Footnote 603: [(return)]
—Ibid., 379.
Footnote 604: [(return)]
—Ibid., 380; Bishop, Loyalty on the Frontier, 56.
Footnote 605: [(return)]
Blunt to Schofield, November 9, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 785.
Footnote 606: [(return)]
H.W. Martin to Coffin, December 20, 1862, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, C 1950.
Dwight's Mission. His view of the country through which he passed must have been discouraging.[607] There was little to subsist upon and the few Indians lingering there were in a deplorable state of deprivation, little food, little clothing[608] and it was winter-time.
So desolate and abandoned did the Cherokee country appear that General Blunt considered it would be easily possible to hold it with his Indian force alone, three regiments, yet he said no more about the immediate return of the refugees,[609] but issued an order for their removal to Neosho. The wisdom of his action might well be questioned since the expense of supporting them there would be immeasurably greater than in Kansas[610] unless, indeed, the military authorities intended to assume the entire charge of them.[611] Special Agent Martin regarded some talk that was rife of letting them forage upon the impoverished people of Missouri as
Footnote 607: [(return)]
It was not discouraging to Blunt, however. His letter referring to it was even sanguine [Official Records, vol. xiii, 785-786].
Footnote 608: [(return)]
Martin to Coffin, December 20, 1862.
Footnote 609: [(return)]
The Interior Department considered it, however, and consulted with the War Department as late as the twenty-sixth. See Register of Letters Received, vol. D., p. 155.