Footnote 854: [(return)]
Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 1097.
Footnote 855: [(return)]
On August 14, Cooper complained to Smith that Steele had been given the place that rightfully should have been his [ibid., 987]. Smith looked into the matter and made his reply, strictly non-partisan, September 1st [ibid., 1037]. The authorities at Richmond declared against Cooper's claims and pretensions, yet, in no wise, did he abandon them.
among men, he might have accomplished great things for Indian Territory and for the Confederacy. Almost simultaneously with the forwarding of Scott's first report to Holmes, he personally made reports[856] and issued appeals,[857] some of which, because of their grasp, because of their earnestness, and because of their spirit of noble self-reliance, call for very special mention. Watie's purpose in making and in issuing them was evidently nothing more and nothing less than to dispel despondency and to arouse to action.
Watie's appeal may have had the effect designed but it was an effect doomed to be counteracted almost at once. Blunt's offensive had more of menace to the Creeks and their southern neighbors than had Steele's defensive of hope. The amnesty to deserters,[858] that issued under authority from Richmond on the twenty-sixth of August, even though conditional upon a return to duty, was a confession of weakness and it availed little when the Choctaws protested against the failure to supply them with arms and ammunition, proper in quality and quantity, for Smith to tell them that such things, intended to meet treaty requirements but diverted, had been lost in the fall of Vicksburg.[859] Had not white men been always singularly adept at making excuses for breaking their promises to red?
In September, when everything seemed very dark for the Confederacy on the southwestern front, desperate efforts were made to rally anew the Indians.
Footnote 856: [(return)]
Watie's report to Scott, August 8, 1863 [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 1104-1105] was full of very just criticism, but not at all factional.
Footnote 857: [(return)]
The appeal to the Creeks, through their governor, is to be found in Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 1105-1106, and that to the Choctaws and Chickasaws, ibid., 1106-1107.
Footnote 858: [(return)]
—Ibid., 980.
Footnote 859: [(return)]
Smith to Principal Chief, Choctaw Nation, August 13, 1863, ibid., 967; Bryan to Hon. R.M. Jones, September 19, 1863, ibid., 1021.