The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War

by Annie Heloise Abel

The Federal authorities were proposing to the Indians at the very time when you stopped their clothing and money, that, if they would return to the old Union, they should not be asked to take up arms, their annuities should be paid them in money, the negroes taken from them be restored, all losses and damage sustained by them be paid for, and they be allowed to retain, as so much clear profit, what had been paid them by the Confederate States. It was a liberal offer and a great temptation, to come at the moment when you and Hindman were felicitously completing your operations, and when there were no breadstuffs in their country, and they and their women and children were starving and half-naked. You chose an admirable opportunity to rob, to disappoint, to outrage and exasperate them, and make your own Government fraudulent and contemptible in their eyes. If any human action can deserve it, the hounds of hell ought to hunt your soul and Hindman's for it through all eternity.

Instead of co-operating with the Federal authorities, and doing all that he and you could do to induce the Indians to listen to and accept their propositions, he had better have expelled the enemy from Arkansas or "have perished in the attempt;" and you had better have marched on Helena, before its fortifications were finished, and purged the eastern part of the State of the enemy's presence. If you had succeeded as admirably in that, as you have in losing

the Indian Country, you would have merited the eternal gratitude of Arkansas, instead of its execrations; and the laurel, instead of a halter. I said that you and your Lieutenant had left nothing undone. I repeat it. Take another small example. Until I left the command, at the end of July, the Indian troops had regularly had their half rations of coffee. As soon as I was got rid of, an order from Gen. Hindman took all the remaining coffee, some 3,000 lbs., to Fort Smith. Even in this small matter, he could not forego an opportunity of injuring and disappointing them.

You asked me, in August, what was the need of any white troops at all, in the Indian Country; and you said that the few mounted troops, I had, if kept in the Northern part of the Cherokee Country, would have been enough to repel any Federal force that ever would have entered it. As you and Hindman never allowed any ammunition procured by me, to reach the Indian Country, if you could prevent it, whether I obtained it at Richmond or Corinth, or in Texas, and as you approve of his course in taking out of that country all that was to be found in it, I am entitled to suppose that you regarded ammunition for the Indians as little necessary, as troops to protect them in conformity to the pledge of honor of the Government. One thing, however, is to be said to the credit of your next in command. When he has ordered anything to be seized, he has never denied having done so, or tried to cast responsibility on an inferior. After you had written to me that you had ordered Col. Darnell to seize, at Dallas, Texas, ammunition furnished by me, you denied to him, I understand, that you had given the order. Is it so? and did he refuse to trust the order in your hands, or even to let you see it, but would show it to Gen. McCulloch?

Probably you know by this time, if you are capable of learning any thing, whether any white troops are needed in the Indian Country. The brilliant result of Gen. Hindman's profound calculations and masterly strategy, and of his long-contemplated invasion of Missouri, is before the country; and the disgraceful rout at Fort Wayne, with the manoeuvres and results on the Arkansas, are pregnant commentaries on the abuse lavished on me, for not taking "the line of the Arkansas," or making Head Quarters on Spring River, with a force too small to effect any thing any where.

I have not spoken of your Martial Law and Provost Marshals

in the Indian Country, and your seizure of salt-works there, or, in detail, of your seizure of ammunition procured by me in Texas, and on its way to the Indian troops, of the withdrawal of all white troops and artillery from their country, of the retention for other troops of the mountain howitzers procured by me for Col. Waitie, and the ammunition sent me, for them and for small arms, from Richmond. This letter is but a part of the indictment I will prefer bye and bye, when the laws are no longer silent, and the constitution and even public opinion no longer lie paralyzed under the brutal heel of Military Power; and when the results of your impolicy and mismanagement shall have been fully developed.

But I have a word or two to say as to myself. From the time when I entered the Indian Country, in May, 1861, to make Treaties, until the beginning of June, 1862, when Gen. Hindman, in the plentitude of his self-conceit and folly, assumed absolute control of the Military and other affairs of the Department of Indian Territory, and commenced plundering it of troops, artillery and ammunition, dictating Military operations, and making the Indian country an appanage of Northwestern Arkansas, there was profound peace throughout its whole extent. Even with the wild Camanches and Kiowas, I had secured friendly relations. An unarmed man could travel in safety and alone, from Kansas to Red River, and from the Arkansas line to the Wichita Mountains. The Texan frontier had not been as perfectly undisturbed for years. We had fifty-five hundred Indians in service, under arms, and they were as loyal as our own people, little as had been done by any one save myself to keep them so, and much as had been done by others to alienate them. They referred all their difficulties to me for decision, and looked to me alone to see justice done them and the faith of Treaties preserved.