Creek, about twelve miles south of Fort Scott, was raided by guerrillas;[594] but even that had no effect upon their determination to remain. The Neutral Lands, although greatly intruded upon by white people, were legally their own and they declined to budge from them at the instance of Superintendent Coffin.
Arrangements were undertaken for supplying the Cherokee refugees with material relief;[595] but scarcely had anything been done to that end when, to Coffin's utter surprise, as he said, the military authorities "took forcible possession of them" and had them all conveyed to Neosho, Missouri, presumably out of his reach. But Coffin would not release his hold and detailed the new Cherokee agent, James Harlan,[596] and Special Agent A.G. Proctor to follow them there.
John Ross, his family, and a few friends were, meanwhile, constituting another kind of refugee in the eastern part of the United States.[597] and were criticized by some
Footnote 594: [(return)]
Coffin to Dole, November 14, 1862, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862.
Footnote 595: [(return)]
Coffin to Mix, August 31, 1863, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1863-1864, C 466. A.M. Jordan, who acted as commissary to the Cherokees at Camp Drywood, reported to Dole, December 6, 1862, that he was feeding about a thousand who were then there [ibid., Cherokee, I 847 of 1862].
Footnote 596: [(return)]
Charles W. Chatterton, of Springfield, Illinois, who had been appointed Cherokee agent in the place of John Crawford, removed [Dole to Coffin, March 18, 1862, ibid., Letter Book, no. 67 pp. 492-493] had died, August 31, at the Sac and Fox Agency [Hutchinson to Mix September 1, 1862, ibid., General Files, Cherokee, H 538 of 1862]; [Coffin to Dole, September 13, 1862, ibid., C 1827: W.H. Herndon to Dole, November 15, 1862, ibid., H 605]. Harlan was not regularly commissioned as Cherokee agent until January, 1863 [Coffin to Dole, April 7, 1863, ibid., C 143 of 1863; Harlan to Dole, January 26, 1863, ibid., H 37 of 1863].
Footnote 597: [(return)]
John Ross asked help for his own family and for the families of various relations, thirty-four persons in all. He wanted five hundred dollars for each person [Ross to Dole, October 13, 1862, ibid., R 1857 of 1862]. Later, he asked for seventeen thousand dollars, likewise for maintenance [Ross to Dole, November 19, 1862, ibid.]. The beginning of the next year, he notified the department that some of his party were about to return home (cont.)
of their opponents for living in too sumptuous a manner.[598]
The removal, under military supervision, of the Cherokee refugees, had some justification in various facts, Blunt's firm conviction that Coffin and his instigators or abettors were exploiting the Indian service, that the refugees at Leroy were not being properly cared for, and that those on the Neutral Lands had put themselves directly under the protection of the army.[599] His then was the responsibility. When planning his second Indian Expedition, Blunt had discovered that the Indian men were not at all inclined to accompany it unless they could have some stronger guarantee than any yet given that their families would be well looked after in their absence. They had returned from the first expedition to find their women and children and aged men, sick, ill-fed, and unhappy.