Resolved, That the great consideration with the Cherokee people should be a united and harmonious support and defense of their common rights, and we hereby pledge ourselves to mutually sustain our nationality, and to defend our lives and the integrity of our homes and soil whenever the same shall be wantonly assailed by lawless marauders.
Resolved, That, reposing full confidence in the constituted authorities of the Cherokee Nation, we submit to their wisdom the management of all questions which affect our interests growing out of the exigencies of the relations between the United and Confederate States of America, and which may render an alliance on our part with the latter States expedient and desirable.
And which resolutions, upon the question of their passage being put, were carried by acclamation. Joseph Vann, President.
Wm. P. Ross, Secretary.
Tahlequah, C. N., August 21, 1861.[439]
In making his plans, prior to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, for effecting a junction with Price and coöperating with him and others in southwest Missouri, McCulloch acted, not under direct orders from Richmond, but from his own desire to take such a position opposite the Cherokee Neutral Lands, once so outrageously intruded upon by Kansas settlers and now being made the highway of marauders entering Missouri, as would make it appear to the Cherokees that he was there as their friend and as the protector of their interests. After the battle, he refused, and rightly in view of his own special commission, to accompany Price in his forward march towards the Missouri River. Instead he drew back into the neighborhood of the Cherokee boundary and there developed his plans for attacking Kansas, should such a course be deemed necessary in order to protect Indian Territory.
It was at this juncture that the Cherokees as a nation expressed their preference for the South and for the southern cause, moved thereto, however, by the peculiarities and the difficulties of their situation. The Executive Council lost no time in communicating[440] to McCulloch the decision of the Tahlequah mass-meeting and their own determination to carry out its wishes by effecting an alliance with the Confederacy “as early as practicable.” They realized very clearly that this might “give rise to movements against the Cherokee people upon their northern border” and were resolved to be prepared for such an emergency. They, therefore, authorized the raising of a regiment of mounted men, home guards they were to be and to be so designated, officered by appointment of the principal chief, Colonel John Drew being made the colonel. It would appear that the nucleus of this regiment, and with a strong southern bias, had made[441] its appearance prior to the Tahlequah meeting and the circumstance gave rise to the suspicion that the Cherokees had not been acting in good faith. After the war, the suspicion concentrated, very unjustly, upon John Ross and was made the most of by Commissioner Cooley at the Fort Smith conference; in order to accomplish, for reasons dishonorable to the United States government, the aged chief’s deposition.
Drew’s regiment of home guards was tendered to McCulloch and he agreed to accept it[442] but not until after a treaty of alliance should have been actually consummated between the Cherokees and the Confederate States. Pending the accomplishment of that highly desirable object, McCulloch promised to protect the Cherokee borders with his own troops and confessed[443] that he had already authorized the enlistment of another force of Cherokees under the command of Stand Watie, which had been designed to protect that same northern border but “not to interfere with the neutrality of the Nation by occupying a position within its limits.”
It is not easy to decide just when or by whom the use of Indians by the Federals in the border warfare[444] was first suggested. As late as May twenty-second, Governor Charles Robinson of Kansas, in a letter[445] to Superintendent Branch, protested against even so much as arming them, which would certainly indicate that a general use of their services had not yet been thought of or resorted to; but, in August, when Senator James H. Lane was busy organizing his brigade of volunteers for the defense of Kansas, he resolved,[446] rather officiously, one might think, upon using some of the Kansas River tribes in establishing “a strong Indian camp near the neutral lands to prevent forage into Kansas” and arranged for a conference with the Indians at Fort Lincoln, his headquarters. Soon, however, a stay of execution was ordered[447] until the matter could be discussed, in its larger aspects, with Commissioner Dole, to whom courtesy,[448] at least, would have demanded that the whole affair should have been first submitted.
Dole was then in Kansas[449] and before long became aware[450] that General Frémont was also favoring the enlistment of Indians, or, at all events, their employment by the army in some capacity. He had approached Agent Johnson on the subject, his immediate purpose being to request Fall Leaf, a Delaware, “to organize a party of 50 men for the service of” his department. Agent Johnson called the tribe together and discovered that the chiefs were much averse to having their young men enlist. Dole inquired into the matter and assured[451] the chiefs that a few braves only were needed and those simply for special service and that there was no intention of asking the tribe, as a tribe, to give its services. The chiefs refused consent, notwithstanding; but Fall Leaf and a few others like him did enlist.[452] They were probably among the fifty-three Delawares, subsequently reported[453] as having been employed by Frémont to act as scouts and guides. Fall Leaf attained the rank of captain.[454] Superintendent Branch,[455] be it said, and also Commissioner Dole,[456] at this stage of the war, were strongly opposed to a general use of the Indians for purposes of active warfare. They knew only too well what it was likely to lead to. Indeed, the most that Dole had, up to date, agreed[457] to, was the supplying the Indians with the means of their own defense when United States troops had shown themselves quite unavailable.
Dole’s opinion being such, it is scarcely to be supposed that he could have considered favorably Senator Lane’s idea of an Indian camp in the Cherokee Neutral Lands or the one, developed later, of an Indian patrol along the southern boundary of Kansas. Lane’s troubles, quite apart from his Indian projects, were daily increasing; and, considering the method of warfare indulged in by him and encouraged in his white troops, the same one that pro-slavery and free-state men had equally experimented with in squatter-sovereignty days, it would have been simply deplorable to have permitted him the free use of Indian warriors. Complaints[458] of Lane and of his brigade, of their jayhawking and of their marauding were being made on every hand. Governor Robinson[459] reported these complaints and endorsed them. Secretary Cameron, while making his western tour of investigation, heard[460] them and reported them also. Lane attributed[461] them to personal dislike of him, to envy, to everything, in fact, except their true cause; but we know now that they were all well-grounded. Yet, remarkable to relate, Lane’s influence with Lincoln and with the War Department suffered no appreciable decline. His suggestions[462] were acted upon; and, as we shall presently see, he was even permitted to organize a huge jayhawking expedition at the beginning of the next year.