D. N. Cooley Esq, Commissioner of Ind. Aff.
[229] In writing this letter, Pike most certainly addressed himself to Toombs officially and with the idea in mind that he was holding his commission under the Confederate State Department. That he was serving under that department and that he did not get his appointment until May seem scarcely to admit of a doubt, notwithstanding the fact that Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of War later in the year, December [14?], 1861, in reporting to President Davis, could make the following statement:
At the first session of the Congress an act was passed providing for the sending of a commissioner to the Indian tribes north of Texas and west of Arkansas, with the view of making such arrangements for an alliance with and the protection of the Indians as were rendered necessary by the disruption of the Union and our natural succession to the rights and duties of the United States, so far as these Indians were concerned. The supervision of this important branch of administrative duty was confided to the State Department, by which Brig.-Gen. Albert Pike was selected as commissioner. At a later period of the same session a Bureau of Indian Affairs was created by law and attached to this Department, charged with the management of our relations with the Indian tribes....—Official Records, fourth ser., vol. i, 792.
Now, if Benjamin was correct in his chronology, the appointment of Pike must have antedated that of Hubbard, a very unlikely state of affairs unless, indeed, the Confederate government from the start, taking cognizance of the very advanced condition of the Indians under discussion and of the very extreme delicacy of the situation, concluded it would be wisest to act upon the assumption that the great tribes were independent enough to be dealt with almost as foreign powers and so left everything to the discretion of the State Department.
In November, 1861, the Provisional Congress considered the advisability of transferring the whole Indian Bureau to the Department of State [Journal, November 28, 1861, vol. i, 489]. The transfer was probably suggested by the fact that the relations to date of the Confederate States with the Indians had been conducted altogether upon a basis of diplomacy. An added reason might have been, that the ordinary business of the War Department was sufficiently onerous without the details of Indian complications being made a part of it. Yet the transfer was never made.
[230] Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 576-578.
[231] Hubbard’s ill-health, however, seems to have made it incumbent upon Pike to assume much the larger share of official responsibility and practically to do Hubbard’s work as well as his own; that is, so much of it as was not transacted in Richmond.
[232] Adjutant and Inspector-General S. Cooper to McCulloch, May 13, 1861 [Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 575-576].
[233] Hubbard to Walker, June 2, 1861 [ibid., 589-590].
[234] Official Records, first ser., vol. xiii, 497-498; General Files, Cherokee, 1859-1865, C515.