III. THE CONFEDERACY IN NEGOTIATION WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES
The provisional government of the Confederate States showed itself no less anxious and no less prompt than the individual states in its endeavor to secure the Indian country and the Indian alliance. On the twenty-first of February, 1861, the very same day that the law was passed for the establishment of a War Department of which Leroy P. Walker of Alabama took immediate charge, William P. Chilton, member[201] of the Provisional Congress from Alabama, offered in that body a resolution to the effect, that the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of opening up negotiations with the Indian tribes of the West in relation to all matters concerning the mutual welfare of said tribes and the people of the Confederate States.[202] The resolution was adopted. Four days later, Edward Sparrow of Louisiana asked that the same committee be instructed to consider the advisability of appointing agents to those same Indian tribes.[203] The Indian committee, at the time, was composed of Jackson Morton of Florida, Lawrence M. Keitt of South Carolina, and Thomas N. Waul of Texas. Robert W. Johnson became a member after Arkansas had seceded and had been admitted to the Confederacy.
Preliminary steps such as these led naturally to a comprehension of the need for a Bureau of Indian Affairs[204] and, on the twelfth of March, President Davis recommended[205] that one be organized and a commissioner of Indian affairs appointed. His recommendations were acted upon without delay and a law[206] in conformity with them passed. This happened on the fifteenth of March and on the day following, the last of the session, Davis nominated David Hubbard,[207] ex-commissioner[208] from Alabama to Arkansas, for the Indian portfolio. For some time, however, Hubbard had little to do.[209] It is wise therefore to leave him for a while and resume the examination of congressional work.
The journal entries through February and March show that the Provisional Congress had, not infrequently, Indian matters placed before it and, at times presumably, communications direct from the tribes. On the fourth of March, Robert Toombs, himself on the Finance Committee and at the same time Secretary of State,[210] offered the following resolution:[211]
Resolved, That the President be, and he is hereby authorized to send a suitable person as special agent of this Government to the Indian tribes west of the State of Arkansas.
Whether this was called forth by the investigations of the Committee on Indian Affairs under the Chilton resolution of the twenty-first of February or whether it grew out of a correspondence between Toombs and Albert Pike does not appear. Toombs and Pike were friends, brother Masons[212] in fact, and then or soon afterwards in intimate correspondence on the subject of Indian relations. The resolution passed, but there the matter seems to have rested for a time. On the tenth of May, William B. Ochiltree proposed[213] that the Committee on Indian Affairs consider the condition of Reserve Indians in Texas; and, on the fifteenth, a most important measure was introduced[214] in the shape of a bill, reported by Keitt from the Committee on Indian Affairs, “for the protection of certain Indian tribes.” This opened up the whole subject of prospective relations with the great tribes of Indian Territory and, taken in connection with the provision for a special commissioner, was fruitful of great results.
On the seventh of May, Thomas A. Harris of Missouri had made the Provisional Congress acquainted with some Choctaw and Chickasaw resolutions,[215] which, in themselves, seemed indicative of a friendly disposition towards the South. This fact lent to the bill for the assumption of a protectorate a large significance. Congress considered it, for the most part, in secret session. The text of the act as finally passed does not appear in any of the published[216] statutes of the Confederate States; but, under the act, Albert Pike, special commissioner for the purpose appointed by President Davis, negotiated all his remarkable treaties with the western tribes. Three sections of the law, those added to the original bill by way of amendment, appear in the Provisional Congress Journal.[217] They are strictly financial in their nature and are as follows: