Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the Confederate States do hereby assume the duty and obligation of collecting and paying over as trustees to the several Indian tribes now located in the Indian Territory south of Kansas, all sums of money accruing, whether from interest or capital of the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held by the Government of the United States as trustees for said Indians or any of them; and the said interest and capital as collected shall be paid over to said Indians or invested for their account, as the case may be, in accordance with the several treaties and contracts now existing between said Indians and the Government of the United States.
Sec. 7. That the several States of this Confederacy be requested to provide by legislation or otherwise that the capital and interest of the bonds issued by them respectively, and held by the Government of the United States in trust for said Indians, or any of them, shall not be paid to said Government of the United States, but shall be paid to this Government in trust for said Indians.
Sec. 8. That it shall be the duty of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to obtain and publish, at as early a period as practicable, a list of all the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held in trust by the Government of the United States as aforesaid, and to give notice in said publication that the capital and interest of said bonds are to be paid to this Government and to no other holder thereof whatever.
Before this bill for the protection of the Indians had come up for discussion or had even emerged from the rooms of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Albert Pike, in letters to Toombs and R. W. Johnson, had pointed out most emphatically the military necessity of securing[218] the Indian country. His conviction was strong that the United States had no idea of permanently abandoning the same but would soon replace the regular troops, it had withdrawn from thence, by volunteers. Pike discussed the matter with N. Bart Pearce and the two agreed[219] that there was no time to lose and that something must be done forthwith to prevent the possibility of Federal emissaries gaining a foothold among the great tribes; for, if they did gain such a foothold, their influence was likely to be very great, especially among the Cherokees who might be regarded as predisposed to favor them, they having many abolitionists on their tribal rolls. Whether, at so early a date, Pike thought formal negotiation, as had been customary, the preferable method of procedure, we are not prepared to say, positively. Formal negotiation was scarcely consistent with the southern argument of Jackson’s time or consonant with present state-rights doctrine. When writing[220] to Johnson on the eleventh of May, Pike seems to have been thinking simply of Indian enlistment and of the use of white and red troops in the defense of the Indian country. At that date his own appointment[221] as diplomatic agent for the negotiation of treaties of amity and alliance was certainly not prominently before him. He expressed himself to Johnson in such a way, indeed, as would lead us to suppose that the position he half expected to get, and did not altogether want, was that of commander of an Indian Department which he hoped would be created.
For such a position Pike was not entirely unfitted. He had served in the Mexican War and had attained the rank of captain; but his tastes were certainly not what one would call military. He was a poet[222] of acknowledged reputation and a lawyer of eminence. Arkansas had recognized him as one of her foremost citizens by sending him as her one and only delegate to the Commercial Convention[223] of Southern and Western States, held at Charleston, South Carolina, April, 1854. Just recently, at the time when the question of secession was before the people of Arkansas, he had issued a pamphlet, entitled, State or Province, Bond or Free, described by a contemporary as, “a most specious argument for secession, but a re-production of the political heresies, that thirty years ago called down on John C. Calhoun, the anathema maranatha of Andrew Jackson.”[224] To the men of his time, it seemed all the more astonishing that Albert Pike should take such a pronounced stand on the subject of state rights, not because he was a New Englander by birth, for there were many such in Arkansas and in the ranks of the secessionists, but because he was the author of that stirring poem against the idea of national disintegration, published some time before under the title of, “Disunion.”[225]
On the twentieth of May, Pike wrote[226] again to Toombs and by that time he certainly knew[227] of his commission to treat with the Indian tribes, but had apparently not received any very definite instructions as to the scope of his authority. One little passage in the letter brings out very clearly the essential fair-mindedness of the man, a marked characteristic in all[228] his dealings with the Indians, but at once his strength and his weakness. He succeeded with the red man for the very same reason that he failed with the white, because he gave to the Indians the consideration and the justice which were their due. This is the significant passage from his letter to Toombs:[229]
I very much regret that I have not received distinct authority to give the Indians guarantees of all their legal and just rights under treaties. It cannot be expected they will join us without them, and it would be very ungenerous, as well as unwise and useless, in me to ask them to do it. Why should they, if we will not bind ourselves to give them what they hazard in giving us their rights under treaties?
As you have told me to act at my discretion, and as I am not directed not to give the guarantees, I shall give them, formal, full, and ample, by treaty, if the Indians will accept them and make treaties. General McCulloch will join me in this, and so, I hope and suppose, will Mr. Hubbard, and when we shall have done so we shall, I am sure, not look in vain to you, at least, to affirm these guarantees and insist they shall be carried out in good faith.
There was an implied doubt of Hubbard in Pike’s reference to him and a single future declaration almost justified the doubt, notwithstanding the fact that Hubbard was supposed to have been chosen as commissioner of Indian affairs because of his “well known sympathy for the Indian tribes and the deep concern” he had ever “manifested in their welfare.” Hubbard’s official position was that of Commissioner of Indian Affairs; but the unorganized character of the Confederate administration in early 1861 is well attested by the way Secretary Walker confounded the name and functions of that office with those of an ordinary superintendent. On the fourteenth of May, he addressed Hubbard as “Superintendent of Indian Affairs” and instructed him
To proceed to the Creek Nation, and to make known to them, as well as to the rest of the tribes west of Arkansas and south of Kansas ... the earnest desire of the Confederate States to defend and protect them against the rapacious and avaricious designs of their and our enemies at the North.... You will, in an especial manner, impress upon the Creek Nation and surrounding Indian tribes the imperious fact that they will doubtless recognize, that the real design of the North and the Government at Washington in regard to them has been and still is the same entertained and sought to be enforced against ourselves, and if suffered to be consummated, will terminate in the emancipation of their slaves and the robbery of their lands. To these nefarious ends all the schemes of the North have tended for many years past, as the Indian nations and tribes well know from the character and conduct of those emissaries who have been in their midst, preaching up abolition sentiments under the disguise of the holy religion of Christ, and denouncing slaveholders as abandoned by God and unfit associates for humanity on earth.