Footnote 610: [(return)]
Coffin to Henning, December 28, 1862, Indian Office Consolidated Files, Cherokee, C 17 of 1863.
Footnote 611: [(return)]
Coffin's letter to Dole of December 20 [Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, C 1950] would imply that the superintendent expected that to be the case. He said, having reference to Martin's report, "... The statement of facts which he makes, from all the information I have from other sources, I have no doubt are strictly true and will no doubt meet your serious consideration.
"If the Programme as fixed up by the Military Officers, and which I learn Dr. Gillpatrick is the bearer to your city and the solicitor general to procure its adoption is carried out, the Indian Department, superintendent, and agents may all be dispensed with. The proposition reminds me of the Fable of the Wolves and the Shepherds, the wolves represented to the shepherds that it was very expensive keeping dogs to guard the sheep, which was wholly unnecessary; that if they would kill off the dogs, they, the wolves, would protect the sheep without any compensation whatever."
sheer humbug. The army was not doing that and why should the defenceless Indians be expected to do it. As it was, they seem to have been reduced to plundering in Kansas.[612] On the whole, it is difficult to explain Blunt's plan for the concentration of the Cherokee refugees at Neosho, since there were, at the time, many indications that Hindman was considering another advance and an invasion of southwest Missouri.
The November operations of the Federals in northeastern Arkansas were directed toward arresting Hindman's progress, if progress were contemplated. Meanwhile, Phillips with detachments of his Indian brigade was continuing his reconnoissances and, when word came that Stand Watie had ventured north of the Arkansas, Blunt sent him to compel a recrossing.[613] Stand Watie's exploit was undoubtedly a preliminary to a general Confederate plan for the recovery of northwestern Arkansas and the Indian Territory, a plan, which Blunt, vigorous and aggressive, was determined to circumvent. In the action at Cane Hill,[614] the latter part of November, and in the Battle of Prairie Grove,[615] December seventh, the mettle of the Federals was put to a severe test which it stood successfully and Blunt's cardinal purpose was fully accomplished.[616] In both engagements, the Indians played a part and played it
Footnote 612: [(return)]
These Indians must have been the ones referred to in Richard C. Vaughn's letter to Colonel W.D. Wood, December i, 1862 [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 796].
Footnote 613: [(return)]
Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, p. 382.
Footnote 614: [(return)]
—Ibid., vol. i, chapter xxix.
Footnote 615: [(return)]
—Ibid., vol. i, chapter xxx; Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 66-82, 82-158, vol. liii, supplement, 458-461, 866, 867; Livermore, The Story of the Civil War, part iii, bk. 1, 84-85.
Footnote 616: [(return)]
One opinion is to the effect that the result of the Battle of Prairie Grove, Fayetteville, or Illinois Creek, was virtually to end the war north of the Arkansas River [ibid., p. 85; Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 82]. (cont.)