooper, Garrett, Cowart, Leeper, and Dorn, were absent[120] from their posts, with or without leave, the first part of the new year and that every one of them became or was already an active secessionist.[121]

It has been authenticated and is well understood today that, as the Southern States, one by one, declared themselves out of the Union or were getting themselves into line for so doing, they prepared to further the cause of secession among their neighbors and, for the purpose, sent agents or commissioners to them, who organized the movement very much as the Committees of Correspondence did a similar movement prior to the American Revolution. In short, in the spring of 1861, the seceding states entered upon active proselytism and at least two of them extended their labors to and among the Indians. Those two were Texas and Arkansas. Missouri also worked with the same end in view, so did Colorado, but apparently not so much with the great tribes of Oklahoma as with the politically less important of Kansas. Colorado, it is true, did operate to some extent upon the Cherokees of the Outlet and upon the Wichitas, but mostly upon the Indians of the western plains. No one can deny that, in the interests of the Confederate cause, the project of sending emissaries even to the Indians was a wise measure or refuse to admit that the contrasting inactivity and positive indifference of the North was foolhardy in the extreme. It indicated a self-complacency for which there was no justification. More than that can with truth be said; for, from the standpoint of political wisdom and foresight, the inactivity where the Indians were concerned was conduct most reprehensible.

While Chickasaws and Choctaws, unsolicited,[122] were expressing themselves, the secessionist sentiment was developing rapidly in Texas. By the middle of February, conditions were such that steps might be taken to order the evacuation of the state by Federal troops. This was finally done under authority of the Committee of Public Safety[123] and the general in command, D. E. Twiggs of Georgia, compliantly yielded. His small show of resistance seemed, under the circumstances, a mere pretense, although he had his reasons, and good ones too, perfectly satisfactory to himself, for doing what he did. Two main conditions were attached to the agreement of surrender;[124] one, exacted by General Twiggs, to the effect that his men be allowed to retain their arms, commissary stores, camp and garrison equipage, and the means of transportation; the other, exacted by the Texan commissioners, that the troops depart by way of the coast and not overland, as the United States War Department had designed when, a short time before, it had ordered a similar removal.[125] The precaution of forcing a coastwise journey[126] was taken by the Texan commissioners to consume time and to prevent the troops being retained in states or territories through which transit lay for possible future use against Texas. The easy compliance of General Twiggs[127] undoubtedly merits some censure and yet was perfectly well justified to his own conscience by the exigencies of the situation and by the fact that he had repeatedly asked for orders as to what he should do in the event of an emergency and had received none. The circumstance of his surrender and the resulting triumph of the secessionist element could not fail to have its effect upon the watchful Indians to whom the exhibition of present power was everything.

That the Texan secessionists fully appreciated the strategic position of the Indian nations and the absolute necessity of making some sort of terms with them was brought out by the action of the convention at its first session. An ordinance was passed “to secure the friendship and co-operation of the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations of Indians;” and three men, James E. Harrison, James Bourland, and Charles A. Hamilton, were appointed as commissioners[128] “to proceed to said nations and invite their prompt co-operation in the formation of a Southern Confederacy.”[129]

Now before following these men in the execution of their mission, it may be advisable, for breadth of view, to illustrate how Texas still further made Indian relations an issue most prominent in all the earlier stages of her secession movement; but at the very outset it must be admitted that, in so doing, she differentiated carefully between the civilized and the uncivilized tribes. With the one group she was ready to seek an alliance, offensive and defensive, but with the other to wage a relentless, exterminating war. The failure of the United States central government to protect her against the aggressions and the atrocities so-called of the wild tribes was cited by her as one principal justification for withdrawal from the Union,[130] her obvious purpose being to gain thereby the adherence of the northern counties, non-slaveholding but frontier. Almost conversely, on the other hand, Governor Houston gave as one good and sufficient reason for not withdrawing from the Union, the fear that should the Union be dissolved the wild tribes, who were now, in a measure, restrained from committing depredations and enormities by the very nature of their treaty guaranties, would be literally let loose upon Texas.[131] As far as the civilized tribes were concerned, however, all were of one mind and that took the form of the conviction that so great was the necessity of gaining and holding the confidence of the Indians, that Texas must not procrastinate in joining her fortunes with those of her sister states in the Confederacy.[132]

James E. Harrison and his colleagues started out upon the performance of the duties assigned them, February 27, 1861. Their report[133] of operations and of observations being somewhat difficult of access and its contents not easily summarized, is herewith appended. Its fullness of detail is especially to be commended.

We ... crossed Red River and entered the Chickasaw Nation about thirty miles southwest of Fort Washita; visited and held a private conference with His Excellency Governor C. Harris and other distinguished men of that nation, who fully appreciated our views and the object of our mission. They informed us that a convention of the Chickasaws and Choctaws was in a few days to convene at Boggy Depot, in the Choctaw Nation, to attend to some municipal arrangements. We, in company with Governor Harris and others, made our way to Boggy Depot, conferring privately with the principal men on our route. We arrived at Boggy Depot on the 10th day of March. Their convention or council convened on the 11th. Elected a president of the convention (Ex-Governor Walker, of the Choctaw Nation); adopted rules of decorum. On the 12th we were waited on by a committee of the convention. Introduced as commissioners from Texas, we presented our credentials and were invited to seats. The convention then asked to hear us, when Mr. James E. Harrison addressed them and a crowded auditory upon the subject of our mission, setting forth the grounds of our complaint against the Government of the United States, the wrongs we had suffered until our patience had become exhausted, endurance had ceased to be a virtue, our duty to ourselves and children demanded of us a disruption of the Government that had ceased to protect us or to regard our rights; announced the severance of the old and the organization of a new Government of Confederate Sovereign States of the South, with a common kindred, common hopes, common interest, and a common destiny; discussed the power of the new Government, its influence, and wealth; the interest the civilized red man had in this new organization; tendering them our warmest sympathy and regard, all of which met the cordial approbation of the convention.

The Choctaws and Chickasaws are entirely Southern and are determined to adhere to the fortunes of the South. They were embarrassed in their action by the absence of their agents and commissioners at Washington, the seat of Government of the Northern Confederacy, seeking a final settlement with that Government. They have passed resolutions authorizing the raising of a minute company in each county in the two nations, to be drilled for actual service when necessary. Their convention was highly respectable in numbers and intelligence, and the business of the convention was dispatched with such admirable decorum and promptness as is rarely met with in similar deliberative bodies within the States.

On the morning of the 13th, hearing that the Creeks (or Maskokys) and Cherokees were in council at the Creek agency, on the Arkansas River, 140 miles distant, we immediately set out for that point, hoping to reach them before their adjournment. In this we were disappointed. They had adjourned two days before our arrival. We reached that point on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning, hearing that there was a religious meeting five miles north of the Arkansas River, in the Creek Nation, Mr. James E. Harrison attended, which proved to be of the utmost importance to our mission. The Reverend Mr. H. S. Buckner was present, with Chilly McIntosh, D. N. McIntosh, Judge Marshall, and others, examining a translation of a portion of the Scriptures, hymn book, and Greek grammar by Mr. Buckner into the Creek language. Mr. Buckner showed us great kindness, and did us eminent service, as did also Elder Vandiven, at whose house we spent the night and portion of the next day with these gentlemen of the Creek Nation, and through them succeeded in having a convention of the five nations called by Governor Motey Kinnaird, of the Creeks, to meet at North Fork (Creek Nation) on the 8th of April.

In the intermediate time we visited the Cherokee Nation, calling on their principal men and citizens, conversing with them freely until we reached Tahlequah, the seat of government. Near this place Mr. John Ross resides, the Governor of the nation. We called on him officially. We were not unexpected, and were received with courtesy, but not with cordiality. A long conference was had with him, conducted by Mr. Harrison on the part of the commissioners, without, we fear, any good result. He was very diplomatic and cautious. His position is the same as that held by Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural; declares the Union not dissolved; ignores the Southern Government. The intelligence of the nation is not with him. Four-fifths, at least, are against his views, as we learned from observation and good authorities. He, as we learned, had been urged by his people to call a council of the nation (he having the only constitutional authority to do so), to take into consideration the embarrassed condition of political affairs in the States, and to give some expression of their sentiments and sympathies. This he has persistently refused to do. His position in this is that of Sam. Houston in Texas, and in all probability will share the same fate, if not a worse one. His people are already oppressed by a Northern population letting a portion of territory purchased by them from the United States, to the exclusion of natives, and we are creditably informed that the Governors of some two or more of the Western free-soil States have recommended their people emigrating to settle the Cherokee country. It is due Mr. John Ross, in this connection, to say that during our conference with him he frequently avowed his sympathy for the South, and that, if Virginia and the other Border States seceded from the Government of the United States, his people would declare for the Southern Government that might be formed. The fact is not to be denied or disguised that among the common Indians of the Cherokees there exists a considerable abolition influence, created and sustained by one Jones, a Northern missionary of education and ability, who has been among them for many years, and who is said to exert no small influence with John Ross himself.

From Tahlequah we returned to the Creek Nation, and had great satisfaction in visiting their principal men—the McIntoshes, Stidhams, Smiths, Vanns, Rosses, Marshalls, and others too numerous to mention. Heavy falls of rain occurred about the time the convention was to meet at North Fork, which prevented the Chickasaws and Choctaws from attending the council, the rivers and creeks being all full and impassable. The Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, Quapa, and Socks (the three latter dependencies of the Creeks) met on the 8th of April. After they had organized by calling Motey Kinnaird, the Governor of the Creeks, to the chair, a committee was appointed to wait on the commissioners present, James E. Harrison and Capt. C. A. Hamilton, and invite them to appear in the convention, when, by invitation, Mr. Harrison addressed the convention in a speech of two hours. Our views were cordially received by the convention. The Creeks are Southern and sound to a man, and when desired will show their devotion to our cause by acts. They meet in council on the 1st of May, when they will probably send delegates to Montgomery to arrange with the Southern Government.

These nations are in a rapid state of improvement. The chase is no longer resorted to as means of subsistence, only as an occasional recreation. They are pursuing with good success agriculture and stock raising. Their houses are well built and comfortable, some of them costly. Their farms are well planned and some of them extensive and all well cultivated. They are well supplied with schools of learning, extensively patronized. They have many churches and a large membership of moral, pious deportment. They feel themselves to be in an exposed, embarrassed condition. They are occupying a country well suited to them, well watered, and fertile, with extensive fields of the very best mineral coal, fine salt springs and wells, with plenty of good timber, water powers which they are using to an advantage. Pure slate, granite, sandstone, blue limestone, and marble are found in abundance. All this they regard as inviting Northern aggression, and they are without arms, to any extent, or munitions of war. They declare themselves Southerners by geographical position, by a common interest, by their social system, and by blood, for they are rapidly becoming a nation of whites. They have written constitutions, laws, etc., modeled after those of the Southern States. We recommend them to the fostering care of the South, and that treaty arrangements be entered into with them as soon as possible. They can raise 20,000 good fighting men, leaving enough at home to attend to domestic affairs, and under the direction of an officer from the Southern Government would deal destruction to an approaching army from that direction, and in the language of one of their principal men:

“Lincoln may haul his big guns about our prairies in the daytime, but we will swoop down upon him at night from our mountains and forests, dealing death and destruction to his army.”

No delay should be permitted in this direction. They cannot declare themselves until they are placed in a defensible position. The Administration of the North is concentrating his forces at Fort Washita, about twenty-four miles from the Texas line, and within the limits of the Chickasaw Nation. This fort could easily be taken by a force of 200 or 300 good men, and it is submitted as to whether in the present state of affairs a foreign government should be permitted to accumulate a large force on the borders of our country, especially a portion containing a large number of disaffected citizens who repudiate the action of the State.

In this connection it may not be improper to state that from North Fork to Red River we met over 120 wagons, movers from Texas to Kansas and other free States. These people are from Grayton, Collin, Johnson, and Denton, a country beautiful in appearance, rich in soil, genial in climate, and inferior to none in its capacity for the production of the cereals and stock. In disguise, we conversed with them freely. They had proposed by the ballot box to abolitionize at least that portion of the State. Failing in this, we suppose at least 500 voters have returned whence they came.

All of which is respectfully submitted this April 23, 1861....

Presumably, the suggestions, contained in the closing paragraphs of the commissioners’ report, in so far as they concerned Texas, were immediately acted upon by her. It was very true, as the commissioners had reported, that a change was taking place in the disposition of Federal troops within the Indian country. About the middle of February, a complaint[134] had been filed at the Indian Office by the Wichita agent, Matthew Leeper, to the effect that men, claiming to be Choctaws and Chickasaws, were trespassing upon the Leased District. The Reserve Indians asked for relief and protection at the hands of their guardian, the United States government. Shortly afterwards, perhaps in a measure in response to the appeal or more likely, to a hint that everything was not quite as it should be on the Texan border, Colonel William H. Emory, First United States Cavalry, was ordered, March 13,[135] to take post at Fort Cobb. He was then in Washington and, immediately upon his departure thence, was ordered, March 18,[136] to form his regiment at Fort Washita instead, word having come from the commander at that post,[137] in a report of the third instant, of a threatened attack by Texans. In explanation of a policy so vacillating, Emory was given to understand that the change of destination was really made at the solicitation of the agent and delegation of the Chickasaws. Those men were in Washington, out of reach of and apparently out of sympathy with, the events transpiring at home. Agent Cooper, secessionist though he was, probably did not altogether approve of the interference of the Texans. At any rate, he shared the representations of the Chickasaw delegation that Fort Washita stood in need of reënforcement,[138] and the War Department acceded to their request on the ground that, “The interests of the United States are paramount to those of the friendly Indians on the reservation near Fort Cobb.”[139]

Emory’s orders further comprehended a concentration of all the troops at Fort Washita that were then at that place and at Forts Cobb and Arbuckle;[140] but the orders were discretionary in their nature and permitted his leaving a small force at the more northern posts should circumstances warrant or demand it. On the nineteenth, General Scott had had a conference with Senator Charles B. Mitchell of Arkansas and, in deference to Mitchell’s opinion, still further modified his orders to Emory so that, while leaving him the bulk of his discretionary power, he recommended that, if advisable, Emory retain one company at Fort Cobb.[141] In any event, one company of infantry was to move in advance from Fort Arbuckle to Fort Washita.[142]

Up to the twenty-fourth of March, at which time he left Memphis, Colonel Emory made pretty good time in his attempt to reach his destination; but from Memphis on his movements were unavoidably and considerably hampered. Low water in the Arkansas detained him for several days so that he deemed it prudent to send his orders on ahead to the commanding officer at Fort Arbuckle “to commence the movement upon Fort Washita, and, in the event of the latter place being threatened, to march to its support with his whole force.”[143] On reaching Fort Smith, Emory found that matters had come to a crisis in Arkansas and, touching the disposition of his force and the objects of his mission, allowed himself to be unduly influenced in his judgment by men of local predilections.[144] It was upon their advice and upon the urgent pleadings of Matthew Leeper,[145] Indian agent on the Leased District, that he exercised his discretionary power as to the disposal of troops, without listening to his military subordinates[146] or having viewed the locality for himself. In the interests of these local petitioners,[147] he even enlarged upon Mitchell’s recommendation and concluded to leave two companies at Fort Cobb as one was deemed altogether inadequate to the protection of so isolated a post. It never seems to have occurred to him that the attack would have to come from the south, from the direction of Fort Washita, and that a force large enough to be efficient at either Fort Washita or Fort Arbuckle would necessarily protect Fort Cobb and the Indians of the Leased District.

The position of the Indians in the Leased District was serious in the extreme. They lived in mortal terror of the Texans and their agent, the man placed over them by the United States government, was now an avowed secessionist. He was a Texan and declared, as so many another southerner did from General Lee down, that honor and loyalty compelled him to go with his state. In February, he had been in Washington City, settling his accounts with the government and estimating for the next two quarters in accordance with the rulings and established usage of the Indian Office. On his way west and back to his agency, he was waylaid by a man of the name of “Burrow,” very probably Colonel N. B. Burrow, acting under authority from the state of Arkansas, who despoiled him of part of his travelling equipment and then suffered him to go on his way.[148] Leeper reached his agency to find the Indians greatly excited. He endeavored to allay their fears, assuring them that the Texans would do them no harm. Soon, however, came his own defection and he thenceforward made use of every means, either to make the way easy for the Texans or to induce the Indians to side with them against the United States.

While Emory was dilly-dallying at Fort Smith, the Texans made their preparations[149] for invading the Indian country and a regiment of volunteers under William C. Young, once a planter of Braganza County and now state regimental colonel, moved towards the Red River. There is something to show that they came at the veiled invitation[150] of the Indians. At any rate they seem to have felt pretty sure of a welcome[151] and were close at hand when Colonel Emory reached Fort Washita. He reached Fort Washita to find that the concentration of troops, even of such as his ill-advised orders would permit, had not yet fully taken place, that his supplies had been seized by the Texans, and that a general attack by them upon the poorly fortified posts was to be hourly expected. Emory, thereupon, resolved to withdraw from Fort Washita towards Arbuckle and Cobb. The day after he did so, April 16, Young’s troops entered in force. Emory hurried forward to strengthen Fort Cobb and, indeed, to relieve it, taking, in his progress, the open prairie road that his cavalry might be more available. On the way,[152] he was joined by United States troops from Fort Arbuckle, the Texans in close pursuit. Fort Arbuckle was occupied by them in turn and then Fort Cobb, Emory never so much as attempting to enter the place; for he found its garrison in flight to the northeast. Fugitives all together, the Federal troops, piloted by a Delaware Indian, Black Beaver,[153] hurried onwards towards Fort Leavenworth. They seem to have made no lengthy stop until they were safe across the Arkansas River[154] and their flight may well be said to have been a precipitous one. Behind them, at Fort Arbuckle, Colonel Young took possession of abandoned property and placed it in the care of the Chickasaw Indians,[155] who had materially aided him in his attack. His next move was to negotiate,[156] unauthoritatively, a treaty with the Reserve Indians, gaining the promise of their alliance upon the understanding that the Confederacy, in return, would feed and protect them. Fort Cobb was rifled and the Indians made rich, in their own estimation, with booty.[157] Colonel Young seems then to have drawn back towards the Red River; but for several months he continued to occupy with his forces,[158] under the authority of Texas and with the consent of the Chickasaw Indians, the three frontier posts that Emory had been instructed to guard; viz., Forts Washita, Arbuckle, and Cobb.

If Texas took time by the forelock in her anxiety to secure the Indian country and its inhabitants, Arkansas most certainly did the same; and, in the undertaking, various things told to her advantage, among which, not the least important was the close family relationship existing between her secessionist governor, Henry M. Rector, and the southern superintendent. They were cousins and, to all appearances, the best of friends. It is doubtful if in any state the executive authority thereof worked more energetically for secession or with greater consistency and promptitude than in Arkansas. Governor Rector had been elected, in the autumn of 1860, by the Democrats and old-line Whigs. He belonged to a numerous and most influential family, land-surveyors most of them, seemingly by inheritance, and, although from northern or border states originally, strongly committed to the doctrine of state sovereignty. The family connections were also powerful socially and politically. The gubernatorial inauguration came in November, 1860, and from that moment Henry M. Rector and his host of relations and friends worked for secession.

At the outset, Governor Rector identified the Indian interests with those of Arkansas. Even in his message[159] of December 11, 1860 he gave it as his opinion that the two communities must together take measures to prevent anti-slavery migration. It was rather late in the day, however, to intimate that men of abolitionist sentiments must not be allowed to cross the line, and a man of the political acumen of Henry M. Rector must have known it. Immediately after the general election there were evidences of great excitement in Arkansas and, when news[160] came that the disused arsenal at Little Rock was to be occupied by artillery under Captain James Totten from Fort Leavenworth, it broke out into expressions of public dissent. Little Rock was scarcely less radical and secessionist in its views than was Fort Smith and Fort Smith was regarded as a regular hot-bed of sectionalism. The legislature, too, was filled with state-rights advocates and some of the actions taken there were almost revolutionary in their trend. With the new year came new alarms and false reports of what was to be. Harrell records[161] that the first message over the newly completed telegraph line between Memphis and Little Rock was a repetition of the rumor, quite without foundation, that Major Emory had been ordered from Fort Gibson to reinforce Totten at Little Rock, and that the effect upon Helena was electrical. It is no wonder that the newspapers and personal communications[162] of the time showed great intensity of feeling and a tendency to ring the changes on a single theme.

The public indignation following the receipt of the unsubstantiated rumor that Totten was to be reënforced seems to have compelled the action of Governor Rector in taking possession,[163] on February eighth, in the name of the state of Arkansas, of the United States arsenal at Little Rock; but, as a matter of fact, Rector needed only an excuse, and a very slight one at that, for doing more than he had already done to prove his sectional bias. Nor had he forgotten or neglected the Indians. Indeed, never at any time did he leave a single stone unturned in his search for inside and outside support; and, notwithstanding the fact that the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was not passed until the sixth of May, Governor Rector conducted himself, for months before that, as though the state were a bona fide member of the Confederacy. In all his audacious venturings, proposals, and acts, he had the full and unquestioning support, not only of his cousin, Elias Rector,[164] in whose honor Albert Pike had written the well-known parody[165] on “The Old Scottish Gentlemen;”[166] but of the leading citizens of Fort Smith and Little Rock, particularly of those whose previous occupations, residence, inclinations, or interests had made them conversant with Indian affairs and, therefore, unusually appreciative of the strategic value of the Indian country. Under such circumstances, it is not at all surprising that Governor Rector seized, as he did, the earliest[167] opportunity to approach the Cherokees. Fort Smith at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers was only eighty miles from Fort Gibson.

Before taking up for special comment Governor Rector’s negotiations with the Cherokees through their principal chief, John Ross, it might be well to retrace our steps a little in order to show how, in yet other ways, Arkansas interested herself more than was natural in the concerns of the Indians and made some of her citizens, in the long run, more than ordinarily responsible for the development of secessionist sentiment among the southern tribes.

When David Hubbard, journeying westward as special secessionist commissioner[168] from Alabama to Arkansas, reached Little Rock—and that was in the early winter of 1861—he soon discovered that many Arkansans were not willing for their state to go out of the Union unless she could take Indian Territory with her. Hubbard’s letter,[169] descriptive of the situation, is very elucidating. It is addressed to Andrew B. Moore,[170] governor of Alabama, and bears date Kinloch, Alabama, January third.

My Dear Sir: On receipt of your letter and appointment as commissioner from Alabama to Arkansas, I repaired to Little Rock and presented my credentials to the two houses, and also your letter to Governor Rector, by all of whom I was politely received. The Governor of Arkansas was every way disposed to further our views, and so were many leading and influential members of each house of the Legislature, but neither are yet ready for action, because they fear the people have not yet made up their minds to go out. The counties bordering on the Indian nations—Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—would hesitate greatly to vote for secession, and leave those tribes still under the influence of the Government at Washington, from which they receive such large stipends and annuities. These Indians are at a spot very important, in my opinion, in this great sectional controversy, and must be assured that the South will do as well as the North before they could be induced to change their alliances and dependence. I have much on this subject to say when I get to Montgomery, which cannot well be written. The two houses passed resolutions inviting me to meet them in representative hall and consult together as to what had best be done in this matter. When I appeared men were anxious to know what the seceding States intended to do in certain contingencies. My appointment gave me no authority to speak as to what any State would do, but I spoke freely of what, in my opinion, we ought to do. I took the ground that no State which had seceded would ever go back without full power being given to protect themselves by vote against anti-slavery projects and schemes of every kind. I took the position that the Northern people were honest and did fear the divine displeasure, both in this world and the world to come, by reason of what they considered the national sin of slavery, and that all who agreed with me in a belief of their sincerity must see that we could not remain quietly in the same Government with them. Secondly, if they were dishonest hypocrites, and only lied to impose on others and make them hate us, and used anti-slavery arguments as mere pretexts for the purpose of uniting Northern sentiment against us, with a view to obtain political power and sectional dominion, in that event we ought not to live with them. I desired any Unionist present to controvert either of these positions, which seemed to cover the whole ground. No one attempted either, and I said but little more. I am satisfied, from free conversations with members of all parties and with Governor Rector, that Arkansas, when compelled to choose, will side with the Southern States, but at present a majority would vote the Union ticket. Public sentiment is but being formed, but must take that direction....

What, in addition to that just cited, Hubbard had to say about the Indians or about the profit accruing from close contact with them, we have no way of knowing; but we have a right to be suspicious of the things that have to be communicated by word of mouth only, especially in this instance, when we remember that white men have always made the Indians subjects of exploitation and that Hubbard was the man whom the southern Confederacy chose for its first commissioner of Indian affairs, also that Hubbard’s first outline of work, as commissioner, in truth, his only outline, comprehended an extended visit to the Indians before whom he proposed to expatiate on the financial advantages of an adherence to the Confederacy and the inevitable financial ruin that must come from continued loyalty to the Union. All things considered, it would surely seem that in Hubbard’s mind the money question was always uppermost.

But there were others to whom the Indian income was a thing of interest. At the earlier meeting of the Arkansas convention, a resolution[171] had been passed, March 9, 1861, authorizing an inquiry to be made into the annual cost to the United States government of the Indian service west of Arkansas. The state administration had already seized[172] the Indian funds on hand, an opportunity to do so having offered itself upon the occasion of the death[173] of the United States disbursing officer, Major P. T. Crutchfield. But, later, for fear that this might work prejudice with the Indians a resolution[174] was passed providing that the money should not be diverted from its proper uses. Because of such actions and others of like direction, it is certainly safe to assume that pecuniary considerations made the frontiersmen of 1861 vitally interested in Indian affairs. The same influences that moved Hubbard to write his letter to Governor Moore with special mention of the Indians unquestionably moved the citizens of Boonsboro to try,[175] without much further ado, the temper of the Cherokees.

Returning now to Governor Rector and to a recital of his endeavors with the same Indian people, it is seen that his approach to the Cherokees was made, as has been already intimated, through their principal chief, John Ross, and by means of the following most excellently worded letter:

The State of Arkansas, Executive Department,
Little Rock, January 29, 1861.

To His Excellency John Ross,
Principal Chief Cherokee Nation:

Sir: It may now be regarded as almost certain that the States having slave property within their borders will, in consequence of repeated Northern aggressions, separate themselves and withdraw from the Federal Government.

South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have already, by action of the people, assumed this attitude. Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland will probably pursue the same course by the 4th of March next. Your people, in their institutions, productions, latitude, and natural sympathies, are allied to the common brotherhood of the slaveholding States. Our people and yours are natural allies in war and friends in peace. Your country is salubrious and fertile, and possesses the highest capacity for future progress and development by the application of slave labor. Besides this, the contiguity of our territory with yours induces relations of so intimate a character as to preclude the idea of discordant or separate action.

John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees
[From Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology]

It is well established that the Indian country west of Arkansas is looked to by the incoming administration of Mr. Lincoln as fruitful fields, ripe for the harvest of abolitionism, free-soilers, and Northern mountebanks.

We hope to find in your people friends willing to co-operate with the South in defense of her institutions, her honor, and her firesides, and with whom the slaveholding States are willing to share a common future, and to afford protection commensurate with your exposed condition and your subsisting monetary interests with the General Government.

As a direct means of expressing to you these sentiments, I have dispatched my aide-de-camp, Lieut. Col. J. J. Gaines, to confer with you confidentially upon these subjects, and to report to me any expressions of kindness and confidence that you may see proper to communicate to the governor of Arkansas, who is your friend and the friend of your people. Respectfully, your obedient servant,

Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas.[176]

Lieutenant Gaines duly started out upon his mission and upon reaching Fort Smith interviewed Superintendent Rector and received from him a letter of introduction[177] to John Ross, which was, in effect, a hearty endorsement of the governor’s project. An inkling of what Gaines was about soon came to the ears of A. B. Greenwood, an Arkansan, a state-rights man, and United States commissioner of Indian affairs. At the moment he was the official, intent upon doing his duty, nothing more. It was then in his official capacity that he straightway demanded of Agent Cowart an explanation of Gaines’s movements; but Cowart was privy to Governor Rector’s plans undoubtedly, a Georgian, a secessionist, and one of those illiterate, disreputable, untrustworthy characters that frontier or garrison towns seem always to produce or to attract, the kind, unfortunately for its own reputation and for the Indian welfare, that the United States government has so often seen fit to select for its Indian agents. More than that, Cowart was a man of such base principles that he could commercialize with impunity a great cause and calmly continue to hold office under and to draw pay from one government while secretly plotting against it in the interests of another. On this occasion he attempted a denial[178] of the presence of Rector’s commissioner at Fort Smith; but the Indian Office had soon good proof[179] that a commissioner had been there and that he had proceeded thence to the Cherokee country. It was no other than Gaines, of course, who, when once he had delivered the Rector letters to Ross, saw fit, in the further interests of his mission, to attend the inter-tribal council at the Creek Agency.

John Ross did not reply to Governor Rector’s communication until the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday and he then expressed the same ideas of concern, of sympathy, but also those of positive neutrality that had characterized his advice to the Indian conferees. He scouted, though, the very idea of the incoming administration’s planning to abolitionize the Indian country while at the same time he manifested his utter disapproval of it. This is what he said:

Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, February 22, 1861.

His Excellency Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas:

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s communication of the 29th ultimo, per your aide-de-camp, Lieut. Col. J. J. Gaines.

The Cherokees cannot but feel a deep regret and solicitude for the unhappy differences which at present disturb the peace and quietude of the several States, especially when it is understood that some of the slave States have already separated themselves and withdrawn from the Federal Government and that it is probable others will also pursue the same course.

But may we not yet hope and trust in the dispensation of Divine power to overrule the discordant elements for good, and that, by the counsel of the wisdom, virtue, and patriotism of the land, measures may happily be adopted for the restoration of peace and harmony among the brotherhood of States within the Federal Union.

The relations which the Cherokee people sustain toward their white brethren have been established by subsisting treaties with the United States Government, and by them they have placed themselves under the “protection of the United States and of no other sovereign whatever.” They are bound to hold no treaty with any foreign power, or with any individual State, nor with the citizens of any State. On the other hand, the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the Cherokee Nation for the protection of the right and title in the lands, conveyed to them by patent, within their territorial boundaries, as also for the protection of all other of their national and individual rights and interests of persons and property. Thus the Cherokee people are inviolably allied with their white brethren of the United States in war and friends in peace. Their institutions, locality, and natural sympathies are unequivocally with the slave-holding States. And the contiguity of our territory to your State, in connection with the daily, social, and commercial intercourse between our respective citizens, forbids the idea that they should ever be otherwise than steadfast friends.

I am surprised to be informed by Your Excellency that “it is well established that the Indian country west of Arkansas is looked to by the incoming administration of Mr. Lincoln as fruitful fields ripe for the harvest of abolitionism, free-soilers, and Northern mountebanks.” As I am sure that the laborers will be greatly disappointed if they shall expect in the Cherokee country “fruitful fields ripe for the harvest of abolitionism,” &c., you may rest assured that the Cherokee people will never tolerate the propagation of any obnoxious fruit upon their soil.

And in conclusion I have the honor to reciprocate the salutation of friendship.

I am, sir, very respectfully, Your Excellency’s obedient servant,

Jno. Ross, Principal Chief Cherokee Nation.[180]

The Arkansas state convention, sanctioned by popular vote, met, by authority of the governor’s proclamation, March fourth. Its members were inclined to temporize, however; for, as Harrell says, they were coöperationists[181] rather than secessionists and their policy of temporizing they carried out even in the provision made for reassembling after adjournment. David Walker, the president of the convention, was out of sympathy with this; and, at the first news of the attack upon Fort Sumter and while passion and excitement were still at fever heat, called[182] an extra session for the sixth of May. The regular session was not to come until the nineteenth of August. Coincidently Governor Rector again showed where his sympathies lay by refusing[183] President Lincoln’s call for troops.

The Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was passed on the sixth of May. S. R. Cockrell had proved himself a good prophet; for, writing jubilantly to L. P. Walker, on the twenty-first of April, on the progress of secession, he had said,[184] “Arkansas will go out 6th of May before breakfast. The Indians come next.” His closing remark had some foundation for its utterance. Intelligent and prominent Indians were to be found in the very ranks of the Arkansas secessionists. E. C. Boudinot, a Cherokee, an enemy and rival of John Ross, and later Cherokee delegate in the Confederate Congress, was secretary[185] of the convention. M. Kennard, a leading and a principal Creek chief, seems also to have been influential. The alliance of the Indians was yet being sought.[186]

The secession ordinance once safely launched, the Arkansas convention turned its attention without equivocation to Indian concerns. On the tenth of May, for instance, it followed the example set by Texas and passed a resolution,[187] authorizing the president of the convention to appoint three delegates to visit Indian Territory. The men appointed were, S. L. Griffith of Sebastian County (the same man, interestingly enough to whom the United States government had recently offered[188] the Southern Superintendency), J. Murphy of Madison County, and G. W. Laughinghouse of St. Francis County. Two of these counties were on or near the border. Sebastian was on the border and Madison not far inland, so Griffith and Murphy very probably realized the full significance of their mission. On the eleventh of May, the convention tried to pass another resolution,[189] indicative of a community of interests between Arkansas and the Indian country. This resolution failed, but, had it passed, it would have prayed the president of the Confederate States to erect a military department or division out of Arkansas and Indian Territory. As it was, the convention contented itself, on this occasion, with empowering[190] Brigadier-general Pearce[191] to coöperate with Brigadier-general McCulloch.[192] It took this action on the twenty-first of May and on the twenty-eighth it received a communication[193] from Elias Rector concerning the Choctaws and Chickasaws.

Almost simultaneously with this legislative activity, solicitation of the Indians came from yet other directions. On the eighth of May, Brigadier-general B. Burroughs of the Arkansas militia took it upon himself to make an appeal to the Chickasaws, which he did in this wise:

Headquarters Eighth Brigade, First Division, Arkansas Militia,
Fort Smith, Ark., May 8, 1861.

Gov. C. Harris: To-day we have information that Arkansas, in Convention, has seceded, by a vote 69 to 1. Tennessee has also seceded, and made large appropriations and ordered an army of 50,000 men.

Arkansas has for several days past been in arms on this frontier for the protection (of) citizens, and the neighboring Indian nations whose interests are identical with her own.

I have news through my scouts that the U. S. troops have abandoned the forts in the Chickasaw country.

Under my orders from the commander-in-chief and governor of Arkansas, I feel authorized to extend to you such military aid as will be required in the present juncture of affairs to occupy and hold the forts.

I have appointed Col. A. H. Word, one of the State senators, and Captain Sparks, attached to this command, commissioners to treat and confer with you on this subject. These gentlemen are fully apprised of the nature of the powers intrusted to myself by the governor of this State, and are authorized to express to you my views of the subject under consideration. I ask, therefore, that you express to them your own wishes in the premises, and believe, my dear sir, that Arkansas cherishes the kindest regards for your people.

I have the honor to subscribe myself, with sentiments of regard, your excellency’s friend and servant,

B. Burroughs, Brigadier-General, Commanding.[194]

The impudence and calm effrontery of this has its humorous side and would seem even ridiculous were it not for the fact that we are bound to remember that the Indians took it all so very seriously. It was true enough, as Burroughs said, that the Federal troops had abandoned the Indian country; but against whom were the forts to be held? Surely not against the Federals. Furthermore, what need was there for Arkansas to interest herself in the Chickasaw forts, since the Texan troops were already in possession? Is it possible to suppose that Burroughs’s scouts, who had found out so much about the withdrawal of the Federal forces, had not discovered the work of the Texans in contributing thereto? The Chickasaws were particularly friendly to the secessionists and, in this same month of May, passed, by means of their legislature, those eight resolutions[195] in which they gave such strong expression to their views, at the same time, however, giving the Southern States clearly to understand that they knew the extent of their own rights and were determined to hold fast to them. They also declared that they wished to hold their forts themselves.

On the ninth of May, the Indians were still further addressed and this time by the citizens of Boonsboro, Arkansas, whose appeal has already been referred to and quoted.[196] The appeal was made through the medium of a letter to John Ross and of him the citizens of Boonsboro inquired where he intended to stand; inasmuch as they much preferred “an open enemy to a doubtful friend.” They earnestly hoped, they said, to find in him and his people “true allies and active friends.” On the fifteenth of May, J. R. Kannady, lieutenant-colonel, commanding at Fort Smith, also communicated[197] with Ross and on the same subject, his immediate provocation being the report that Senator James H. Lane was busy raising troops in Kansas to be used against Missouri and Arkansas. Of the Kannady letter, John B. Luce was the bearer and, to it, Ross replied[198] on the seventeenth, the very day that he published his great proclamation[199] of neutrality; for the otherwise most sensible John Ross labored under the delusion that the Indians would be allowed to figure as silent witnesses of events. In this respect, he was, however, on slightly firmer ground than were the citizens of such a state as Kentucky; but, none the less, he labored under a delusion as he soon found out to his sorrow. His proclamation of neutrality was intended as a final and conclusive answer[200] to all interrogatories like that from Boonsboro.

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III. THE CONFEDERACY IN NEGOTIATION WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES

The provisional government of the Confederate States showed itself no less anxious and no less prompt than the individual states in its endeavor to secure the Indian country and the Indian alliance. On the twenty-first of February, 1861, the very same day that the law was passed for the establishment of a War Department of which Leroy P. Walker of Alabama took immediate charge, William P. Chilton, member[201] of the Provisional Congress from Alabama, offered in that body a resolution to the effect, that the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of opening up negotiations with the Indian tribes of the West in relation to all matters concerning the mutual welfare of said tribes and the people of the Confederate States.[202] The resolution was adopted. Four days later, Edward Sparrow of Louisiana asked that the same committee be instructed to consider the advisability of appointing agents to those same Indian tribes.[203] The Indian committee, at the time, was composed of Jackson Morton of Florida, Lawrence M. Keitt of South Carolina, and Thomas N. Waul of Texas. Robert W. Johnson became a member after Arkansas had seceded and had been admitted to the Confederacy.

Preliminary steps such as these led naturally to a comprehension of the need for a Bureau of Indian Affairs[204] and, on the twelfth of March, President Davis recommended[205] that one be organized and a commissioner of Indian affairs appointed. His recommendations were acted upon without delay and a law[206] in conformity with them passed. This happened on the fifteenth of March and on the day following, the last of the session, Davis nominated David Hubbard,[207] ex-commissioner[208] from Alabama to Arkansas, for the Indian portfolio. For some time, however, Hubbard had little to do.[209] It is wise therefore to leave him for a while and resume the examination of congressional work.

The journal entries through February and March show that the Provisional Congress had, not infrequently, Indian matters placed before it and, at times presumably, communications direct from the tribes. On the fourth of March, Robert Toombs, himself on the Finance Committee and at the same time Secretary of State,[210] offered the following resolution:[211]

Resolved, That the President be, and he is hereby authorized to send a suitable person as special agent of this Government to the Indian tribes west of the State of Arkansas.

Whether this was called forth by the investigations of the Committee on Indian Affairs under the Chilton resolution of the twenty-first of February or whether it grew out of a correspondence between Toombs and Albert Pike does not appear. Toombs and Pike were friends, brother Masons[212] in fact, and then or soon afterwards in intimate correspondence on the subject of Indian relations. The resolution passed, but there the matter seems to have rested for a time. On the tenth of May, William B. Ochiltree proposed[213] that the Committee on Indian Affairs consider the condition of Reserve Indians in Texas; and, on the fifteenth, a most important measure was introduced[214] in the shape of a bill, reported by Keitt from the Committee on Indian Affairs, “for the protection of certain Indian tribes.” This opened up the whole subject of prospective relations with the great tribes of Indian Territory and, taken in connection with the provision for a special commissioner, was fruitful of great results.

On the seventh of May, Thomas A. Harris of Missouri had made the Provisional Congress acquainted with some Choctaw and Chickasaw resolutions,[215] which, in themselves, seemed indicative of a friendly disposition towards the South. This fact lent to the bill for the assumption of a protectorate a large significance. Congress considered it, for the most part, in secret session. The text of the act as finally passed does not appear in any of the published[216] statutes of the Confederate States; but, under the act, Albert Pike, special commissioner for the purpose appointed by President Davis, negotiated all his remarkable treaties with the western tribes. Three sections of the law, those added to the original bill by way of amendment, appear in the Provisional Congress Journal.[217] They are strictly financial in their nature and are as follows:

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the Confederate States do hereby assume the duty and obligation of collecting and paying over as trustees to the several Indian tribes now located in the Indian Territory south of Kansas, all sums of money accruing, whether from interest or capital of the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held by the Government of the United States as trustees for said Indians or any of them; and the said interest and capital as collected shall be paid over to said Indians or invested for their account, as the case may be, in accordance with the several treaties and contracts now existing between said Indians and the Government of the United States.

Sec. 7. That the several States of this Confederacy be requested to provide by legislation or otherwise that the capital and interest of the bonds issued by them respectively, and held by the Government of the United States in trust for said Indians, or any of them, shall not be paid to said Government of the United States, but shall be paid to this Government in trust for said Indians.

Sec. 8. That it shall be the duty of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to obtain and publish, at as early a period as practicable, a list of all the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held in trust by the Government of the United States as aforesaid, and to give notice in said publication that the capital and interest of said bonds are to be paid to this Government and to no other holder thereof whatever.

Before this bill for the protection of the Indians had come up for discussion or had even emerged from the rooms of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Albert Pike, in letters to Toombs and R. W. Johnson, had pointed out most emphatically the military necessity of securing[218] the Indian country. His conviction was strong that the United States had no idea of permanently abandoning the same but would soon replace the regular troops, it had withdrawn from thence, by volunteers. Pike discussed the matter with N. Bart Pearce and the two agreed[219] that there was no time to lose and that something must be done forthwith to prevent the possibility of Federal emissaries gaining a foothold among the great tribes; for, if they did gain such a foothold, their influence was likely to be very great, especially among the Cherokees who might be regarded as predisposed to favor them, they having many abolitionists on their tribal rolls. Whether, at so early a date, Pike thought formal negotiation, as had been customary, the preferable method of procedure, we are not prepared to say, positively. Formal negotiation was scarcely consistent with the southern argument of Jackson’s time or consonant with present state-rights doctrine. When writing[220] to Johnson on the eleventh of May, Pike seems to have been thinking simply of Indian enlistment and of the use of white and red troops in the defense of the Indian country. At that date his own appointment[221] as diplomatic agent for the negotiation of treaties of amity and alliance was certainly not prominently before him. He expressed himself to Johnson in such a way, indeed, as would lead us to suppose that the position he half expected to get, and did not altogether want, was that of commander of an Indian Department which he hoped would be created.

For such a position Pike was not entirely unfitted. He had served in the Mexican War and had attained the rank of captain; but his tastes were certainly not what one would call military. He was a poet[222] of acknowledged reputation and a lawyer of eminence. Arkansas had recognized him as one of her foremost citizens by sending him as her one and only delegate to the Commercial Convention[223] of Southern and Western States, held at Charleston, South Carolina, April, 1854. Just recently, at the time when the question of secession was before the people of Arkansas, he had issued a pamphlet, entitled, State or Province, Bond or Free, described by a contemporary as, “a most specious argument for secession, but a re-production of the political heresies, that thirty years ago called down on John C. Calhoun, the anathema maranatha of Andrew Jackson.”[224] To the men of his time, it seemed all the more astonishing that Albert Pike should take such a pronounced stand on the subject of state rights, not because he was a New Englander by birth, for there were many such in Arkansas and in the ranks of the secessionists, but because he was the author of that stirring poem against the idea of national disintegration, published some time before under the title of, “Disunion.”[225]

On the twentieth of May, Pike wrote[226] again to Toombs and by that time he certainly knew[227] of his commission to treat with the Indian tribes, but had apparently not received any very definite instructions as to the scope of his authority. One little passage in the letter brings out very clearly the essential fair-mindedness of the man, a marked characteristic in all[228] his dealings with the Indians, but at once his strength and his weakness. He succeeded with the red man for the very same reason that he failed with the white, because he gave to the Indians the consideration and the justice which were their due. This is the significant passage from his letter to Toombs:[229]

I very much regret that I have not received distinct authority to give the Indians guarantees of all their legal and just rights under treaties. It cannot be expected they will join us without them, and it would be very ungenerous, as well as unwise and useless, in me to ask them to do it. Why should they, if we will not bind ourselves to give them what they hazard in giving us their rights under treaties?

As you have told me to act at my discretion, and as I am not directed not to give the guarantees, I shall give them, formal, full, and ample, by treaty, if the Indians will accept them and make treaties. General McCulloch will join me in this, and so, I hope and suppose, will Mr. Hubbard, and when we shall have done so we shall, I am sure, not look in vain to you, at least, to affirm these guarantees and insist they shall be carried out in good faith.

There was an implied doubt of Hubbard in Pike’s reference to him and a single future declaration almost justified the doubt, notwithstanding the fact that Hubbard was supposed to have been chosen as commissioner of Indian affairs because of his “well known sympathy for the Indian tribes and the deep concern” he had ever “manifested in their welfare.” Hubbard’s official position was that of Commissioner of Indian Affairs; but the unorganized character of the Confederate administration in early 1861 is well attested by the way Secretary Walker confounded the name and functions of that office with those of an ordinary superintendent. On the fourteenth of May, he addressed Hubbard as “Superintendent of Indian Affairs” and instructed him

To proceed to the Creek Nation, and to make known to them, as well as to the rest of the tribes west of Arkansas and south of Kansas ... the earnest desire of the Confederate States to defend and protect them against the rapacious and avaricious designs of their and our enemies at the North.... You will, in an especial manner, impress upon the Creek Nation and surrounding Indian tribes the imperious fact that they will doubtless recognize, that the real design of the North and the Government at Washington in regard to them has been and still is the same entertained and sought to be enforced against ourselves, and if suffered to be consummated, will terminate in the emancipation of their slaves and the robbery of their lands. To these nefarious ends all the schemes of the North have tended for many years past, as the Indian nations and tribes well know from the character and conduct of those emissaries who have been in their midst, preaching up abolition sentiments under the disguise of the holy religion of Christ, and denouncing slaveholders as abandoned by God and unfit associates for humanity on earth.

You will be diligent to explain to them, under these circumstances, how their cause has become our cause, and themselves and ourselves stand inseparably associated in respect to national existence and property interests; and in view of this identification of cause and interests between them and ourselves, entailing a common destiny, give to them profound assurances that the Government of the Confederate States of America, now powerfully constituted through an immense league of sovereign political societies, great forces in the field, and abundant resources, will assume all the expense and responsibility of protecting them against all adversaries....

Give them to understand, in this connection, that a brigadier-general of character and experience has been assigned to the military district embracing the Indian Territories south of Kansas, with three regiments under his command, while in Texas another military district has been formed....

In addition to these things, regarded of primary importance, you will, without committing the Government to any especial conduct, express our serious anxiety to establish and enforce the debts and annuities due to them from the Government at Washington, which otherwise they will never obtain, as that Government would, undoubtedly, sooner rob them of their lands, emancipate their slaves, and utterly exterminate them, than render to them justice. Finally, communicate to them the abiding solicitude of the Confederate States of America to advance their condition in the direction of a proud political society, with a distinctive civilization, and holding lands in severalty under well-defined laws, by forming them into a Territorial government; but you will give no assurance of State organization and independence, as they still require the strong arm of protecting power, and may probably always need our fostering care; and, so far as the agents of the late Government of the United States may be concerned, you will converse with them, and such of them as are willing to act with you in the policy herein set forth you are authorized to substantiate in the employment of this Government at their present compensation....[230]

Hubbard’s mission to the west was quite independent[231] of Pike’s, although both missions were undoubtedly part of the one general plan of securing as quickly, as surely, and as easily as possible the friendly coöperation of the Indians. At about the same moment that they were devised, the Confederacy took yet another means of accomplishing the same object and one referred to in the letter of Secretary Walker just quoted. On the thirteenth of this same month of May, 1861, it assigned Brigadier-general Ben McCulloch “to the command of the district embracing the Indian Territory lying west of Arkansas and south of Kansas.” McCulloch’s orders[232] were “to guard that Territory against invasion from Kansas or elsewhere,” and, for the purpose, in addition to three regiments of white troops, “to engage, if possible, the service of any of the Indian tribes occupying the Territory referred to in numbers equal to two regiments.”

Hubbard’s part in the prosecution of this great endeavor may as well be disposed of first. It was of short duration and seemingly barren of direct results. Hubbard was long in reaching the western boundary of Arkansas. On the way out he was seized with pneumonia and otherwise delayed by wind and weather. On the second of June he was still in Little Rock, apparently much more interested[233] in the local situation in Arkansas than in the real object of his mission. His intention was to “go up the river to Fort Smith,” June third. From that point, on the twelfth, he addressed the Cherokee chief, John Ross, and the Confederate general, Ben McCulloch. The letter was more particularly meant for the former.

As Commissioner of Indian Affairs of the Confederate States it was my intention to have called upon you and consulted as to the mutual interests of our people. Sickness has put it out of my power to travel, and those interests require immediate consideration, and therefore I have determined to write, and make what I think a plain statement of the case for your consideration, which I think stands thus: If we succeed in the South—succeed in this controversy, and I have no doubt of the fact, for we are daily gaining friends among the powers of Europe, and our people are arming with unanimity scarcely ever seen in the world before—then your lands, your slaves, and your separate nationality are secured and made perpetual, and in addition nearly all your debts are in Southern bonds, and these we will also secure. If the North succeeds you will most certainly lose all. First your slaves they will take from you; that is one object of the war, to enable them to abolish slavery in such manner and at such time as they choose. Another, and perhaps the chief cause, is to get upon your rich lands and settle their squatters, who do not like to settle in slave States. They will settle upon your lands as fast as they choose, and the Northern people will force their Government to allow it. It is true they will allow your people small reserves—they give chiefs pretty large ones—but they will settle among you, overshadow you, and totally destroy the power of your chiefs and your nationality, and then trade your people out of the residue of their lands. Go North among the once powerful tribes of that country and see if you can find Indians living and enjoying power and property and liberty as do your people and the neighboring tribes from the South. If you can, then say I am a liar, and the Northern States have been better to the Indian than the Southern States. If you are obliged to admit the truth of what I say, then join us and preserve your people, their slaves, their vast possessions in land, and their nationality.

Another consideration is your debts, annuities, &c., school funds due you. Nearly all are in bonds of Southern States and held by the Government at Washington, and these debts are nearly all forfeited already by the act of war made upon the States by that Government. These we will secure you beyond question if you join us. If you join the North they are forever forfeited, and you will have no right to believe that the Northern people would vote to pay you this forfeited debt. Admit that there may be some danger take which side you may, I think the danger tenfold greater to the Cherokee people if they take sides against us than for us. Neutrality will scarcely be possible. As long as your people retain their national character your country cannot be abolitionized, and it is our interest therefore that you should hold your possessions in perpetuity.[234]

The effect that such a communication as the foregoing might well have had upon the Indians can scarcely be overestimated. Time out of number they had been over-reached in dealings financial. Only the year before, bonds in which Indian trust funds were invested had been abstracted[235] from the vaults of the Interior Department; and, for this cause and other causes, Indian money had not been readily forthcoming for the much needed relief of Indian sufferers from the fearful drought that devastated Indian Territory, Kansas, and other parts of the great American desert in 1860.

Comment upon Hubbard’s letter from the standpoint of historical inaccuracy seems hardly necessary here. Suffice it to say that the distortion of facts and the shifting of responsibility for previous Indian wrongs from the shoulders of Southern States to those of a federal government made up entirely of northern states must have seemed preposterous in the extreme to the Indians. One can not help wondering how Hubbard dared to say such things to the Indian exiles from Southern States and particularly to John Ross who like all of his tribe and of associated tribes was the victim of southern aggression and not in any sense whatsoever of northern.

To Hubbard’s gross amplification and even defiance of his instructions, also to his extravagant utterances touching the repudiation of debts and southern versus northern justice and generosity, Chief Ross replied,[236] by way of strong contrast, in terms dignified and convincing:

It is not the province of the Cherokees to determine the character of the conflict going on in the States. It is their duty to keep themselves, if possible, disentangled, and afford no grounds to either party to interfere with their rights. The obligations of every character, pecuniary and otherwise, which existed prior to the present state of affairs between the Cherokee Nation and the Government are equally valid now as then. If the Government owe us, I do not believe it will repudiate its debts. If States embraced in the Confederacy owe us, I do not believe they will repudiate their debts. I consider our annuity safe in any contingency.

A comparison of Northern and Southern philanthropy, as illustrated in their dealings toward the Indians within their respective limits, would not affect the merits of the question now under consideration, which is simply one of duty under existing circumstances. I therefore pass it over, merely remarking that the “settled policy” of former years was a favorite policy with both sections when extended to the acquisition of Indian lands, and that but few Indians now press their feet upon the banks of either the Ohio or the Tennessee....

Judging from all the instructions that Secretary Walker sent out on Indian matters in May of 1861, it would seem that he had very much at heart the enlistment of the Indians and their actual participation in the war. Mention has already been made of how General McCulloch was told by Adjutant-general Cooper to add, if possible, two Indian regiments to his brigade and of how Walker had written Hubbard urging him to persuade the Indians to join forces and raising the number of Indian regiments desired from two to three. In a similar strain Walker wrote[237] to Douglas H. Cooper on the occasion of definitely asking him to give his services to the South. In all these letters no special stress was laid upon an intention to use the Indians as home guards exclusively. On the contrary, one might easily draw, from the letters, a quite opposite inference and conclude that the Indian troops, if raised, were to be used very generally and exactly as any other volunteers might be used. This is important in view of the stand, and a very positive one it was, that Albert Pike took some time afterwards. In his own letter[238] to Johnson of May 11, 1861, he does not specifically say that the Indian soldiers, whose mustering he has in contemplation, are not to be used outside of the Indian country; but he does insist that that country be occupied by them and by a certain number of white regiments—another important point as subsequent events will divulge.

General McCulloch took up his part of the task of securing the Indians in his own characteristic way. He had great energy and great enthusiasm and both qualities were displayed to the fullest extent on the present occasion. He first laid his plans for taking possession forthwith of the Indian country, it having come to his knowledge that Colonel Emory with the Federal forces had abandoned it.[239] Apparently, it had never occurred to McCulloch that the Indians themselves might be averse to such a proceeding on his part but he was soon made aware of it; for when he consulted[240] with John Ross, he found, to his discomfiture and deep chagrin, that the desire and the determination of this greatest of all the Indians was to remain strictly neutral. On the twelfth of June, McCulloch still further communicated[241] with Ross and informed him that he would respect his wishes in so far as expediency justified but that he would have to insist upon the inherent right of the individual Cherokees to organize themselves into a force of Home Guards should they feel so inclined. Then he closed his letter by this note of warning:

Should a body of men march into your Territory from the North, or if I have an intimation that a body is in line of march for the Territory from that quarter, I must assure you that I will at once advance into your country, if I deem it advisable.

Once again the forbearance of Chief Ross had been put to a severe test, but he none the less replied to McCulloch with his customary dignity. Ross was then at Park Hill, McCulloch at Fort Smith, where he had halted hoping that the permission would be forthcoming for him to cross the line. Ross’s reply[242] came by return mail, so to speak, and was dated the seventeenth. It was largely a reiteration of the reasons he had already given for preserving neutrality, but it was also a positive refusal to allow the individual Cherokees to organize a Home Guard. The concluding paragraph gives the lie direct to those intriguing and self-interested politicians who, in later years, endeavored to impugn Ross’s sincerity:

Your demand that those people of the nation who are in favor of joining the Confederacy be allowed to organize into military companies as Home Guards, for the purpose of defending themselves in case of invasion from the North, is most respectfully declined. I cannot give my consent to any such organization for very obvious reasons: First, it would be a palpable violation of my position as a neutral; second, it would place in our midst organized companies not authorized by our laws but in violation of treaty, and who would soon become efficient instruments in stirring up domestic strife and creating internal difficulties among the Cherokee people. As in this connection you have misapprehended a remark made in conversation at our interview some eight or ten days ago, I hope you will allow me to repeat what I did say. I informed you that I had taken a neutral position, and would maintain it honestly, but that in case of a foreign invasion, old as I am, I would assist in repelling it....

It will develop later how Ross’s wishes with respect to the enrollment of Home Guards were successfully and adroitly circumvented, with the connivance of General McCulloch, by men of the Ridge faction in Cherokee politics. From the beginning, McCulloch seemed determined not to take Ross seriously, yet he duly informed Secretary Walker of the turn events were taking. On the twelfth of June, for instance, he wrote[243] to him and gave an account of his recent interview with the Cherokee chief. It was rather a misleading account, however; for it conveyed to Walker the idea that Ross was only waiting for provocation from the North to throw in his lot with the Confederacy. On the twenty-second of June, McCulloch wrote[244] to Walker again and to the same effect as far as his belief that Ross was not sincere in his professions of neutrality was concerned, even though, in the interval between the two letters, he had been carefully corrected by Ross himself and even though he was, at the very time, sending on to Richmond, the correspondence that denied the truth of his own statement. He did, however, add that his belief now was that Ross was awaiting a favorable moment to join forces with the North.

Albert Pike, special commissioner from the State Department of the Confederate States to the Indian tribes west of Arkansas, had accompanied General McCulloch on his visit to Ross, the latter part of May, and had been present at the resulting interview. He had told[245] Toombs that he would leave Little Rock for Fort Smith the twenty-second and go at once[246] to the Cherokee country. At Fort Smith, Pike met McCulloch and the two, seeking the same object, agreed to go forward together,[247] having already been approached by an anti-Ross element of the Cherokee Nation.[248] Ross, as has been shown, insisted upon maintaining an attitude of strict neutrality, which probably did not surprise his interviewers, since, according to Pike’s own testimony, he and McCulloch had not gone to Park Hill expecting to be able to effect any arrangement with Chief Ross.[249] Ross, however, did go so far as to promise[250] that within a short while he would call a meeting of the Cherokee Executive Council and confer with it further on the policy to be pursued. Ross doubtless felt that it was a part of political wisdom to do this. His was an exceedingly difficult position; for, within the nation, there was a large element in favor of secession. It was a minority party, it is true; but, none the less, it represented for the most part, the intelligence and the property and the influence of the tribe. Opposed to it and in favor of neutrality, was the large majority, not nearly so influential because made up of the full-bloods and of those otherwise poverty-stricken and obscure. In the light of previous tribal discords, the minority party was the old Ridge, or Treaty, Party, now headed by Stand Watie and E. C. Boudinot, while the majority party was the Ross, or Non-treaty Party. Ross himself, his nephew, William P. Ross, and a few others were the great exceptions to the foregoing characterization of their following. Of sturdy Scotch extraction and honest to the core, they personally stood out in strong contrast to the rank and file of the non-secessionists and it was they who so guided public sentiment that John Ross had the nation back of him when, on May 17, 1861, he issued his memorable Proclamation of Neutrality:[251]

Proclamation to the Cherokee people

Owing to the momentous state of affairs pending among the people of the several States, I, John Ross, Principal Chief, hereby issue this my proclamation to the people of the Cherokee Nation, reminding them of the obligations arising under their treaties with the United States, and urging them to the faithful observance of said treaties by the maintenance of peace and friendship toward the people of all the States.

The better to obtain these important ends, I earnestly impress upon all my fellow-citizens the propriety of attending to their ordinary avocations and abstaining from unprofitable discussions of events transpiring in the States and from partisan demonstrations in regard to the same.

They should not be alarmed by false reports thrown into circulation by designing men, but cultivate harmony among themselves and observe in good faith strict neutrality between the States threatening civil war. By these means alone can the Cherokee people hope to maintain their rights unimpaired and to have their own soil and firesides spared from the baleful effects of a devastating war. There has been no declaration of war between the opposing parties, and the conflict may yet be averted by compromise or a peaceful separation.

The peculiar circumstances of their condition admonish the Cherokees to the exercise of prudence in regard to a state of affairs to the existence of which they have in no way contributed; and they should avoid the performance of any act or the adoption of any policy calculated to destroy or endanger their territorial and civil rights. By honest adherence to this course they can give no just cause for aggression or invasion nor any pretext for making their country the scene of military operations, and will be in a situation to claim and retain all their rights in the final adjustment that will take place between the several States. For these reasons I earnestly impress upon the Cherokee people the importance of non-interference in the affairs of the people of the States and the observance of unswerving neutrality between them.

Trusting that God will not only keep from our own borders the desolations of war, but that He will in infinite mercy and power stay its ravages among the brotherhood of States.

Given under my hand at the executive office at Park Hill this 17th day of May, 1861.

Jno. Ross, Principal Chief Cherokee Nation.

The discretion of the Cherokees, their wily diplomacy if, under the circumstances, you should please to call it such, was more than counterbalanced by the indiscretion and the impetuosity of some of their neighbors. It has already been noted how the Chickasaws expressed their southern sympathies in the legislative resolves[252] of the twenty-fifth of May, but not as yet how the Choctaws took an equally strong stand. Both tribes were so very pronounced in their show of affection for the Confederacy that they gave a secessionist color to the whole of the Indian Territory, so much so, in fact, that Lieutenant-colonel Hyams could report[253] to Governor Moore of Louisiana, on the twenty-eighth of May, and upon information given him by some Indian agent.

... That the nations on the borders of this State (Arkansas) are anxious and desirous to be armed; that they can and will muster into the service 25,000 men; that they have immense supplies of beeves, sufficient to supply the meat for the whole Confederate service. All they ask is arms and enrollment. If within your power to forward their views with the President, it would be a great step in the right direction, and erect a more effectual barrier against the Kansas marauders than any force that could be sent against them, and thereby protect the northern boundary of both Arkansas and Louisiana. The reasons why every effort should be made to arm these people (now heart and soul with us) to defend themselves and us are so palpable, that I do not attempt to urge them upon you, but do solicit your attention, so far as is compatible with your high position, to this matter, to impress its importance on the President, and use your well-known influence to effect this much desirable result....

General McCulloch, in a letter[254] also of the twenty-eighth of May, more particularly specified the tribes that were friendly to the South, but he too mentioned some of them, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, as “anxious to join the Southern Confederacy.” It should not be a matter of surprise then to find that on the fourteenth of June, George Hudson, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, acting in accordance with the will of the General Council, which had met four days before, publicly declared[255] the Choctaw Nation, “free and independent.” The chief’s proclamation was, in effect, a conscription act and provided for the enrollment, for military service in the interests of the Confederacy, of all competent males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. The General Council had authorized this and had further arranged for the appointment of commissioners “to negotiate a treaty of alliance and amity” with the Confederate States.

Under such conditions, the work of Albert Pike must have seemed all plain sailing when once he was safely beyond the Cherokee limits; but his efforts,[256] vain though they were, to persuade that tribe into an alliance did not end[257] with the first recorded interview with Ross. He kept up his intercourse with the Ridge faction; but finally decided that as far as Ross and the nation as a whole were concerned it would be best to await the issue of events. It was only too apparent to all the southern agents and commissioners that Ross would never yield his opinion unless compelled thereto by one of three things or a combination of any or all of them. The three things were, pressure from within the tribe; some extraordinary display of Confederate strength that would presage ultimate success for southern arms; and encroachment by the Federals. It was the combination that eventually won the day. Pike, meanwhile, had passed on to the Creek country.

At the North Fork Village, in the Creek country, the work of negotiating Indian treaties in the interests of the Confederacy really began and it did not end until a rather long series of them had been concluded. The series consisted of nine main treaties[258] and the nine group themselves into three distinct classes. The basis of classification is the relative strength or power of the tribe, or better, the degree of concession which the Confederacy, on account of that strength or that power or under stress of its own dire needs, felt itself obliged to make. This is the list as classified:

FIRST CLASS

1. Creek, negotiated at North Fork, Creek Nation, July[259] 10, 1861

2. Choctaw and Chickasaw, negotiated at North Fork, July 12, 1861

3. Seminole, negotiated at the Seminole Council House, August 1, 1861

4. Cherokee, negotiated at Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, October 7, 1861

SECOND CLASS

1. Osage, negotiated at Park Hill, Cherokee Nation, October 2, 1861

2. Seneca and Shawnee, negotiated at Park Hill, October 4, 1861

3. Quapaw, negotiated at Park Hill, October 4, 1861

THIRD CLASS

1. Wichita, etc., negotiated at the Wichita Agency near the False Washita River, August 12, 1861

2. Comanche, negotiated at the Wichita Agency, August 12, 1861

Although all the treaties, made in 1861 by Albert Pike, were negotiated under authority[260] of the Act of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, approved May 21, 1861, by which the Confederacy offered and agreed to accept the protectorate of the Indian tribes west of Arkansas and Missouri, only those made with the great tribes contained a statement,[261] definitely showing that the protectorate had been formally offered, formally accepted and formally assumed. Thus, in a very unequivocal way, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Cherokees, all signified[262] their willingness to transfer their allegiance from the United to the Confederate States. The smaller tribes seem not to have been asked to make the same concession and their nationality was, in no sense, recognized. They acted more or less under duress or compulsion, and the very negotiation of treaties with them was taken as a full compliance with the confederate scheme.

The nationality of the great tribes, or more properly speaking, their political importance, was still further recognized by clauses guaranteeing territorial and political integrity,[263] representation by delegates[264] in the Confederate Congress, and the prospect[265] of ultimate statehood. The guarantee of territorial integrity was, of a certainty, not new. It had been inserted into various removal treaties as a safeguard against a repetition of the injustice that had been meted out to the Indians by the Southern States in Jackson’s day. It comprised, in effect, a solemn promise that no state or territorial lines should ever again circumscribe the particular domain of the Indian nation securing the guarantee; and that state or territorial laws, as the case might be, should have no operation within the Indian country. The idea of congressional representation[266] was also not new, but where it had previously been but a promise or a mere contingency, it was now an assured fact, a thing definitely provided for. Ultimate statehood had, however, attached to it the old time elements of uncertainty, which is not at all surprising, considering that Walker, in his instructions[267] to Hubbard, had positively spoken against it.

All the treaties, without distinction of class, recognized the land rights of the Indians and their existing territorial limits, but with the usual restriction upon alienation to foreign powers. A sale or cession to a foreign state, without the consent of the Confederate States, was to result in forfeiture and reversion to the Confederate States. By the Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty, the arrangement,[268] already satisfactorily reached, for a Chickasaw country distinct from a Choctaw was continued, the Indians of both tribes being given the privilege of having their particular land surveyed and sectionized whenever they might so please, provided it be done by regular legislative process.[269] The same treaty transferred[270] the lease of the Wichita Reserve from the United to the Confederate States and limited it to ninety-nine years. Practically the same bands of Indians were to be accommodated in this Leased District as before; namely, those whose permanent ranges were south of the Canadian or between it and the Arkansas. The New Mexican Indians were still to be absolutely excluded. The Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians reserved the right to pass upon the accommodation of any other Indians than those specifically mentioned in the treaty. The individual bands, so accommodated in the Leased District, were to be settled upon reserves and to hold the same in fee. Finally, the treaty placed,[271] for the time being, the Wichitas and their fellow reservees exclusively under the control of the Confederate States with a limited jurisdiction resting in the Choctaw Nation and a full right of settlement in Choctaws and Chickasaws.

In regard to special features of the land rights of tribes other than those already mentioned, it is well to observe, perhaps, that the title to the reservation then occupied by the Seminoles was admitted to be dependent upon Creek sufferance;[272] that the United States patent of December 31, 1838, was recognized[273] as protecting the Cherokee; and that the Osage lands in Kansas were inferentially covered by the Confederate guarantee, given that tribe, of title in perpetuity.[274] The Confederate States, moreover, agreed to indemnify[275] the Cherokees should their Neutral Lands be lost to them through the misfortune of the war. It is rather interesting to see that this new government, in promising the insignificant tribes a permanent occupancy of their present holdings, made use of the same high-flown, meaningless language that the United States had so long used; but Albert Pike knew better than to assure the truly powerful tribes that they should hold their lands themselves and in common “as long as the grass should grow and the waters run.” That language could yet be made appealing and effective, though, in official dealings with weak Wichitas,[276] Senecas, and Shawnees,[277] and, strange as it may seem, even with Creeks.[278] In reciprocal fashion, the wild Comanches could most naïvely promise[279] to hold the Confederate States “by the hand, and have but one heart with them always.”

Speaking of indemnification, we are reminded of other very important financial obligations assumed by the Confederacy when it made its famous treaties with the Indians west of Arkansas. Those financial obligations comprised the payment of annuities due the tribes from the United States in return for land cessions of enormous extent. They also comprised the interest on various funds, such as the Orphan Creek fund, education funds, and the like. Albert Pike had been given no specific authority to do this but he knew well that no treaties could possibly be made without it. It was not very likely that the slaveholding tribes would surrender so much wealth for nothing, and so Pike argued, when justifying himself and his actions later on. In his capacity as commissioner with plenary powers, he also promised the Indians that the Confederacy would see to it that their trust funds, secured by southern bonds, should be rendered safe and negotiable. Over and above all this, the government of the Confederate States made itself responsible for claims for damages of various sorts that the different tribes had brought or were to bring against the United States. Three good instances of the same are the following: the claim of the Cherokees for losses, personal and national, incident to the removal from Georgia; the claim[280] of the Seminoles for losses sustained by reason of General Thomas S. Jesup’s emancipation[281] order during the progress of the Second Seminole War; and the claim of the Wichitas against the United States government for having granted to the Choctaws the land that belonged by hereditary preëmption to them and had so belonged from time out of mind. It is exceedingly interesting to know that these Wichitas had been colonized on the very land they claimed as indisputably their own.

In all the treaties, negotiated by Pike, except the two of the Third Class,[282] the Wichita and the Comanche, the institution of slavery was positively and particularly recognized, recognized as legal and as having existed from time immemorial. Property rights in slaves were guaranteed. Fugitive Slave Laws were declared operative within the Indian country, and the mutual rendition of fugitives was promised throughout the length and breadth of the Confederacy. The First Class of treaties differs from the Second in this matter but only in a very slight degree. The latter condenses in one clause[283] all that bears upon slavery in its various aspects, the former separates the discussion of the legality of the institution from that of the rendition of slaves. Of the First Class, the Creek Treaty[284] constituted the model; of the Second, the Osage.[285]

Aside from the things to which reference has already been made, the Confederate Indian treaties were, in a variety of ways and to the same extent that the Confederate constitution itself was, a reflection upon past history. To avoid the friction that had always been present between the red men and their neighbors, an attempt was now made to redefine and to readjust the relations of Indians with each other both within and without the tribe; their relations with white men considered apart from any political organization; their relations, either as individuals or as tribes, with the several states of the Confederacy; and their relations with the central government. In general, their rights, civil, political, and judicial, as men and as semi-independent communities were now specified under such conditions as made for what in times past would have been regarded as full recognition, and even for enlargement. Indian rights were at a premium because Indian alliances were in demand.

The relations of Indians with Indians need not be considered at length. Suffice it to say that many clauses were devoted to the regulation of the affairs of those tribes that were, either politically or ethnologically, closely connected with each other; as, for example, the Choctaws and Chickasaws on the one hand and the Creeks and Seminoles on the other. Still other clauses assured the tribes of protection against hostile invasion from red men and from white, and assured all the great tribes, except the Cherokees,[286] of similar protection against domestic violence.[287] The Cherokees, very possibly, were made an exception because of the known intensity of their factional strife and hatred, which, purely for its own selfish ends, the Confederacy had done so much to augment. There may also have been some lingering doubt of John Ross’s sincerity in the matter of devotion to the Confederacy. The time had been and might come again when the Confederacy would find it very expedient to play off one faction against another. Injuries coming to the Indians from a failure to protect were to be indemnified out of the Confederate treasury. Could the United States, throughout the more than a hundred years of its history have had just such a law, its national treasury would have been saved millions and millions of dollars paid out in claims, just and unjust, of white men against the Indians.

As affecting their relations with white men, the Indians were conceded the right to determine absolutely, by their own legislation, the conditions of their own tribal citizenship. This would mean, of course, the free continuance of the custom of adoption, a custom more pernicious in Indian history than even the principle of equal apportionment in Frankish; because it was the entering wedge to territorial encroachment. The white man, once adopted into the tribe as a citizen, was to be protected against unjust discrimination or against the forfeiture of his acquired status. The provisions against intruders were legitimately severe, those of the United States had never been severe enough. The executive power had always been very weak and very lax but now it was to reside in the tribal Council and would bid fair to be firm because interested, or, perhaps, we should say disinterested. The Confederacy, on its part, promised that the aid of the military should be forthcoming for the expulsion of intruders on application by the agent, should the tribal authority prove inadequate. The Indians might compel the removal of obnoxious men from agency and military reserves. Unauthorized settlement within the Indian country by citizens of the Confederate States was absolutely forbidden under pain of punishment by the tribe encroached upon.

With respect to Indian trade, there was considerable innovation and considerable modification of existing laws. For years past, the Indians of the great tribes had chafed under the restrictions which the United States government had placed upon their trade and, unquestionably, no other single thing had irritated them more than the very evident monopoly right which the United States had given to a few white men over it. Indian trade, under federal regulations, was nothing more nor less than an extension of the protective policy, a policy that was destructive of all competition and that put the Indian, often to the contempt of his intelligence, at the mercy of the white sharper. Indian commissioner after Indian commissioner had protested against it, but all in vain. George W. Manypenny, particularly, had tried[288] to effect a change; for he was himself convinced that, if the Indians were capable of self-government, they were certainly capable of conducting their own trade. Needless to say, Manypenny’s efforts were entirely unavailing. The Indian trade in the hands of the licensed white trader, although a pernicious thing for the Indian, was an exceedingly lucrative business for enterprising American citizens, white men who were, unfortunately, in possession of the elective franchise but of little else that was honorable and the government, controlled by constituents with local interests, dared not surrender it to the unenfranchised Indians no matter how highly competent they might be. Thus the Indian country, throughout its entire extent, was exploited for the sake of the frontiersman. Moreover, the annuity money, a just tax upon a government that had received so much real estate from the aborigines, instead of being spent judiciously to meet the ends of civilization and in such a way as to reflect credit upon the donor, who after all was a self-constituted guardian, went right back into the pockets of United States citizens but, of necessity, into those of only a very limited number of them.

Because it was a matter of expediency and not because it was a principle that it believed in, otherwise it would have given it to the weak tribes as well as to the strong, the Confederacy gave to the Indians of the great tribes, but not to all in exactly the same measure,[289] the control of their own trade. It did not do away with the post trader, as it ought to have done in order to make its reform complete, but it did deprive him of his monopoly privileges. It hedged his license about with restrictions,[290] made it subject, on complaint of the Indian and in the event of arrearages, to revocation; and, to all of the great tribes except the Seminoles, it gave the power of taxing his goods, his stock in trade, usually a rather paltry outfit. No better precaution could have possibly been devised against exorbitant charging. An ad valorem tax would most certainly have quite eliminated the fifty, the one hundred, and the two hundred per cents of profit. As a matter of fact, the extravagantly high prices of the ordinary Indian trader would be, for most persons, positively prohibitive. The Confederacy further bound itself to pay to the Indians an annual compensation for the land and timber used by the trader.

The questions settled as between the several states and the Indian tribes were chiefly[291] of property rights and of civil and criminal rights and procedure. In addition to their property right in slaves, the Indians were at last admitted to have a possible right in other things, in land, for instance, that might lie within the limits of a state. This they were henceforth to hold, dispose of as they pleased, and bequeath by will.[292] Restrictions, likewise, upon their power freely to dispose of their chattels,[293] were removed, a coördinate concession, but one that did not so much affect their relations with a given individual state as their relations with the central government. To such[294] of the Indians as were not to be brought within the jurisdiction of the Confederate States District Courts[295] that were to be created within the Indian country, the right was given to sue and to implead in any of the courts of the several states. To Indians generally of the great tribes was given the right to be held competent as witnesses[296] in state courts, and, if indicted there themselves, to subpoena witnesses and to employ counsel.[297] The Cherokees, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws were also granted the right of recovery[298] as against citizens of the Confederate States. Should recovery not be possible, the Confederacy was to stand the loss. But more than anything else reciprocal right of extradition was henceforth to be accorded. This was to exist as between tribe and tribe[299] and, with some slight exceptions, as between tribe and state. An examination of the various treaties reveals a steady development in the matter of this concession. The Creek Treaty,[300] which was the first to be negotiated, made extradition a rather one-sided[301] affair. The tribe was to yield the criminal to the state, but, not reciprocally, the state to the tribe. This verbal inequality would not have so much mattered had there been a possibility that in the sequel it would have been interpreted, as in the states, in terms of executive courtesy and discretion; but the chances were that a state would have made it a matter of absolute obligation with the tribe. Reciprocity[302] found its way into the second treaty, however, and also into all the later ones of the First Class. Finally, be it remarked, that as a climax to this series of judicial concessions, full faith and credit[303] were to be given by the one Indian nation or Confederate state, as the case might be, to all legal processes, decisions, and acts of the other.

There yet remain two provisions[304] of importance that were intended to put the Indian nations on a basis of equality with the states. They are provisions rather particular in their nature, however, and, in their full operation, would have affected Texas and Arkansas much more nearly than any other members of the Southern Confederacy. The first of these provisions is to be found, as a grant of mutual rights, only in treaties of the First Class and in two only of those, the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Cherokee. The omission from the Creek and Seminole treaties was due, most likely, to geographical conditions; but the lack of reciprocity in the Osage, the one treaty of the Second Class in which a suggestion of the provision occurs, was just as surely due to the weakness of the tribe from which the privilege was exacted. The provision comprehended the use of navigable streams within the limits of the Confederacy and the Indians specified were to have the same rights in the premises as the citizens of the Confederate States. Osage[305] streams and water courses were, however, to be open to white people but not conversely Confederate waters to the Osages. The clauses in treaties of the First Class, embodying this provision, comprehended all navigable streams whatsoever but had particular application to the Red and Arkansas Rivers, the Choctaw[306] and Chickasaw to the former and the Cherokee[307] to the latter. The rights of ferrying on these streams were to be open alike to white and red men living upon their banks.

The second provision was couched in terms of general amnesty. The Indians were to forgive wholesale the citizens of the individual Confederate states for their past offences and, reciprocally, the states were to forgive and pardon the Indians for theirs, or, rather, the government of the Confederate States was to use its good offices to persuade and induce them to do so.[308] The Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty contained, in addition to this general clause, a particular one bringing out again the close connection with Texas and Arkansas. It reads thus:

... And the Confederate States will especially request the States of Arkansas and Texas to grant the like amnesty as to all offences committed by Choctaw or Chickasaw against the laws of those States respectively, and the Governor of each to reprieve or pardon the same, if necessary.[309]

Some evidence of the special interest Texas might have in the matter came out rather prominently in the treaties of the Third Class, the amnesty in them was particular while the amnesty in the treaties of the other two classes was general. This is what the Wichita and Comanche say:

It is distinctly understood by the said several tribes and bands, that the State of Texas is one of the Confederate States, and joins this Convention, and signs it when the Commissioner signs it, and is bound by it; and all hostilities and enmities between it and them are now ended and are to be forgotten and forgiven on both sides.[310]

It soon developed that Texas was not pleased to find her consent so thoroughly taken for granted and that the Reserve Indians were no better satisfied. The enmity between the two continued as before.

As regarded the relations between the Indian tribes and the Confederate States proper, the Pike treaties were old law in so far as they duplicated the earlier United States treaty arrangements and new law only in so far as they met conditions incident to the war. United States laws and treaties were specifically continued in force wherever possible, and, in most cases, the name of the one government was simply substituted for that of the other. Considerable emphasis was laid upon the right of eminent domain. The Indians conceded to the Confederacy the power to establish agency reserves,[311] military posts[312] and fortifications, to maintain post and military roads,[313] and to grant the right of way,[314] upon payment of an indemnity,[315] to certain corporations for purposes of internal improvement, mainly railway and telegraph lines. Most of this would have contributed very materially to the good of the southern cause in guarding one of the approaches to Texas and in increasing the convenience of communication. The Confederate States assumed the wardship of the tribes, exacted a pledge of loyalty from the weaker and one of alliance,[316] offensive and defensive, but without the entail of pecuniary responsibility, from the stronger. In its turn, the Confederacy promised to the Indians many things, deserving of serious mention and far too important for mere enumeration. As a matter of fact, the South paid pretty dearly, from the view-point of historical consistency, for its Indian alliance. In the light of Indian political history, it yielded far more than at first glance appears and, as a consequence, the great tribes gained nearly everything that they had been contending for for half a century.

As has just been intimated, the concessions made by the Confederacy to the Indians were somewhat significant. In addition to the things noted a few paragraphs back, congressional delegates, control of trade, and others of like import, Pike, the lawyer commissioner and the man of justice, promised the establishment of Confederate States courts within the Indian country. There were to be two of them, one in the Choctaw country[317] and one in the Cherokee.[318] They were to be District Courts with a limited Circuit Court jurisdiction. The importance of the concession cannot well be over-estimated; for it struck at the root of one of the chief Indian grievances. The territorial extent of the districts was left a little vague and the jurisdiction was not fairly distributed. Here again we have an illustration of might conditioning right. The Osages,[319] the Senecas and Shawnees,[320] and the Quapaws[321] were all brought within the limits of the Cha-lah-ki, or Cherokee district, but it is not clear that, as far as they were concerned, any other offences than those against the Fugitive Slave[322] laws, were to come within the purview of the court. The Wichitas and Comanches were left entirely unassigned, although naturally, they would have come within the Tush-ca-hom-ma, or Choctaw district.

The Confederacy reinstituted the agency system and continued it with modifications. These modifications were in line with reiterated complaints of the Indians. They restricted the government patronage to some extent and, in certain instances, allowed a good deal of tribal control. As a general thing, to each tribe was allowed one agent and to each language, one interpreter. An exception to the first provision was to be found wherever it had been found under the earlier régime. Thus there was a single agent for the Choctaws and Chickasaws, another for the fragmentary tribes of the Leased District, and another for those of the Neosho River country. In the minor treaties, it was stipulated, for very evident and very sound reasons, most of them based upon experiences of past neglect, that the agent should be faithful in the performance of his duties, that he should reside at his agency continually, and never be absent for long at a time or without good and sufficient cause.

There were also certain things the Indians were forbidden to do, many of them familiar to us in any ordinary Bill of Rights and having reference to ex-post facto laws, laws impairing the obligation of contracts, due process of law, and the like. The Confederacy, in turn, bound itself not to allow farming on government reserves or settlement there except under certain conditions and not to treat[323] with Cherokee factions. It inserted into the treaties with the minor tribes the usual number of civilization clauses, promising agricultural and industrial support; and into the Cherokee some things that were entirely new, notably a provision that the congressional delegation from each of the great tribes should have the right to nominate a youth to membership in any military academy that might be established.[324] It also promised to maintain a postal system throughout the Indian country, one that should be, in every particular, a part of the postal system of the Confederate States with the same rates, stamps, and so on. To the Cherokees, it promised the additional privilege[325] of having the postmasters selected and appointed from among their own people. From the foregoing analysis of the treaties, it is clearly seen that the characteristic feature of them all was conciliation and conciliation written very, very large. Of the great tribes, the Confederacy asked an alliance full and complete; of the middle tribes, such as the Osage, it asked a limited alliance and peace; and of the most insignificant tribes it asked simply peace but that it was prepared, not only to ask, but, if need be, to demand. Between the Cherokees and the Wichitas, there was a wide, wide gulf and one that could be measured only in terms of political and military importance.

So much for the contents of the treaties but what about the detailed history of their negotiation? When Albert Pike first came within reach of the Indian country, he communicated[326] officially or semi-officially with the men belonging or recently belonging to the Indian field service, agents and agency employees, or, at least, with those of them that were known as Confederate sympathizers. A few very necessary changes had been made in the service with the inauguration of President Lincoln but the changes were not always such as could, in any wise, have strengthened the Federal position. First, as regards the southern superintendency, an attempt had been made to find a successor to Elias Rector[327] at about the same time that Harrison B. Branch[328] of Missouri had been appointed central superintendent in the stead of A. M. Robinson. The man chosen was Samuel L. Griffith[329] of Fort Smith to whom the new Secretary of the Interior, Caleb B. Smith, telegraphed on the fifth of April, tendering the position. Similarly by wire, on the ninth, Griffith accepted; and, on the tenth, explained[330] the delay in the following letter:

Being a member of our State Convention on the Union side, I hesitated a day or two, as to the propriety of accepting, fearing it might affect the union cause, but on mature deliberation and counsel with union friends, and on the receipt of a memorial signed by a large number of names of men of all parties, I concluded to accept....

Col. W. H. Garret Agt. for the Creeks, passed through this place on the 8th....

Col. S. Rutherford left here this morning for his agency (the Seminole). I desired him to ascertain on his way through the Creek and Choctaw Nations, the facts, as to the rumor that two men from Texas were in the Creek Nation for the purpose of meeting the several nations in Council &c. and to report to me immediately....

Dr. Griffith’s solicitude for the Union interests apparently soon vanished. On the twentieth of April, he wrote[331] that, “under the circumstances,” he could not hold office. Coffin of Indiana was then selected[332] for the place of southern superintendent and, in a very little while, Griffith was among the applicants[333] for the corresponding position in the Confederate States. Between the dates of the two activities, moreover, he had been appointed by the Arkansas Convention one of the three special agents to interview the Indian tribes in the interests of secession. That was on the tenth of May.

The changes in the agency incumbents proved equally temporary and unfortunate. Particularly was this the case with two determined[334] upon on the sixth of April. Four days later, William Quesenbury[335] of Fayetteville, Arkansas was notified that he had been appointed to succeed William H. Garrett as agent for the Creeks, and John Crawford[336] of the same place that he had been appointed to succeed Robert J. Cowart as agent for the Cherokees. Both went over to the Confederacy. Nothing else could well have been expected of Crawford, or of Quesenbury either for that matter, and it is rather surprising that their past records were not more thoroughly examined. Quesenbury, like Richard P. Pulliam, was a sort of protégé of Elias Rector. Pulliam had been Rector’s clerk in the office and Quesenbury his clerk in the field.[337] Crawford had been very prominent[338] in the Arkansas legislature the preceding winter in the expression of ideas and sentiments hostile to Abraham Lincoln. He accepted the office of Cherokee agent under Lincoln, notwithstanding, and he subsequently said[339] that he did so because the Indians would not have liked a northern man to come among them. Before Crawford’s commission arrived, Cowart had departed[340] and Cherokee affairs were in dire confusion.[341] John J. Humphreys[342] of Tennessee had meanwhile been offered the Wichita Agency[343] and Peter P. Elder[344] of Kansas, the Neosho River. The Choctaw and Chickasaw Agency seems to have been left vacant. Truth to tell, there was no longer any such agency under United States control. Cooper had thrown in his lot with the secessionists and was already working actively in their cause.

The defection of Douglas H. Cooper, United States agent for the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, can not be passed by so very lightly; for it had such far reaching effects. The time came during and after the war, when the United States Indian Office came to have in its possession various documents[345] that proved conclusively that Douglas H. Cooper had been most instrumental in organizing the secession movement among the Indians of at least his own agency. It was even reported[346] that material was forthcoming to show how he “was engaged in raising troops for the Rebel Army, during the months of April, May, and June, 1861, while holding the office of U. S. Indian Agent.” His successor had been appointed considerably before the end of that time, however, and, when the war was over, the Indians themselves exonerated him from all responsibility in the matter of their own defection.[347] Notwithstanding, he most certainly did manifest unusual activity in behalf of the slaveholding power. Even his motives for manifesting activity are, in a sense, impugned as instanced by the following most extraordinary letter, which, written by Cooper to Rector privately and in confidence and later transmitted to Washington out of the ordinary course of official business, has already been quoted once for the purpose of forming a correct estimate of the recipient’s character. It is gratifying to know that such letters are very rare in connection with the history of the American Civil War.

Private & Confidential

[Copy]

Fort Smith May 1st 1861.

Major Elias Rector

Dr. Sir: I have concluded to act upon the suggestion yours of the 28th Ultimo contains.

If we work this thing shrewdly we can make a fortune each, satisfy the Indians, stand fair before the North, and revel in the unwavering confidence of our Southern Confederacy.

My share of the eighty thousand in gold[348] you can leave on deposite with Meyer Bro. subject to my order. Write me soon.

Cooper.

When Captain Pike[349] reached the North Fork Village, very probably still attended by the escort that the Military Board of Arkansas had graciously—or perhaps officially since Pike, according to his own confession, was acting as commissioner from Arkansas[350] as well as from the Confederacy—furnished[351] him,[352] he found the Creeks awaiting his approach with some anxiety. Among them were Motey Kennard,[353] principal chief of the Lower Creeks, and Echo Harjo, principal chief of the Upper Creeks, both of whom had been absent[354] in Washington at the time the inter-tribal council of the spring had been planned. They had gone to Washington, in company with John G. Smith, as a delegation, greatly concerned about the prospect of Creek finances and the continuance of Creek integrity should the quarrel between the North and the South continue. Greenwood had tried to reassure them; but, when shortly afterwards, all Indian allowances were suspended[355] by the United States Indian Office for fear that remittances might fall, en route, into the hands of the disaffected, the distrust and the dissatisfaction of the Indians revived and increased, thus rendering them peculiarly susceptible to the plausible secessionist arguments of men like Agent Garrett. Sometime in May, therefore, a delegation was sent to Montgomery[356] to confer with authorities of the Confederate States, who by the time of the arrival of the Creeks had moved on to Richmond.

At the North Fork Village, everything seemed to be working in Pike’s favor. There was scarcely a white man[357] around who was willing to say a word for the North; and leading Indians, who were known to be anti-secessionists, were away[358] treating with the Indians of the Plains. Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, who was to become the stanch leader of the opposition, was not with the absentees, it would seem; but then that, at the time, did not so much signify because he was not a ranking chief and so had little influence.[359] On the tenth of July, the treaty that Pike and the Creek commissioners had been working on for days was finally submitted for signature and the names of Motey Kennard, Echo Harjo, Chilly McIntosh, Samuel Checote and many other less prominent Creeks were attached to it. On the twentieth, the general council approved it and more names were attached, that of Jacob Derrysaw being among them. On one or the other occasion, several white men signed. William Quesenbury, who was acting as Pike’s secretary, Agent Garrett, Interpreter G. W. Stidham,[360] and W. L. Pike. Soon came the return of the travellers and much subsequent commotion. They expressed themselves as opposed to the whole proceeding, yet three of them found that, in their absence, their names had been forged[361] to the document that was passing as a treaty between the Creeks and the Confederate States. The three whose names were forged were, Ok-ta-ha-hassee Harjo (better known subsequently as “Sands” and who became in reconstruction days the great rival of Samuel Checote for the office of principal chief), Tallise Fixico, and Mikko Hutke. It is a matter of dispute what course Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la had taken[362] in the treaty conference but not what he did afterwards; for he became the intrepid leader of the so-called “Loyal Creeks” and the foremost of the “Refugees.”

If the Creeks were disturbed about their national finances, the Choctaws[363] were even more so. There were many suspicious circumstances connected with a certain corn contract and with the expenditure generally of the huge sum of money that the United States Congress had appropriated in satisfaction of claims arising under the treaty of removal, payment on which it had recently suspended to the displeasure of the Indians and the discomfiture of the speculators. Wherever suspicion rested, Pike attempted elaborate explanations and, wherever affairs could be turned to the account of the Confederacy, he labored with redoubled zeal. His task was an easy one comparatively-speaking, though, for the Choctaws were already committed[364] to the southern cause. The two Folsoms, Peter and Sampson, who were among the special commissioners sent to Washington to inquire about the money and who had lingered at Montgomery, were his eager coadjutors. Just how far George Hudson, principal chief, was readily compliant, it is difficult to say. It is supposed that he issued his proclamation[365] of June 14, announcing independence and calling for troops, under compulsion and, in July, he may still have been secretly in favor of neutrality. The joint treaty for the Choctaws and Chickasaws was completed on the twelfth of July and again prominent men, the most prominent in the tribes, no doubt, endorsed the action by affixing their signatures. R. M. Jones, the chief[366] of the secessionists, W. B. Pitchlynn, Winchester Colbert, and James Gamble,[367] who was soon afterwards selected as the first delegate[368] to the Confederate Congress, were among the signers; but Agent Cooper was not. Perchance, he and Pike had already begun to dispute over the propriety of an Indian agent’s holding a colonelcy in the Confederate army. Cooper[369] wanted to be both agent and colonel.

Having disposed satisfactorily of the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, Pike passed on, with his group of white and red friends, to the Seminoles and met them in council[370] at their own agency. Rector was now[371] one of his assistants. The poor Seminoles, according to their own story of what happened, were taken completely unawares;[372] and, after some skilful maneuvering, Pike succeeded in inducing about half[373] of them, headed by one of their principal chiefs, John Jumper,[374] and a town chief, Pas-co-fa, to agree to “perpetual peace and friendship” with the Confederate States. There was nothing specifically said about an alliance, offensive and defensive, but it was understood and was immediately provided for.[375] The head chief, Billy Bowlegs,[376] and other chiefs of present and future importance, like John Chup-co,[377] refused[378] to sign the treaty and, before many days had elapsed, joined the party of the “Loyal Creeks.” Various ones of the “Southern” Creeks, notably Motey Kennard, were present at the treaty-making and used their influence to strengthen that of Pike, Rector, Agent Rutherford,[379] Contractor Charles B. Johnson, and a host of minor enthusiasts, like J. J. Sturm and H. P. Jones, all of whom had formerly been in the United States employ and were now, or soon to be, in the Confederate.[380]

Pike’s military escort had surely left him by this time and had returned to Arkansas and yet never had it been more needed; for the Confederate commissioner and his party were about to go into the western country to confer with the tribes of the Leased District whose friendship as yet could scarcely be counted upon, notwithstanding the fact that their agent had openly thrown in his fortunes with the South[381] and was using every form of persuasive art to induce them to do the same. Fearing, perhaps, some show of hostility from the Wichitas, Comanches, and Tonkawas, and hoping that a show of force on his part would intimidate them, Pike gathered together, before proceeding to the Leased District, a company of fifty-six[382] mounted men, friendly Creeks and Seminoles, and with them left the Seminole Council House. The Leased District once reached, some of the hardest work of the whole negotiation began and two treaties[383] were ultimately concluded, one with some of the legitimate residents of the locality and one with wandering bands who came in for the purpose. It is well to note at the outset, however, that the Wichitas proper refused to be either cajoled or intimidated and that, in consequence, they who had always, under United States control, been the most important of the reservees, the ones to give the name to the entire group, were now reduced to a subordinate position and some of the Comanches[384] elevated to the first rank. The first treaty then, the one made with reservees, was thus designated, “Treaty with Comanches and Other Tribes and Bands.” The second treaty, made with Indians belonging outside the Leased District was designated, “Treaty with the Comanches of the Prairies and Staked Plain.”

The negotiation of the remaining treaties of the Pike series came as an immediate effect of Confederate military successes and belongs, in its description, to the next chapter. It is proper now to return to a consideration of the work of the Confederate Congress, in so far, at least, as that work had a bearing upon the alliance with the tribes. On the twenty-eighth of August, Hugh F. Thomason of Arkansas, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire whether any, and if so what, treaties have been made with any of the Indian tribes, and if so, with which of them; and whether any, and if so, what legislation is necessary in consequence thereof; and that they have leave to report at such time and in such manner as to them shall seem proper.[385]

There the matter rested until after the whole series of treaties had been completed which was in ample time for President Davis to submit[386] Pike’s report[387] and the tangible evidence of his successful work to the Provisional Congress at its winter session.

President Davis’s message of December 12, 1861, transmitting the Pike treaties to the Provisional Congress, summarized their merits and their defects and gave direction to the consideration and discussion that ended in their ratification. It called particular attention to the pecuniary obligations[388] assumed and to the contemplated change of status. Regarding the latter, Davis said,

Important modifications are proposed in favor of the respective local governments of these Indians, to which your special attention is invited. That their advancement in civilization justified an enlargement of their power in that regard will scarcely admit of a doubt; but whether the proposed concessions in favor of their local governments are within the bounds of a wise policy may well claim your serious consideration. In this connection your attention is specially invited to the clauses giving to certain tribes the unqualified right of admission as a State into the compact of the Confederacy, and in the meantime allowing each of these tribes to have a delegate in Congress. These provisions are regarded not only as impolitic but unconstitutional, it not being within the limits of the treaty-making power to admit a State or to control the House of Representatives in the matter of admission to its privileges. I recommend that the former provision be rejected, and that the latter be so modified as to leave the question to the future action of Congress; and also do recommend the rejection of those articles in the treaties which confer upon Indians the right to testify in the State courts, believing that the States have the power to decide that question, each for itself, independently of any action of the Confederate Government.[389]

Again Arkansas was in the lead in the exhibition of interest and, on the motion[390] of one of her delegation, Robert W. Johnson, the president’s message and the documents accompanying it were referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. This was on the thirteenth of December and Johnson was the chairman of the committee. On the nineteenth, the treaties began to be considered[391] in executive session. The first to be so considered was the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and interest concentrated on its twenty-seventh article,[392] the one giving to the two tribes jointly a delegate in the Confederate Congress. This provision was finally amended[393] so as to leave the delegate’s status, his rights and his privileges, just as Davis had recommended, to the House of Representatives. Then came the consideration of the twenty-eighth article,[394] which promised ultimate statehood, and that also was amended in such a way as to leave the final determination to Congress,

By whose act alone, under the Constitution, new States can be admitted and whose consent it is not in the power of the President or the present Congress to guarantee in advance....[395]

In the afternoon of December twenty-first, the Provisional Congress resumed[396] its consideration of the Indian treaties. The day previous, it had decided upon this order of procedure and had agreed[397] that the Comanche treaties, being of the least importance, should be left to the last. The work of the twenty-first was on the judicial clauses and, on the question of the qualification of the Indians to be competent witnesses in civil and criminal suits. Article XXXVI[398] of the Osage Treaty, dealing with the right to subpoena witnesses and to have counsel, seemed likely to create prejudice.[399] At length Waul of Texas suggested[400] that Commissioner Pike be invited to be present at future sessions in order that some very necessary explanations of scope, of motives, and of reasons might be forthcoming. In the end, the only changes made in the grant of judicial privileges were along the line of safe-guarding the existing rights of the individual states. In illustration of this, take the Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty as typical of all of the treaties of the First Class. Articles XLIII and XLIV were amended. To the former was added,

And the Confederate States will request the several States of the Confederacy to adopt and enact the provisions of this article, in respect to suits and proceedings in their several courts.[401]

From the latter, the phrase, “or of a State,” was stricken out and this substitution made; “or of a State, subject to the laws of the State.”[402]

On the whole, the Indian treaties took up a very large share of the attention of the Confederate Congress throughout the month of December; and, after debate, President Davis’s advice in every particular was followed, even to the assumption of the pecuniary obligations. On the twenty-third of December, Johnson reported[403] back the treaty with the Cherokees and some of its clauses were then considered. On the same day, Johnson offered[404] a resolution of ratification for the Seminole Treaty and it was unanimously adopted, the same changes identically having been made in the treaty as had been made in the Choctaw and Chickasaw in so far as the two treaties corresponded originally with each other. Congress also ratified a supplementary article to the Seminole Treaty. The last of the month, the Comanche treaties were reached[405] and soon pushed through with only very slight modifications. Then came the final consideration of the treaty with the Creek Indians. It was ratified[406] with the customary amendments the same day. The Quapaw Treaty came[407] next and with its congressional ratification, the work of diplomatically securing the Indians was practically done. The later Indian ratification was more or less perfunctory.

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IV. THE INDIAN NATIONS IN ALLIANCE WITH THE CONFEDERACY

The work of soliciting the military support of the Indians and, to a large extent, that of securing it, antedated very considerably the formal negotiation of treaties with their constituted authorities. Whether it be true or not, that Douglas H. Cooper, United States agent for the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, did, as early as April, 1861, begin to enroll his Indians for the service of the Confederate States, it is indisputable that, immediately upon receiving Secretary Walker’s communication[408] of May thirteenth, he began to do it in real earnest and, from that time forward, gained his recruits with astonishing ease. There were many[409] to recommend the employment of the Indians and some to oppose it. A certain F. J. Marshall, writing[410] to Jefferson Davis from Marysville, Kansas, on the twentieth of May, mapped out a tremendous programme of activities in which Indians were to play their part and to help secure everything of value between the Missouri line and the Pacific coast. Henry McCulloch thought[411] they might be used advantageously in Texas and on her borders. Pike believed[412] not more than thirty-five hundred could be counted upon, maybe five thousand, but whatever the number, he would engage them quickly and provide them with the necessary equipment. He wanted also to employ[413] a battalion of those Indians that more strictly belonged to Kansas. Presumably, then, he would not have confined Confederate interest to the slaveholding tribes. Others besides Pike were doubtless of the same mind. Marshall was, for instance, and southern emissaries were frequently heard of, north of the Neosho River. Henry C. Whitney, one of two United States special agents (Thomas C. Slaughter was the other), sent[414] out to Kansas to investigate and with a view to relieve under congressional appropriation[415] the distress among the Indians, caused by the fearful and widespread drouth of 1860, met[416] with many traces of secessionist influence.[417]

The efforts of Cooper, coupled with those of Pike and McCulloch, in this matter of the enlistment of Indian troops, were soon rewarded. Chief Hudson’s proclamation of June fourteenth, besides being a declaration of independence, was a call for troops and a call that was responded to by the Choctaws with alacrity. A little more than a month later, the enlistment of Indians had so far advanced that McCulloch was able to speak[418] positively as to his intended disposition of them. It was to keep them, both the Choctaw-Chickasaw regiment, which was then well under way towards organization, and the Creek, which was then forming, at Scullyville, situated fifteen miles, or thereabouts, from Fort Smith, as a check upon the Cherokees. Evidently the peace-loving element among the Cherokees was yet the dominant one. On the twenty-fifth of July, Cooper furnished further information,

The organization of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment of Mounted Rifles will be completed this week, but as yet no arms[419] have been furnished at Fort Smith for them. I hope speedy and effectual measures will be taken to arm the people of this (Indian) Territory—the Creeks, Seminoles, Cherokees.... The Choctaws and Chickasaws can furnish 10,000 warriors[420] if needed. The Choctaws and Chickasaws are extremely anxious to form another regiment.

There seems to be a disposition to keep the Indians at home. This seems to me bad policy. They are unfit for garrison duty, and would be a terror to the Yankees.[421]

All this time, of course, Pike had been making progress with his treaties and undoubtedly simplifying Cooper’s task by embodying in those treaties the principles of an active alliance. These clauses from the Creek Treaty will illustrate the point:

Article I. There shall be perpetual peace and friendship, and an alliance offensive and defensive, between the Confederate States of America, and all of their States and people, and the Creek Nation of Indians, and all its towns and individuals.[422]

Article XXXVI. In consideration of the common interests of the Creek Nation and the Confederate States, and of the protection and rights guaranteed to the said nation by this treaty, the Creek Nation, hereby agrees that it will, either by itself or in conjunction with the Seminole Nation, raise and furnish a regiment of ten companies of mounted men to serve in the armies of the Confederate States for twelve months, the company officers whereof shall be elected by the members of the company, and the field officers by a majority of the votes of the members of the regiment. The men shall be armed by the Confederate States, receive the same pay and allowances as other mounted troops in the service, and not be moved beyond the limits of the Indian country west of Arkansas without their consent.[423]

Article XXXVII. The Creek Nation hereby agrees and binds itself at any future time to raise and furnish, upon the requisition of the President, such number of troops for the defence of the Indian country, and of the frontier of the Confederate States as he may fix, not out of fair proportion to the number of its population, to be employed for such terms of service as the President may fix; and such troops shall always receive the same pay and allowances as other troops of the same class in the service of the Confederate States.[424]

Article XXXVIII. It is further agreed by the said Confederate States that the said Creek Nation shall never be required or called upon to pay, in land or otherwise, any part of the expenses of the present war, or of any war waged by or against the Confederate States.[425]

Article XXXIX. It is further agreed that, after the restoration of peace, the Government of the Confederate States will defend the frontiers of the Indian country, of which the Creek country is a part, and hold the forts and posts therein, with native troops, recruited among the several Indian Nations included therein, under the command of officers of the army of the Confederate States, in preference to other troops.[426]

Although John Ross had positively forbidden the recruiting of any force within the limits of the Cherokee country, that while nominally for home defense, should be in reality a reserve force for the Confederacy, he was unable to prevent individuals from going over, on their own responsibility entirely, to McCulloch; and many did go and are believed to have fought[427] with his brigade at the Battle of Oak Hills, or Wilson’s Creek. That battle proved the determining point in this period of Cherokee history. It was a Confederate victory, and a victory gained under such circumstances[428] that the watchful Indians had every reason to think that the southern cause would be triumphant in the end.

The dissensions[429] among the Cherokee and the constant endeavors of the Ridge Party to develop public sentiment in favor of the Confederacy, to undermine the popularity of John Ross, and to destroy his influence over the full-bloods were, and there is no gainsaying it, the real causes of the ultimate Cherokee defection. The Battle of Wilson’s Creek was only the occasion, only the immediate cause, the excuse, if you please, and of itself could never have brought about a decision. Yet its effect[430] upon Cherokee opinion was unquestionably great and immediate, and that effect was noticeably strengthened and intensified by the memory of other Federal reverses along the Atlantic seaboard, especially the more recent and more serious one of Manassas Junction, on the twenty-first of July.

Up to about that time, the neutral policy of John Ross seems to have received the endorsement of a majority of the Cherokee people. In the last days of June, the Executive Council had been called together and had, after a session of several days, publicly and officially approved[431] of the stand the principal chief had taken to date. But events were already under way that were to make this executive action in no sense a true index to popular feeling. The secessionists were secretly organizing themselves, ready to seize the first opportunity that might appear. The full-bloods, or non-secessionists, were also organized and, under the name of “Pins,” were holding meetings of mutual encouragement among the hills. Encounters between the two factions were not infrequent and the half-breeds resorted to all sorts of expedients for persuading, or that failing, of frightening the full-bloods into a compliance with their wishes. They told them that the Kansas people had designs upon their lands (which was not altogether untrue), and that the Federal government would free their slaves and otherwise dispossess, degrade, and humiliate them. Such arguments had their effect and there was little at hand to counteract it, none in the memory of the past, none in the neglect and embarrassment of the present, none in the prospect of the future. There were no Federal troops, no new Federal assurances of protection. Agent Crawford, who was the only agent within reach, added his threats and his Confederate promises to those of the half-breeds. Then came the Battle of Wilson’s Creek with its disastrous Federal showing, and the exhausted resisting power of the Pins went down before the renewed secessionist ardor.

A meeting of the Cherokee Executive Council had been called for August first, and John Ross, Joseph Vann, James Brown, John Drew, and William P. Ross, all prominent non-secessionists, had attended it. On this occasion, a general, or mass, meeting of the Cherokee people was arranged for, in response to a public appeal, and the date for it was fixed for the twentieth of August.[432] In the interval came the news from Springfield and another communication from Albert Pike.[433]

The convention which met at Tahlequah in August of 1861 ended in the secession of the Cherokee Nation. While it was in progress, the events of the last few months were gone over in thorough review and emphasis placed upon those of recent occurrence. The attendance at the convention was large.[434] Both political factions were well represented and there seems to have been only a slight show of force, if any, from the secessionists. The Reverend Evan Jones is our authority for thinking that some “seventy or eighty of them appeared there in arms with the intention to break up the meeting;” but that only two of them succeeded in making any disturbance.[435] In the course of the meeting, Agent Crawford put in an appearance and again asserted himself in behalf of the Confederacy. He “appeared on the platform,” says an eyewitness,

And stated that although for some time past he had been among the Cherokees acting as U. S. Agent, it had been by the advice and consent of the Confederate authorities, and with the understanding that when the proper time arrived he should declare himself the Agent of the C. S. A. That time had now come making this the proudest day of his life.[436].

Such a confession of baseness seems hardly credible. The secessionist was entitled to his opinions touching the doctrine of state rights, for which a difference of view found its justification both in fact and in theory. He might even conscientiously believe in the righteousness of negro enslavement, inasmuch as it really did offer an easy solution of a labor problem; and moreover, would work under a benign paternalism, for the thorough, because so gradual, development of an inferior race; but by no standard of personal honor, or of moral rectitude could conduct such as Crawford’s be condoned.

John Ross had opened the meeting with an address in which he had defined its purposes and his own good intentions, both past and present. Personally, he seemed still inclined to maintain a neutral attitude but designing persons had made his position most difficult.[437]

... Our soil has not been invaded, our peace has not been molested, nor our rights interfered with by either Government. On the contrary, the people have remained at home, cultivated their farms in security, and are reaping fruitful returns for their labors. But for false fabrications, we should have pursued our ordinary vocations without any excitement at home, or misrepresentations and consequent misapprehensions abroad, as to the real sentiments and purposes of the Cherokee people. Alarming reports, however, have been pertinaciously circulated at home and unjust imputations among the people of the States. The object seems to have been to create strife and conflict, instead of harmony and good-will, among the people themselves, and to engender prejudice and distrust, instead of kindness and confidence, towards them by the officers and citizens of the Confederate States....

... The great object with me has been to have the Cherokee people harmonious and united in the full and free exercise and enjoyment of all their rights of person and property. Union is strength; dissension is weakness, misery, ruin. In time of peace, enjoy peace together; in time of war, if war must come, fight together. As brothers live, as brothers die. While ready and willing to defend our firesides from the robber and murderer, let us not make war wantonly against the authority of the United or Confederate States, but avoid conflict with either, and remain strictly on our own soil. We have homes endeared to us by every consideration, laws adapted to our condition of our own choice, and rights and privileges of the highest character. Here they must be enjoyed or nowhere else. When your nationality ceases here, it will live nowhere else. When these homes are lost, you will find no others like them. Then, my countrymen, as you regard your own rights, as you regard the welfare of your posterity, be prudent how you act. The permanent disruption of the United States is now probable. The State on our border and the Indian nations about us have severed their connection from the United States and joined the Confederate States. Our general interests are inseparable from theirs, and it is not desirable that we should stand alone. The preservation of our rights and of our existence are above every other consideration. And in view of all the circumstances of our situation I do say to you frankly that in my opinion the time has now come when you should signify your consent for the authorities of the nation to adopt preliminary steps for an alliance with the Confederate States upon terms honorable and advantageous to the Cherokee Nation.[438]

Colonel Adair, Cherokee
[From Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology]

After having received this most solemn of warnings, “and a few pertinent and forcible remarks from Colonel Crawford,” the meeting organized with Joseph Vann as president and William P. Ross as secretary. To effect a reconciliation between the contending factions and to decide upon some national policy that should be acceptable to the majority of the people, were, undoubtedly, the objects sought and so, after much discussion, a series of resolutions was adopted in which these ideas were given prominence as well as some of kindred importance. The resolutions asserted the legal and constitutional right of property in slaves and, in no doubtful terms, a friendship for the Confederacy. Yet the convention itself took no definite action towards consummating an alliance but left everything to the discretion of the constituted authorities of the nation, in whom it announced an unwavering confidence.

Whereas we, the Cherokee people, have been invited by the executive of the Cherokee Nation, in compliance with the request of many citizens, to meet in general meeting, for the purpose of drawing more closely the bonds of friendship and sympathy which should characterize our conduct and mark our feelings towards each other in view of the difficulties and dangers which have arisen from the fearful condition of affairs among the people of the several States, and for the purpose of giving a free and frank expression of the real sentiments we cherish towards each other, and of our true position in regard to questions which affect the general welfare, and particularly on that of the subject of slavery: Therefore be it hereby

Resolved, That we fully approve the neutrality recommended by the principal chief in the war pending between the United and the Confederate States, and tender to General McCulloch our thanks for the respect he has shown to our position.

Resolved, That we renew the pledges given by the executive of this nation of the friendship of the Cherokees towards the people of all the States, and particularly towards those on our immediate border, with whom our relations have been harmonious and cordial, and from whom they should not be separated.

Resolved, That we also take occasion to renew to the Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Osages, and others, assurances of continued friendship and brotherly feeling.

Resolved, That we hereby disavow any wish or purpose to create or perpetuate any distinctions between the citizens of our country as to the full and mixed blood, but regard each and all as our brothers, and entitled to equal rights and privileges according to the constitution and laws of the nation.

Resolved, That we proclaim unwavering attachment to the constitution and laws of the Cherokee Nation, and solemnly pledge ourselves to defend and support the same, and as far as in us lies to secure to the citizens of the nation all the rights and privileges which they guarantee to them.

Resolved, That among the rights guaranteed by the constitution and laws we distinctly recognize that of property in negro slaves, and hereby publicly denounce as calumniators those who represent us to be abolitionists, and as a consequence hostile to the South, which is both the land of our birth and the land of our homes.

Resolved, That the great consideration with the Cherokee people should be a united and harmonious support and defense of their common rights, and we hereby pledge ourselves to mutually sustain our nationality, and to defend our lives and the integrity of our homes and soil whenever the same shall be wantonly assailed by lawless marauders.

Resolved, That, reposing full confidence in the constituted authorities of the Cherokee Nation, we submit to their wisdom the management of all questions which affect our interests growing out of the exigencies of the relations between the United and Confederate States of America, and which may render an alliance on our part with the latter States expedient and desirable.

And which resolutions, upon the question of their passage being put, were carried by acclamation. Joseph Vann, President.

Wm. P. Ross, Secretary.
Tahlequah, C. N., August 21, 1861.[439]

In making his plans, prior to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, for effecting a junction with Price and coöperating with him and others in southwest Missouri, McCulloch acted, not under direct orders from Richmond, but from his own desire to take such a position opposite the Cherokee Neutral Lands, once so outrageously intruded upon by Kansas settlers and now being made the highway of marauders entering Missouri, as would make it appear to the Cherokees that he was there as their friend and as the protector of their interests. After the battle, he refused, and rightly in view of his own special commission, to accompany Price in his forward march towards the Missouri River. Instead he drew back into the neighborhood of the Cherokee boundary and there developed his plans for attacking Kansas, should such a course be deemed necessary in order to protect Indian Territory.

It was at this juncture that the Cherokees as a nation expressed their preference for the South and for the southern cause, moved thereto, however, by the peculiarities and the difficulties of their situation. The Executive Council lost no time in communicating[440] to McCulloch the decision of the Tahlequah mass-meeting and their own determination to carry out its wishes by effecting an alliance with the Confederacy “as early as practicable.” They realized very clearly that this might “give rise to movements against the Cherokee people upon their northern border” and were resolved to be prepared for such an emergency. They, therefore, authorized the raising of a regiment of mounted men, home guards they were to be and to be so designated, officered by appointment of the principal chief, Colonel John Drew being made the colonel. It would appear that the nucleus of this regiment, and with a strong southern bias, had made[441] its appearance prior to the Tahlequah meeting and the circumstance gave rise to the suspicion that the Cherokees had not been acting in good faith. After the war, the suspicion concentrated, very unjustly, upon John Ross and was made the most of by Commissioner Cooley at the Fort Smith conference; in order to accomplish, for reasons dishonorable to the United States government, the aged chief’s deposition.

Drew’s regiment of home guards was tendered to McCulloch and he agreed to accept it[442] but not until after a treaty of alliance should have been actually consummated between the Cherokees and the Confederate States. Pending the accomplishment of that highly desirable object, McCulloch promised to protect the Cherokee borders with his own troops and confessed[443] that he had already authorized the enlistment of another force of Cherokees under the command of Stand Watie, which had been designed to protect that same northern border but “not to interfere with the neutrality of the Nation by occupying a position within its limits.”

It is not easy to decide just when or by whom the use of Indians by the Federals in the border warfare[444] was first suggested. As late as May twenty-second, Governor Charles Robinson of Kansas, in a letter[445] to Superintendent Branch, protested against even so much as arming them, which would certainly indicate that a general use of their services had not yet been thought of or resorted to; but, in August, when Senator James H. Lane was busy organizing his brigade of volunteers for the defense of Kansas, he resolved,[446] rather officiously, one might think, upon using some of the Kansas River tribes in establishing “a strong Indian camp near the neutral lands to prevent forage into Kansas” and arranged for a conference with the Indians at Fort Lincoln, his headquarters. Soon, however, a stay of execution was ordered[447] until the matter could be discussed, in its larger aspects, with Commissioner Dole, to whom courtesy,[448] at least, would have demanded that the whole affair should have been first submitted.

Dole was then in Kansas[449] and before long became aware[450] that General Frémont was also favoring the enlistment of Indians, or, at all events, their employment by the army in some capacity. He had approached Agent Johnson on the subject, his immediate purpose being to request Fall Leaf, a Delaware, “to organize a party of 50 men for the service of” his department. Agent Johnson called the tribe together and discovered that the chiefs were much averse to having their young men enlist. Dole inquired into the matter and assured[451] the chiefs that a few braves only were needed and those simply for special service and that there was no intention of asking the tribe, as a tribe, to give its services. The chiefs refused consent, notwithstanding; but Fall Leaf and a few others like him did enlist.[452] They were probably among the fifty-three Delawares, subsequently reported[453] as having been employed by Frémont to act as scouts and guides. Fall Leaf attained the rank of captain.[454] Superintendent Branch,[455] be it said, and also Commissioner Dole,[456] at this stage of the war, were strongly opposed to a general use of the Indians for purposes of active warfare. They knew only too well what it was likely to lead to. Indeed, the most that Dole had, up to date, agreed[457] to, was the supplying the Indians with the means of their own defense when United States troops had shown themselves quite unavailable.

Dole’s opinion being such, it is scarcely to be supposed that he could have considered favorably Senator Lane’s idea of an Indian camp in the Cherokee Neutral Lands or the one, developed later, of an Indian patrol along the southern boundary of Kansas. Lane’s troubles, quite apart from his Indian projects, were daily increasing; and, considering the method of warfare indulged in by him and encouraged in his white troops, the same one that pro-slavery and free-state men had equally experimented with in squatter-sovereignty days, it would have been simply deplorable to have permitted him the free use of Indian warriors. Complaints[458] of Lane and of his brigade, of their jayhawking and of their marauding were being made on every hand. Governor Robinson[459] reported these complaints and endorsed them. Secretary Cameron, while making his western tour of investigation, heard[460] them and reported them also. Lane attributed[461] them to personal dislike of him, to envy, to everything, in fact, except their true cause; but we know now that they were all well-grounded. Yet, remarkable to relate, Lane’s influence with Lincoln and with the War Department suffered no appreciable decline. His suggestions[462] were acted upon; and, as we shall presently see, he was even permitted to organize a huge jayhawking expedition at the beginning of the next year.

The mention of Lane’s jayhawking expedition calls to mind the conditions that made it seem, at the time, an acceptable thing and takes us back in retrospect to Indian Territory and to the events occurring there after the Tahlequah mass-meeting of the twenty-first of August. As soon as the meeting had broken up, John Ross despatched[463] a messenger to Albert Pike to inform him of all that had happened and of the Cherokee willingness, at last, to negotiate with the Confederacy. It was arranged that Pike should come to the Cherokee country, taking up his quarters temporarily at Park Hill, the home of Ross near Tahlequah, and that a general Indian council should be called. A special effort was made to have the fragmentary bands of the northeast represented and Pike sent out various agents[464] to urge an attendance. John Ross was also active in the same interest. He, personally, communicated with the Osages[465] and with the Creeks[466] by letter; but the Creeks,[467] like Evan Jones,[468] seem to have been incredulous as to Cherokee defection. They seem to have doubted the genuineness of the letter sent to them and made inquiries about it, only to be assured[469] again and again by Ross that all was well and that he wished the Indians en masse to join the Southern States.

The council at Tahlequah, viewed in the light of its immediate object, was unusually successful. Four treaties were negotiated, one[470] at Tahlequah itself, October seventh, with the Cherokees and three at Park Hill. Of these three, one[471] was with four bands of the Great Osages, Clermont’s, White Hair’s, Black Dog’s, and the Big Hill, October second; another[472] with the Quapaws, October fourth; and the third,[473] on the same day, with the Senecas[474] (once of Sandusky) and the Shawnees (once of Lewistown and now of the mixed band of Senecas and Shawnees). Hereditary[475] chiefs alone signed for the Great Osages, the merit chief, Big Chief, being, apparently, not present. The notorious ex-United States agent, J. W. Washbourne,[476] was very much in evidence as would most likely also have been the equally notorious and disreputable Indian trader, John Mathews,[477] had he not recently received his deserts at the hands of Senator Lane’s brigade.

An accurate and connected account of the occurrences at the Tahlequah council, it is well nigh impossible to obtain. Some intimidation[478] seems to have been used, and there was a report of a collision[479] between the Ross and Ridge factions some days previous to the meeting. Drew’s regiment, which, when organized, had been placed as a guard[480] on the northern border, escorted[481] Commissioner Pike to Park Hill and later took up its station on the treaty ground. Some of Stand Watie’s Confederate forces were also in the neighborhood.[482] In 1865, at the Fort Smith Council, held for the readjustment of political relations with the United States government, the Indians of the Neosho Agency gave[483] a rather picturesque description of the way they had been prevailed upon to sign the treaty with the Confederate States. The real object of the Tahlequah meeting was evidently not revealed to them until they had actually reached the treaty ground. Agent Dorn had told them that they had to go to the meeting. They went and were there taken in hand by Pike who said,

If you don’t do what we lay before you, we can’t say you shall live happy.

The Indians

feeling badly, just looked on, and the white man went to work, got up a paper and said I want you to sign that. The Indian did not want to, but he compelled him. You know yourself that, under such circumstances, he would do anything to save his life....

Now that the history of the diplomatic relations between the Indian tribes and the Confederacy has been brought thus far, nothing seems more fitting than to return to the consideration of the Federal government and its representatives, its purposes, and its plans, beginning the account with the Indian Office and Commissioner Dole. Dole’s early attempt to prevail upon the War Department to resume its occupation of Indian Territory was followed up by the convincing letter of the thirtieth of May in which he likened the Indians to the Union element in some of the border states and ended by throwing the full responsibility for any disloyalty that might appear among them upon the Federal authorities; inasmuch as they had neglected and were still neglecting to give the support and protection that any ordinary guardian is bound in honor to give to his wards. Dole said in writing to Secretary Smith,

... Experience has shown that the presence of even a small force of federal troops located in the disaffected States has had the effect to preserve the peace, encourage the friends of the Union, and induce the people to return to their allegiance.

That this same result would be produced in the Indian country I cannot doubt, as they can have no inducement to unite with the enemies of the United States unless we fail as a nation to give them that protection guaranteed by our treaty stipulations, and which is necessary to prevent designing and evil-disposed persons from having free intercourse with them, to work out their evil purposes....[484]

Nothing came of Dole’s application and thus was exemplified, as often before and often since, a very serious defect in the American administrative system by which the duty of doing a certain thing rests upon one department and the means for doing it with quite another. It is surely no exaggeration to say that hundreds and hundreds of times the Indians have been the innocent victims of friction between the War and Interior Departments.

But if the authorities at Washington were indifferent to the Indian’s welfare, Senator Lane was neither indifferent to nor ignorant of the strategical importance of Indian Territory. With him the defence of Kansas and the means of procuring that defence were everything. Indian Territory and the Indian tribes came within the scope of the means. And so it happened that, while he was organizing his Kansas brigade, he commissioned[485] a man, E. H. Carruth, who had formerly posed as an educator[486] among the Seminoles, to communicate with the various tribes for the purpose of determining their real feelings towards the United States government and of obtaining, if possible, an interview between Lane and some of their accredited representatives. The interview was to take place “at Fort Lincoln on the Osage or some point convenient thereto.”[487]

Now a considerable portion of the Creek tribe was in just the right mood and in just the right situation to receive such overtures in the right spirit. That portion consisted of those who, after the treaty of July tenth had been negotiated in the manner already described, had rallied around Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la; and who, in a Creek convention that had been called for August fifth had declared that the chiefs, who had signed a treaty outside the National Council, had violated a fundamental law of the tribe and had thereby forfeited their administrative rank. The criticism applied to Motey Kennard and to Echo Harjo, the principal and the second chief respectively. Kennard, as we have seen, was the leader of the Lower Creeks and Harjo of the Upper. A further division in Creek ranks was now inevitable and it came forthwith, the Non-treaty Party, made up mostly of Upper Creeks, proceeding to recognize[488] Ok-ta-ha-hassee Harjo (better known as “Sands”) as the acting principal chief of the tribe. It also betook itself westward so as to be as much as possible out of the reach of the secessionists. When once in a position of at least temporary security, it despatched Mik-ko Hut-kee (White Chief), Bob Deer, Jo Ellis, and perhaps others to Washington to confer with the “Great Father.”[489]

The Creek delegates, Mik-ko Hut-kee and his companions, went, on their way to Washington, northward through Kansas, saw Superintendent Coffin[490] and, later, Lane’s agent, E. H. Carruth. This was about the second week of September and Carruth was at Barnesville, Lane’s headquarters. Carruth received the Creeks kindly, read sympathetically the letter[491] that they brought from their distressed chiefs, Sands and Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, assured the equally distressed delegates of the continued fatherly interest of the United States government, and sent them on their way, greatly comforted. It was while these Creek delegates were lingering at Barnesville that Carruth made a special effort to induce the southern Indians generally to send representatives for an interview with Lane. He wrote personally to Ross,[492] to the two Creek chiefs,[493] and to the Wichita chief, Tusaquach,[494] and, in addition, wrote to the Seminole chiefs and headmen[495] and to the “loyal” Choctaws and Chickasaws.[496]

Presumably, Superintendent Coffin did not altogether approve of Senator Lane’s taking it upon himself to confer with the Indians who, after all, were officially Coffin’s charges; for, in October, we find him, likewise, planning for an intertribal conference to be held at Humboldt.[497] It is rather interesting to look back upon all this and to realize, as perforce we must, that every plan for conferring with the southern tribes in the interests of the United States government, at this critical time, contemplated a meeting at some place outside of Indian Territory. Here were agents of the Indian’s “Great Father” offering protection to the red men and yet giving incontestable proof in the very details of the offer that they did not themselves dare to venture[498] beyond the Kansas boundary. As a matter of fact, all such plans for a general conference came to nothing, although, as late as November, Lane had still the idea of one in mind. He was, at the time, hoping to meet the Indians at Leroy[499] in Coffey County, Kansas, on the twenty-fourth. Lane also continued to advocate the use of the friendly Indians as soldiers. A little earlier, Agent Johnson had endorsed[500] Lane’s plan in a letter to Commissioner Dole; but the coming of General Hunter upon the scene considerably affected the sphere of influence.

Dissatisfaction with Frémont on account of his extravagance, his haphazard way of issuing commissions, his tardiness, and, above all, his general military incompetence had crystallized in September; and, by orders[501] of General Scott on the twenty-fourth of October, Hunter was directed to relieve him. Hunter reached his post in early November and almost immediately thereafter, either upon his own initiative or after consultation with someone like Coffin (it could hardly have been with Lane; for Lane had gone[502] to Washington, or with Branch; for Branch was strongly opposed to the project intended), he telegraphed[503] to the War Department “for permission to muster a Brigade of Kansas Indians into the service of the United States, to assist the friendly Creek Indians in maintaining their loyalty.” Evidently, the request was not granted,[504] but duties akin to it were, by arrangement of President Lincoln, conferred upon Hunter which involved his assuming the responsibility of holding, if such a plan were feasible, an intertribal council so as to renew the confidence of the southern Indians in the United States government. A letter[505] from Dole, outlining the plan, reveals an astonishing ignorance of just how far those selfsame Indians had gone in their defection, because of the loss of the confidence.

In the giving of these new duties to General Hunter, there was not the slightest intention of ignoring Senator Lane. In fact, Dole expressly mentioned that Lane had called for just such an Indian conference[506] and suggested that, if Hunter’s military duties prevented his meeting the Indians in person, Lane might take his place, “provided he can be spared from his post.” The whole affair was incident to the reorganization that had recently, under general orders[507] of the ninth of November, taken place in the Western Department, from which had resulted a Department of Kansas, separate and distinct from the Department of Missouri. The Department of Kansas included “the State of Kansas, the Indian Territory west of Arkansas, and the Territories of Nebraska, Colorado, and Dakota” and was to be under the command of Major-general David Hunter[508] with headquarters at Fort Leavenworth. The idea governing this division of the old western department was, ostensibly, as Nicolay and Hay express[509] it, that Kansas might be protected, Indian Territory repossessed, and Texas reached. As we shall presently see, a similar reorganization took place, about the same time, in the Confederate western service and for very much the same reason, the condition of the Indian country being a very large proportion of that reason. It is barely possible that, as far as the United States was concerned, Senator Lane’s recommendation[510] of the ninth of October was almost wholly accountable for the change.

It was, undoubtedly, high time that something vigorous was being done to stay Confederate progress in Indian Territory. Indeed, events were happening there at this very moment that made all plans for an inter-tribal conference exceedingly out of date. The Confederate government had now a large Indian force[511] in the field and expectations of an increase, provided the necessary arms[512] were obtainable. On the twenty-second[513] of November, by special orders[514] from Richmond, Indian Territory had been erected into a separate military department and Albert Pike, now a brigadier-general, assigned to the command of it. For the present, however, things seem to have remained much as they were with McCulloch nominally in command and Cooper in actual charge. Moreover, long before Pike reappeared upon the scene, matters had come to an issue between the secessionist and unionist Creeks.

Determined not to allow themselves to be over-persuaded or intimidated by the secessionist element in their nation, the unionist Creeks, under Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, had withdrawn from active intercourse with the rival faction and, resisting all attempts of Cooper and others to inveigle them into an interview that might result in compromise, they had encamped at or near the junction of the Deep and North Forks of the Canadian River. Cooper resolved to attack them there and, for the purpose, gathered[515] together an effective fighting force of about fourteen hundred men, all Indians except for a detachment of Texas cavalry. On the fifth of November, Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la broke camp and took up the line of march for Kansas, hoping that, in Kansas, he and his followers would receive either succor or refuge. It has been estimated that Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la’s force, at this time, was less than two thousand men and that it comprised, besides Creeks and Seminoles, some two or three hundred negroes. His traveling cortège was, however, very much larger; for it included women and children, the sick and the aged. Approximately half of the Creeks were on the move for pastures new. For many of them it was a second exodus.

Colonel D. H. Cooper reached the deserted camp of Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la on the fifteenth of November and, finding his enemy gone and locating his trail, moved himself in a slightly northeasterly direction towards the Red Fork of the Arkansas. He came up with the unionist Creeks at Round Mountain on the night of the nineteenth and an indecisive engagement[516] followed, both sides claiming the victory. Under cover of darkness, Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la managed to slip away and crossed into the Cherokee country where there were plenty of disaffected full-bloods to give him sympathy. It is more than likely that they had invited him there and had prepared for his coming. Cooper did not attempt to pursue the Creek refugees, having been called back to the Arkansas line, there to wait in readiness to reënforce McCulloch should the Federals make a forward march southward from Springfield, as then seemed probable. But that danger soon passed, passed even before Cooper had had time to take the post indicated or to leave his own camp at Concharta, after a brief recuperation. He was now free to follow up the meagre advantage of the nineteenth.

The next opportunity to crush Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la came in the Battle of Bird Creek [Chusto-Talasah, Little High Shoals, or the Caving Banks],[517] fought December 9, 1861. On the twenty-ninth of the preceding month, a part of Cooper’s force had set out for Tulsey Town and an advance guard had been sent up the Verdigris in the direction of a place, called “Coody’s Settlement,” where Colonel John Drew with a detachment of his regiment of Cherokee full-bloods was posted. The orders were that Drew should effect a junction with Cooper’s main force and, on December eighth they were all encamped on Bird Creek in the southwestern corner of the Cherokee Nation. At this juncture, word came that Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la wished to treat for peace and Major Pegg, a Cherokee, with three companions was sent forward to confer with him. They found the Creek chief, surrounded by his warriors and ready for battle. It was evening and Colonel Cooper had scarcely heard the news of the Creek determination to fight when a message came that four companies of Drew’s regiment, horrified at the thought of fighting with their neighbors, had dispersed and gone over to Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la. The incident did not promise well for success on the morrow and the Battle of Bird Creek was another indecisive engagement, although the Creeks, eager and resplendent with their yellow corn-shuck badges, seem to have had all the advantage of position. Again they made their escape and again Colonel Cooper was prevented from following them, this time because he was exceedingly fearful lest the Cherokee desertion might have a lasting and disastrous effect upon the remaining Indian forces, particularly upon the small group that was all that was left of the original First Cherokee Mounted Rifles. Cooper’s personal opinion was, that the defection was widespread among the Cherokees and that it would be sheer folly to start out after Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la until more white troops had been added to the pursuing force, by way both of reënforcement and of encouragement.

Instead, therefore, of continuing northward, Colonel Cooper drew off in the direction of Fort Gibson and, from that point, sent for aid to Colonel James McIntosh at Van Buren. He then occupied himself with his own troops and prevailed upon John Ross to rally[518] the Cherokees. It was now the nineteenth of December and the aged chief did his best to keep his people true to the faith that the nation had pledged in the treaty of the seventh of October. He recalled to their minds the fact that it was, by all odds, the best treaty that the Cherokees had ever secured, the one that gave them the fullest recognition of their rights as a semi-independent people, and he might have added with sad, sad truth that it was the best that they could ever hope to get. He made no such pessimistic reflection, however, but concluded,

It is, therefore, our duty and interest to respect it, and we must, as the interest of our common country demands it. According to the stipulations of the treaty we must meet enemies of our allies whenever the south requires it, as they are our enemies as well as the enemies of the south; and I feel sure that no such occurrence as the one we deplore would have taken place if all things were understood as I have endeavored to explain them. Indeed the true meaning of our treaty is, that we must know no line in the presence of our invader, be he who he may....[519]

Colonel Cooper then addressed[520] the Indians and, after him, Major Pegg;[521] but they were not convinced and many of them went home, positively refusing to march farther with the army.

Meanwhile Cooper’s call for reënforcements had reached McIntosh[522] and, as the need seemed so urgent, McIntosh resolved to supply it and notified Cooper to that effect. Subsequently, he decided[523] to take the field in person and to head a column, separate from Cooper’s. What induced him to do this, nobody can well say. Cooper always felt that the incompleteness of the victory over Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, which was soon to come, was mainly attributable to the divided effort of the attacking force. In the two former engagements, Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la’s force, such as it was, untrained and miscellaneous, had greatly outnumbered the Confederate; but now the two were more equally matched in point of numbers and the chances of success were all on the southern side because of superior training and equipment, so Cooper was probably correct in his conjecture. McIntosh’s excuse[524] for advancing precipitately and alone was, notwithstanding, very reasonable. The scarcity of forage made it expedient to march compactly; and the two generals had agreed, so McIntosh declared, when in conference at Fort Gibson, “that either force should attack the enemy on sight.”

The privilege of attacking Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la fell, under this arrangement, supposing it was made, to McIntosh, who had been able to push on in advance of Cooper. The Battle of Chustenahlah was fought in the early afternoon of December 26, 1861, and ended in what seemed the complete defeat of the Creeks. McIntosh reported that, although their position was strong, they were forced to retreat

To the rocky gorges amid the deep recesses of the mountains, where they were pursued by our victorious troops and routed in every instance with great loss. They endeavored to make a stand at their encampment, but their efforts were ineffectual, and we were soon in the midst of it. The battle lasted until 4 o’clock, when the firing gradually ceased....[525]

And then the Creeks fled, leaving practically everything in the shape of property behind them. Cooper came up and detachments of his troops pursued them almost to the Kansas line. The weather was bitterly cold, provisions scarce, the country rough and bleak. The pursuit took the form of a seven day scout; but the Creeks, no matter how great their dispersion, were headed straight for Walnut Creek, Kansas.

Their coming was anticipated. Hearing of their approach, Superintendent Coffin had directed[526] all the agents[527] under his charge to report to him for duty at a place on the Verdigris River called Fort Roe[528] “about thirty-five or forty miles from Leroy and Burlington.” It was Coffin’s intention to meet the refugees upon their first arrival; but, as Commissioner Dole was expected soon to be at Fort Leavenworth, he thought it best to wait[529] and consult with him. It does not seem to have been recorded on just what date the first of the Indian refugees crossed the Kansas line, but they were very soon crossing in great numbers and, by the time Coffin finally reached them, their condition was truly pitiable. They took up their station on the bare prairies between the Verdigris and the Arkansas Rivers and stretched themselves in almost hopeless confusion over about two hundred miles of country. Fortunately the land upon which they camped was Indian land, New York Indian land, and the few white men thereon were legally intruders and could not consistently object to the presence of the refugees. The numbers of the refugees were variously estimated. Starting with about forty-five hundred,[530] they increased daily and at an astonishing rate; for the exodus of the Creeks was but the signal for the flight of other tribesmen from Indian Territory, of all those, in fact, who were either tired of their alliance with the Confederacy or had never been in sympathy with it and were only too eager to take the first chance to escape from it.

The suffering of the refugees, due to destitution and exposure, was something horrible to think upon. Superintendent Coffin had little to give them. He appealed to General Hunter for an allowance from the army supplies and Hunter sent down his chief commissary of subsistence, Captain J. W. Turner, to do what he could to relieve the distress. Hunter also sent Brigade-surgeon A. B. Campbell; for it was not simply food and clothing, that were needed and roof shelter, but medical attendance. As soon as possible, cheap blankets[531] were furnished and some condemned army tents. The journey northward had been undertaken in the bitterest of cold weather. With a raw northwest wind beating in their faces,

And over the snow-covered roads, they travelled all night and the next day, without halting to rest. Many of them were on foot, without shoes, and very thinly clad.... In this condition they had accomplished a journey of about three hundred miles; but quite a number froze to death on the route, and their bodies with a shroud of snow, were left where they fell to feed the hungry wolves....

Families who in their country had been wealthy, and who could count their cattle by the thousands and horses by hundreds, and owned large numbers of slaves, and who at home had lived at ease and comfort, were without the necessaries of life.[532]

When, sometime in early December, Commissioner Dole heard of the resistance that the unionist Creeks were making to Colonel Cooper, he immediately applied once more, through the Secretary of the Interior, to the War Department for troops sufficient to assert Federal supremacy south of the Kansas line, his immediate object being, the strengthening of the force then opposed to Cooper. At the moment, Lane’s expedition was under consideration, Lane having managed to convince the Washington authorities, both congressional and administrative, that an expedition southward was absolutely necessary[533] for the protection of the frontier.

[Larger Image]

Retreat of the Loyal Indians from the Indian Country
under A-poth-yo-ho-lo in the winter of 1861
[From Office of Indian Affairs]

Somewhat earlier, in fact in the late autumn, the non-secession Indians of various tribes had made their own appeal for help. They had made it to the United States government and also, a little later on, to the Indian tribes of Kansas. Along about the first of November, a mixed delegation[534] of Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws had made its appearance[535] at Leroy and, finding there the United States Creek agent, George A. Cutler, had consulted with him “in reference to the intentions of the Federal government regarding the protection due them under treaty stipulations.” Cutler advised the Indians to talk the matter over with Senator Lane and accompanied them to Fort Scott, Lane’s headquarters, for the purpose. Arriving there, they learned that Lane had gone to Washington and had left his command in charge of Colonel James Montgomery. Colonel Montgomery counselled with the Indians as Cutler had done and helped them to reach the decision that it would be best to proceed to Washington and lay their complaints before the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. At the same time, Montgomery notified[536] President Lincoln of their intention.

Still accompanied by Agent Cutler, the delegation resumed its journey, going by way of Fort Leavenworth. There they conferred[537] with General Hunter and left greatly strengthened in their resolution of proceeding to Washington; for Hunter, too, thought that such a trip might compel the government to realize the Indian’s very real distress and its own obligation to relieve it. We are fain to believe that General Hunter personally believed in the military necessity of securing Indian Territory even though he did do all he could to oppose the project of Senator Lane in the early months of 1862 and even though he did disapprove of the formation of the department of Kansas and his own assignment to it instead of to that of Missouri, which would have been his preference. If he at any time to date had wavered[538] in his opinion as to the needs of the Indians and their legitimate claim upon the United States government for protection, Carruth’s letter of November twenty-sixth ought to have settled the matter, unless, indeed, its rather savage tone had created prejudice instead of working conviction as was intended.

... I have from the first believed it would be good policy to let loose the northern Indians, under the employ of government; it certainly would be better for the border States to have the Indian country for a battle ground than to have it remain a shelter for rebel hordes the coming winter....[539]

The visit of the Indians to Washington proved very opportune. By the twenty-seventh of December, they were back at Fort Leavenworth and considerably reassured. Superintendent Coffin had a council with them on the twenty-eighth “at the Fort to good satisfaction.” He says of his interview,

I gave them Presents of Pipes, tobacco, and Sugar, and they went on their way to Fort Scott rejoicing they seem to be in fine Spirits,[540] but are at a Loss what to do for a living til Lanes Army goes down there into the Indian Territory they want very much to get Some of the Funds now due the Creeks....[541]

A more pathetic appeal, and one more immediately telling in its effects, was that made to the brother Indians of Kansas. It came direct from Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la and when it reached the Delawares found in them a ready response. It invited their coöperation[542] in the war and asked for men and ammunition.[543] This is the Delaware reply:[544]

We are much rejoiced to receive your letter by James McDaniel[545] and David Balon. Our Agent has sent it to our great Father, the President, “at Washington,” and to Gen. Hunter at “Fort Leavenworth.” It gives us great pleasure to hear that you are good and true friends to the President, and to the Government of the United States. We hope you will continue to be their friend. If bad men of the South ask you to go to war against the President, stop your ears, don’t listen to them, they are your worst enemies, they are trying to destroy you and the Country.

Grand Children it does our hearts good, we rejoice to hear of the victories you have gained over your enemies of the Government under your brave leader Oputh-la-yar-ho-la.

Grand Children we are ready and willing to help you. Our brave Warriors are ready to spill their Blood for you, and are only waiting to hear from our great Father at Washington, we have asked of him the privaledge of going to your assistance, and hope that our request will be granted, we don’t wish to go to War against the wishes of our great Father the President. We have heard that the President will soon have a large Army in the Indian Country to protect you, that he has ordered Gen. Lane to march to your relief. We are confident that our great Father is able and will protect his red children—Grand Children we pray to the “great spirit” to protect you and keep you out of the hands of the bad men of the South, who are trying to destroy you and the Government—We have no fears as to the result of this war—the President has large Armies in the field that will conquer and punish the Rebels—We are proud of our Muscogee Children.

The United States government had already determined upon an expedition to the Indian country and, yielding to the importunities of Senator Lane, who represented General Hunter as in full accord with himself in the matter, had decided to use the Kansas Indians in the making up of the attacking force. It was well that the Indians had manifested a readiness to fight and that the Delawares, particularly, had overcome their previous aversion. The first official record of the fact that the decision to use the Kansas Indians had been reached appears to be a communication[546] from Assistant Adjutant-general E. D. Townsend to Surgeon-general C. A. Finley, under date of December 31, 1861, notifying him that medical supplies would soon be needed for a force of about twenty-seven thousand men, about four thousand of whom were to be Indians, which was to be concentrated at an early day near Fort Leavenworth. On the third of January, Lane wrote[547] to Hunter, informing him, as if at first hand and semi-officially, of the new plan. It is not to be wondered at that General Hunter took offence at the officiousness and presumption Lane displayed. In point of fact, it was a clear case of executive interference.

Now that it had, to all appearances, gained a long-desired object, the Indian Office lost no time in lending the War Department its hearty coöperation. Commissioner Dole was especially enthusiastic and, under instructions from Secretary Smith, prepared to go out to Kansas himself to help organize the Indians for army service. He also sent particulars[548] of the new movement to Superintendent Branch and a circular letter[549] to the agents of the central superintendency, detailing the advantages that would accrue to individual Indians should they enlist. Dole wrote these letters on the sixth of January and was then expecting to be in Leavenworth City for the making of final arrangements eight or ten days “hence.” He did not manage to get away, however, quite so soon; but the agents went to work immediately and, even before Dole arrived in Kansas, Agent Farnsworth, who had always been rather too eager for Indian enlistment, was able to report[550] the initial steps taken. By the twenty-first of January,[551] Dole was well on his way west. He reached Kansas in due season and there learned[552] for the first time, that Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la had been completely overwhelmed, that the refugees were on the Verdigris, and that General Hunter was subsisting them. This was doleful news, indeed, and made the project of a southern expedition seem more and more expedient.

General Hunter had done the best he could to relieve the awful sufferings of the refugees; but, on the sixth of February, he was obliged to inform[553] Dole that he could do no more, that he had practically reached the end of his resources, and that, after the fifteenth of February, the whole responsibility of subsisting the destitute Indians would have to fall upon the Interior Department. Dole was almost at his wits’ end. He had no funds that he could use legitimately for the need that had arisen. It was a case of emergency, however, and something certainly had to be done. Before the fifteenth of December arrived, additional reports[554] came in from Superintendent Coffin, detailing distress. Under the circumstances it was necessary to act quickly and without congressional authorization. Dole telegraphed[555] to Secretary Smith,

Six thousand Indians driven out of Indian territory, naked and starving. General Hunter will only feed them until 15th. Shall I take care of them on the faith of an appropriation?

He received a reply[556] that should have been dictated, not so much in the spirit of generosity, as of simple justice:

Go on and supply the destitute Indians, Congress will supply the means. War Department will not organize them.

With this approbation in hand, Dole went to work, purchased sufficient supplies on credit, and appointed[557] a special agent, Dr. William Kile of Illinois, who had been commissioned[558] by President Lincoln to act on Lane’s staff and was then in Kansas as Lane’s brigade quartermaster, to attend to their distribution. Meanwhile, the attention of Congress had been called to the matter and a particularly strong letter of Dole’s, describing the utter misery of the exiles, was read in the Senate February 14, in support of a joint resolution for their relief.[559] It was intended originally to apply only to the loyal Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws but had its title changed later so as to make it include the Choctaws. On the third of March, Congress passed[560] an act providing that the annuities of the “hostiles,” Creeks, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Wichitas, and Cherokees, should be applied, as might be necessary, to the relief of refugees from Indian Territory. It was expressly stipulated in this enactment[561] that the money should not be used for other than Indian Territory tribes.

Secretary Smith’s telegram, as the reader has probably already observed, had given to Dole a small piece of information that was not of slight significance, signifying as it did a change of front by the War Department. The War Department had rescinded its former action and had now refused to organize the Indians for service. The objections to Lane’s enterprise must have been cumulative. Before the idea of it had embraced the Indians and before it had become so closely identified with Lane’s name and personality, in fact, while it was more or less a scheme of McClellan’s, Hunter had interposed[562] objections, but purely on military grounds. His force was scarcely equal to a movement southward. Subsequently, Halleck interposed objections likewise and his reasons,[563] whatever his motives may have been, were perfectly sound, indeed, rather alarmingly so, since they broadly hinted at the miserably local interests involved in the war in the west and the gross subordination of military policies to political. Then came Lane with energy like the whirlwind, a local politician through and through. He had absolutely no respect for official proprieties and the military men, opposed to him, were men of small calibre. He reached Kansas, joyfully intent upon putting into immediate effect the power that Lincoln had conferred upon him, only to find that there stood Hunter, fully prepared to contest authority with him. The Adjutant-general had written[564] Hunter that Lane had not been given a command independent of his own and that, if he so desired, he might conduct the expedition southward in person. In the evening of the twenty-sixth, Lane reached Leavenworth, and the very next day, Hunter issued general orders[565] that he would command in person. Taken aback and excusably indignant, Lane communicated[566] at once with John Covode and requested him to impart the news to the President, to Stanton[567] and the new Secretary of War, and to General McClellan.

Official sensitiveness was unquestionably at the bottom of the whole trouble, yet Lincoln was very largely to blame for having yielded to Lane’s importunities. He frankly said that he had wished to keep the affair out of McClellan’s hands as far as possible.[568] He hoped to profit by the services of both Hunter and Lane; but, if they could not agree, then Lane must yield the precedence to Hunter. He must report for orders or decline the service.[569] Military men, stationed in the west, and civil officers of Kansas were all prejudiced against the “Lane Expedition.”[570] They expected it to be nothing but jayhawking and marauding of the worst description. The Indians, however, were deeply disappointed[571] when a halt came in the preparations. Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la personally addressed a communication[572] to Lincoln. He wanted nobody but Lane to command the expedition. Pending a settlement, Dole ordered[573] Coffin[574] to desist from further enrollment. Secretary Stanton was declared opposed to the use of Indians in civilized warfare.[575] Soon the orders for the expedition were countermanded with the understanding, explicit or implied, that it should later proceed under the personal direction of General Hunter.

The military situation in the middle west and the great desire on the part of the Confederacy to gain Missouri and to complete her secession from the old Union necessitated, at the opening of 1862, a thorough-going reörganization of forces concentrated in that part of the country. Experience had shown that separate and independent commands had a tendency to become too much localized, individual commanders too much inclined to keep within the narrow margin, each of his instructions, for the good of the service as a whole to be promoted. It was thought best, therefore, to establish the Trans-Mississippi District of Department No. 2[576] and to place in command of it, Major-general Earl Van Dorn. The district was to comprise all of Louisiana north of the Red River, all of Indian Territory proper, all of Arkansas, and all of Missouri west of the St. Francis. Wise in the main, as the scheme for consolidation unquestionably was, it had its weak points. The unrestricted inclusion of Indian Territory was decidedly a violation of the spirit of the Pike treaties, if not of the actual letter. Under the conditions of their alliance with the Confederacy, the Indian nations were not obliged to render service outside of the limits of their own country; but the Confederacy was obliged, independent of any departmental reörganization or regulations, to furnish them protection.

Almost the first thing that Van Dorn did, after assuming command of the new military district, was to write,[577] from his headquarters at Jacksonport in eastern Arkansas, to Price, advising him that Pike would shortly be ordered to take position in southwestern Missouri, say in Lawrence County near Mt. Vernon, “with instructions to coöperate with you in any emergency.” Van Dorn was then laboring under the impression that Pike’s force consisted of a majority of white troops, three regiments, he thought, out of a brigade of eight or nine thousand men, whereas there was only one white regiment in the whole Indian department. Colonel Cooper complained[578] that this latter condition was the fact and insisted that it was contrary to the express promises made, by authority,[579] to the Choctaws and Chickasaws when he had begun his recruiting work among them the previous summer. Had Van Dorn only taken a little trouble to inquire into the real state of affairs among the Indians, he would, instead of ordering Pike to bring the Indian regiments out of Indian Territory, have seen to it that they stayed at home and that danger of civil strife among the Cherokees was prevented by the presence of three white regiments, as originally promised. At this particular time as it happened, Pike was not called upon to move his force; for the order so to move did not reach him until after the Federals, “pursuing General Price, had invaded Arkansas.”[580]

[From Office of Indian Affairs]

It proved, however, to be but a brief stay of execution; for, as soon as Van Dorn learned that Price had fallen back from Springfield, he resolved[581] to form a junction with McCulloch’s division in the Boston Mountains and himself take command of all the forces in the field. He estimated[582] that, should Pike be able to join him, with Price’s and McCulloch’s troops already combined, he would have an army of fully twenty-six thousand men to oppose a Federal force of between thirty-five and forty thousand. Pike was duly informed[583] of the new arrangement and ordered[584] to “hasten up with all possible dispatch and in person direct the march of” his “command, including Stand Watie’s, McIntosh’s, and Drew’s regiments.” His men were to “march light, ready for immediate action.”[585] The outcome of all these preparations was the Battle of Pea Ridge[586] and that battle was the consummation, the culminating point, in fact, of the Indian alliance with the Southern Confederacy. It was the beginning of the end. It happened just at the time when the Richmond legislators were organizing[587] the great Arkansas and Red River superintendency,[588] which was intended to embrace all the tribes with whom Albert Pike had made his treaties. Albert Pike retired from Pea Ridge to his defences at Fort McCulloch, angry and indignant that the Indians had been taken out of their own country to fight the white man’s battles. His displeasure was serious; for the Indian confidence in the Confederacy depended almost wholly upon the promises and the assurances of the Arkansas poet.

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