Footnote 375: [(return)]
Furnas to Blunt, July 25, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 512.
Footnote 376: [(return)]
—Ibid., 512.
Footnote 377: [(return)]
Britton, Civil War on the border, vol. i, 309.
Footnote 378: [(return)]
Official Records, vol. xii, 512; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, 163.
Footnote 379: [(return)]
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, 163-164.
Footnote 380: [(return)]
Carruth and Martin to Coffin, July 25, 1862, ibid., 160.
that; for, as Weer had once reported, cattle were a drug on the market in the Cherokee country, the prairies "covered with thousands of them."[381] The encampment on the Verdigris was made forthwith; but it was a failure from the start.
The Indians of the First Regiment showed signs of serious demoralization and became unmanageable, while a large number of the Second deserted.[382] It was thought that deprivation in the midst of plenty, the lack of good water and of the restraining influence of white troops had had much to do with the upheaval, although there had been much less plundering since they left than when they were present. With much of truth back of possible hatred and malice, the special agents reported that such protection as the white men had recently given Indian Territory "would ruin any country on earth."[383]
With the hope that the morale of the men would be restored were they to be more widely distributed and their physical conditions improved, Colonel Furnas concluded to break camp on the Verdigris and return to the Grand. He accordingly marched the Third Indian to Pryor Creek[384] but had scarcely done so when orders came from Salomon, under cover of his usurped authority as commander of the Indian Expedition, for him to cross the Grand and advance northeastward to Horse Creek and vicinity, there to pitch his tents. The new camp was christened Camp Wattles. It extended from Horse to Wolf Creek and constituted a point from which the component parts of the Indian Brigade did