Had this permission been promptly granted, I have every reason to believe that the present disastrous state of affairs, in the Indian country west of Arkansas, could have been avoided. I now again respectfully repeat my request—Ibid.
[505] Dole to Hunter, November 16, 1861 [Indian Office, Letter Book, no. 67, PP. 80-82; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1861, pp. 43-44].
[506] Lane’s proposed conference called for the assembling of representatives of Kansas tribes as well as of Indian Territory tribes. Judging from Hunter’s letter to Agent Cutler of November 20, 1861 [Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1861, pp. 44-45], I infer that Hunter’s conference was to be confined to the southern Indians. The purpose of Lane’s must have been represented to the Kansas Indians as Creek needs [Shawnee “talk” to the Creeks, November 15, 1861, ibid., p. 45]. Hunter intended to hold his conference at his headquarters, Fort Leavenworth, which was making the southern Indians come a pretty long way [Hunter to Cutler, November 20, 1861, ibid., p. 44; Dole to Cutler, December 3, 1861, Indian Office, Letter Book, no. 67, p. 107].
[507] Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 567.
[508] Major-general H. W. Halleck was to command the sister department of Missouri.
[509] Abraham Lincoln, vol. v, 81-82.
I earnestly request and recommend the establishment of a new military department, to be composed of Kansas, the Indian country, and so much of Arkansas and the Territories as may be thought advisable to include therein.—Lane to Lincoln, dated Leavenworth City, Kansas, October 9, 1861 [Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 529].
[511] By the end of July, the First Regiment of Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles had been completely organized [Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 620, 624] and eight companies of a prospective Creek regiment [ibid., 624]. By October twenty-second, when McCulloch ordered him [ibid., 721] to take up a position in the Cherokee Neutral Lands, Stand Watie’s battalion had apparently reached the proportions of a regiment, the First Cherokee Mounted Rifles. On the twenty-seventh of November, Pike who was then in Richmond informed Benjamin,
We have now in the service four regiments, numbering in all some 3,500 men, besides the Seminole troops and other detached companies, increasing the number to over 4,000. An additional regiment has been offered by the Choctaws and another can be raised among the Creeks. If I have the authority I can enlist even the malcontents among that people. I can place in the field (arms being supplied) 7,500 Indian troops, not counting the Comanches and Osages, whom I would only employ in case of an invasion of the Indian country....—Official Records, first ser., vol. viii, 697.