Footnote 658: [(return)]
(cont.) December 26, 1862, Dole wrote to Smith thus: "... It being in contemplation to extinguish the Indian title to lands ... in Kansas and provide them with homes in the Indian Territory ... I would recommend that a commissioner should be appointed to negotiate ... I would accordingly suggest that Robt. S. Corwin be appointed ..." [Indian Office Report Book, no. 13, pp. 12-13]. Now Corwin's reputation was not such as would warrant his selection for the post. He was not a man of strict integrity. His name is connected with many shady transactions in the early history of Kansas.
Footnote 659: [(return)]
Presumably, Lane was the chief promoter of it. See Baptiste Peoria to Dole, February 9, 1863, Indian Office General Files, Osage River, 1863-1867.
Footnote 660: [(return)]
U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. xii, 793.
Footnote 661: [(return)]
Dole to Usher, July 29, 1863, Indian Office Report Book, no. 13, p. 211.
Footnote 662: [(return)]
His associates were then the three men, Lewis Downing, James McDaniel, and Evan Jones, who had been appointed delegates with him, (cont.)
real encouragement[663] to renew their offer, yet the Cherokees had as early as February repudiated their alliance with the southern Confederacy. That the United States government was only awaiting a time most propitious for itself is evident from the fact that, when, in the spring following, refugees from the Neutral Lands were given an opportunity to begin their backward trek, they were told that they would not be permitted to linger at their old homes but would have to go on all the way to Fort Gibson, one hundred twenty miles farther south.[664] That was one way of ridding Kansas of her Indians and a way not very creditable to a professed and powerful guardian.
Almost simultaneously with Ross's first application came an offer from the oppressed Delawares to look for a new home in the far west, in Washington Territory. The majority preferred to go to the Cherokee country.[665] Some of the tribe had already lived there and wanted to return. Had the minority gained their point, the Delawares would have traversed the whole continent within the space of about two and a half centuries. They would have wandered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Susquehanna River to the Willamette, in a desperate effort to escape the avaricious pioneer, and, to their own chagrin, they would have found him on the western coast also. Never again would there be any place for them free from his influence.
In the summer of 1863, negotiations were undertaken
Footnote 662: [(return)]
(cont.) by the newly-constructed national council, for doing business with the United States government [Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1863, p. 23].