Into the Territory the Government also gathered other tribes and remnants of tribes, Quapaws, Kiowas, Senecas, Comanches, etc., mostly in the "blanket" stage of savagery.
The dominant sentiment in the civilized tribes was strongly averse to the war and in favor of peace. The memories and traditions as to the meaning of war were too fresh and grievous. The object lessons as to the advantage of peace were everywhere striking and overwhelming. They hoped to maintain a complete neutrality in the struggle, and pleaded to be allowed to do so. June 17, 1861, John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokees, wrote a long official letter to Gen. Ben. McCulloch, in which he said that his people had done nothing to bring about the war, were friends to both sides, and only desired to live in peace.
As in the rest of the South, the Confederates were not listening to any talk of neutrality, and they proceeded as energetically to stifle it as they had the Union and peace advocates in the several Southern States. All the Indian Agents and officials were ardent Secessionists, and at the head of them was Superintendent Albert Pike, originally a Massachusetts Yankee, and the son of a poor shoemaker. He had gone South as one of the numerous "Yankee schoolmasters" who invaded that section in search of a livelihood, had become a States Rights Democrat, and, as usual with proselytes, was the most zealous of believers. He was a lawyer of some ability, a successful politician, an active worker in Masonry, and made much pretense as a poet. Nothing that he ever wrote survives today.
Each of the Indian Agents began enlisting men into the Confederate service and using them to impose Secession ideas upon their fellow-tribesmen who were either indifferent or actually hostile.
The missionaries, being mostly from the North, were strongly for the Union, and their influence had to be encountered and broken down.
The Indian Agents were commissioned Colonels in the Confederate service, and were expected to raise regiments, with the Chiefs as subordinate officers. The leader among the Agents was Douglas H. Cooper, Agent for the Choctaws, a man of courage, decision and enterprise, who raised a regiment mainly of the half-breeds of the Choctaws and Chickasaws.