Your communication to this office of the 31st December last has been received enclosing a letter which was brought to you by a messenger from the South, as you were holding a Council with the Delaware Chiefs of your Agency, and which letter you desired to be laid before the President of the United States. Your communication also represented the readiness of the Delawares and all the other Western tribes to engage in military service on the side of the Government against the rebel States.
With reference to all these Subjects, you will have an opportunity of conferring with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (who has perused your letter in person) at Leavenworth City, for which destination he left this City on Sunday last on public business.—Charles E. Mix, acting commissioner, to F. Johnson, January 21, 1862 [Indian Office, Letter Book, no. 67, p. 268].
[552] Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, pp. 26, 147-148.
I have the honor to inform you that Capt. J. W. Turner, Chief Commissary of Subsistence of the Department, has just returned from the encampments of the loyal Indians, on the Verdigris river, and in its vicinity. Having made arrangements for subsisting these unfortunate refugees until the 15th day of the present month.
In the neighborhood of Belmont and Roe’s Fort, there were, at the time Capt. Turner left, about four thousand five hundred Indians, chiefly Creeks and Seminoles. But their number was being constantly augmented by the arrival of fresh camps, tribes and families.
Their condition is pictured as most wretched—destitute of clothing, shelter, fuel, horses, cooking utensils and food. This last named article was supplied by Capt. Turner in quantities sufficient to last until the 15th instant after which time, I doubt not, you will have made further arrangements for their continued subsistence.
In taking the responsibility of supplying their wants until the Indian Department could make provision for their necessities I but fulfilled a duty due to our common humanity and the cause in which the Indians are suffering. I now trust and have every confidence that under your energetic and judicious arrangements these poor people may be supplied with all they need after the 15th instant, on which day the supplies furnished by Capt. Turner will be exhausted.
I make no doubt that provision should be made for feeding, clothing and sheltering not less than six thousand Indians, and possibly as high as ten thousand, on this point however, you are doubtless better prepared to judge than myself. I only wish to urge upon you the necessity for prompt measures of relief.