Your letter by Micco Hutka is received. You will send a delegation of your best men to meet the Commissioners of the United States Government in Kansas.
I am authorized to inform you that the President will not forget you. Our armies will soon go south and those of your people who are true and loyal to the Government will be treated as friends—Your rights & property will be respected. The Commissioners from the Confederate States have deceived you they have two tongues.
They wanted to get the Indians to fight and they will rob and plunder you if they can get you into trouble. But the President is stil alive his soldiers will soon drive these men who have treacherously violated your homes from the land they have entered. When your Delegates Return to you they will be able to inform you when and where your monies will be paid those who stole your orphan funds will be punished and you will learn that the people who are tru to the Government which has so long protected you are your Friends.—Letter to Opoth-le-ho-yo-ho, Ho-so-tau-hah-sas Hayo, dated Barnesville, September 11, 1861.—General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, C1348.
The author’s opinion is that the mistakes in spelling were made by the illiterate Coffin, who probably made a copy of Carruth’s letters for transmission to the Indian Office. He may also have made a slight alteration in the date of the letter to the Creeks; for the original of the letter, bearing the date of September 10, 1861, was found in Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la’s camp after the Battle of Chustenahlah, December 26, 1861 [Official Records, first ser., vol. viii, 25].
[494] Official Records, first ser., vol. viii, 26.
[495] In his letter to the Seminole chiefs and headmen, Carruth reminds them that he was with them when letters came from Pike and that Pike “is the man who has tried so hard to get your lands sectionalized” and asks, “who brought up a bill in Congress to bring your tribes under Territorial laws, Johnson of Arkansas....”
[496] —Ibid., 26.
[497] Coffin to Dole, October 2, 1861 [Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1861, pp. 38-39].
[498] Evan Jones wrote, October 31, 1861 [Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1861, pp. 41-43] that he had found it impossible to get anyone who would undertake to carry a message to John Ross. The risk was too great.
[499] Dole to Hunter, November 16, 1861 [ibid., p. 44].