My Dear Sir: On receipt of your letter and appointment as commissioner from Alabama to Arkansas, I repaired to Little Rock and presented my credentials to the two houses, and also your letter to Governor Rector, by all of whom I was politely received. The Governor of Arkansas was every way disposed to further our views, and so were many leading and influential members of each house of the Legislature, but neither are yet ready for action, because they fear the people have not yet made up their minds to go out. The counties bordering on the Indian nations—Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—would hesitate greatly to vote for secession, and leave those tribes still under the influence of the Government at Washington, from which they receive such large stipends and annuities. These Indians are at a spot very important, in my opinion, in this great sectional controversy, and must be assured that the South will do as well as the North before they could be induced to change their alliances and dependence. I have much on this subject to say when I get to Montgomery, which cannot well be written. The two houses passed resolutions inviting me to meet them in representative hall and consult together as to what had best be done in this matter. When I appeared men were anxious to know what the seceding States intended to do in certain contingencies. My appointment gave me no authority to speak as to what any State would do, but I spoke freely of what, in my opinion, we ought to do. I took the ground that no State which had seceded would ever go back without full power being given to protect themselves by vote against anti-slavery projects and schemes of every kind. I took the position that the Northern people were honest and did fear the divine displeasure, both in this world and the world to come, by reason of what they considered the national sin of slavery, and that all who agreed with me in a belief of their sincerity must see that we could not remain quietly in the same Government with them. Secondly, if they were dishonest hypocrites, and only lied to impose on others and make them hate us, and used anti-slavery arguments as mere pretexts for the purpose of uniting Northern sentiment against us, with a view to obtain political power and sectional dominion, in that event we ought not to live with them. I desired any Unionist present to controvert either of these positions, which seemed to cover the whole ground. No one attempted either, and I said but little more. I am satisfied, from free conversations with members of all parties and with Governor Rector, that Arkansas, when compelled to choose, will side with the Southern States, but at present a majority would vote the Union ticket. Public sentiment is but being formed, but must take that direction....
What, in addition to that just cited, Hubbard had to say about the Indians or about the profit accruing from close contact with them, we have no way of knowing; but we have a right to be suspicious of the things that have to be communicated by word of mouth only, especially in this instance, when we remember that white men have always made the Indians subjects of exploitation and that Hubbard was the man whom the southern Confederacy chose for its first commissioner of Indian affairs, also that Hubbard’s first outline of work, as commissioner, in truth, his only outline, comprehended an extended visit to the Indians before whom he proposed to expatiate on the financial advantages of an adherence to the Confederacy and the inevitable financial ruin that must come from continued loyalty to the Union. All things considered, it would surely seem that in Hubbard’s mind the money question was always uppermost.
But there were others to whom the Indian income was a thing of interest. At the earlier meeting of the Arkansas convention, a resolution[171] had been passed, March 9, 1861, authorizing an inquiry to be made into the annual cost to the United States government of the Indian service west of Arkansas. The state administration had already seized[172] the Indian funds on hand, an opportunity to do so having offered itself upon the occasion of the death[173] of the United States disbursing officer, Major P. T. Crutchfield. But, later, for fear that this might work prejudice with the Indians a resolution[174] was passed providing that the money should not be diverted from its proper uses. Because of such actions and others of like direction, it is certainly safe to assume that pecuniary considerations made the frontiersmen of 1861 vitally interested in Indian affairs. The same influences that moved Hubbard to write his letter to Governor Moore with special mention of the Indians unquestionably moved the citizens of Boonsboro to try,[175] without much further ado, the temper of the Cherokees.
Returning now to Governor Rector and to a recital of his endeavors with the same Indian people, it is seen that his approach to the Cherokees was made, as has been already intimated, through their principal chief, John Ross, and by means of the following most excellently worded letter:
The State of Arkansas, Executive Department,
Little Rock, January 29, 1861.
To His Excellency John Ross,
Principal Chief Cherokee Nation:
Sir: It may now be regarded as almost certain that the States having slave property within their borders will, in consequence of repeated Northern aggressions, separate themselves and withdraw from the Federal Government.
South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have already, by action of the people, assumed this attitude. Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland will probably pursue the same course by the 4th of March next. Your people, in their institutions, productions, latitude, and natural sympathies, are allied to the common brotherhood of the slaveholding States. Our people and yours are natural allies in war and friends in peace. Your country is salubrious and fertile, and possesses the highest capacity for future progress and development by the application of slave labor. Besides this, the contiguity of our territory with yours induces relations of so intimate a character as to preclude the idea of discordant or separate action.
John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees
[From Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology]