Footnote 808: [(return)]
The plans for such concerted action were made as early as July 8 [Steele to Cooper, July 8, 1863, Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 911-912]. Cabell was instructed to take position between Webber's Falls and Fort Gibson [Duval to Cabell, July 10, 1863, ibid., 916-917] and more specifically, two days before the battle, "within 15 or 20 miles of Gibson and this side of where Gen. Cooper is now encamped on Elk Creek" [Steele to Cabell, July 15, 1863, Confederate Records, chap. 2, no. 268, p. 145].
Footnote 809: [(return)]
Steele knew of the deficiencies in their equipment, however, and of their exhausted state (cont.)
scouts out in all directions and with spies in the very camps of his foes, soon obtained an inkling of the Confederate plan and resolved to dispose of Cooper before Cabell could arrive from Arkansas.[810] Cooper's position was on Elk Creek, not far from present Muskogee,[811] and near Honey Springs on the seventeenth of July the two armies met, Blunt forcing the engagement, having made a night march in order to do it. The Indians of both sides[812] were on hand, in force, the First and Second Home Guards, being dismounted as infantry and thus fighting for once as they had been mustered in. Of the Confederate, or Cooper, brigade Stand Watie, the ever reliable, commanded the First and Second Cherokee, D.N. McIntosh, the First and Second Creek, and Tandy Walker, the regiment of Choctaws and Chickasaws. The odds were all against Cooper from the start and, in ways that Steele had not specified, the material equipment proved itself inadequate indeed. Much of the ammunition was worthless.[813] Nevertheless, Cooper stubbornly contested every inch of the ground and finally gave way only when large numbers of his Indians, knowing their guns to be absolutely useless to them, became disheartened and then demoralized. In confusion, they led the van in
Footnote 809: [(return)]
(cont.) [Duval to W.H. Scott, Commanding Post at Clarksville, Ark., July 8, 1863, Confederate Records, p. 133; Steele to Blair, July 10, 1863, Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 917; same to same, July 13, 1863, ibid., 925].
Footnote 810: [(return)]
See Blunt's official report, dated July 26, 1863 [ibid., part i, 447-448].
Footnote 811: [(return)]
Anderson, Life of General Stand Watie, 21.
Footnote 812: [(return)]
With respect to the number of white troops engaged on the Federal side there seems some discrepancy between Blunt's report [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 448] and Phisterer's statistics [Statistical Record, 145].
Footnote 813: [(return)]
See Cooper's report, dated August 12, 1863 [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 457-461]. The following references are to letters that substantiate, in whole or in part, what Cooper said in condemnation of the ammunition: Duval to Du Bose, dated Camp Prairie Springs, C.N., July 27, 1863 [Confederate Records, chap. 2, no. 268, p. 159]; Steele to Blair, dated Camp Imochiah, August 9, 1863 [ibid., 185-187; Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 961].