Texas, the Louisiana,[515] and the Arkansas. The last-named district
was entrusted to General Hindman and made to embrace Arkansas,
Missouri, and the Indian Territory. Hindman took charge at Fort Smith,
August twenty-fourth and straightway planned such disposition of his
troops as would make for advancing the Confederate line northward of
the Boston Mountains, Fort Smith, and the Arkansas River. The Indian
forces that were concentrated around Forts Smith and Gibson were
shifted to Carey's Ferry that they might cover the military road
southward from Fort Scott. To hold the Cherokee country and to help
maintain order there, a battalion of white cavalry was posted at
Tahlequah and, in each of the nine townships, or districts, of the
country, the formation of a company of home guard, authorized.[516]
The maintaining of order in the Cherokee Nation had come to be
imperatively necessary. John Ross, the Principal Chief, was now
a prisoner within the Federal lines.[517] His capture had been
accomplished by strategy only a short time before and not without
strong suspicion that he had been in collusion with his captors. Early
in August, General Blunt, determined that the country north of the
Arkansas should not be abandoned, notwithstanding the retrograde
movement of Colonel Salomon, had ordered Salomon, now a brigadier in
command of the Indian Expedition, to send
[Footnote 515: Not all of Louisiana was in Holmes's department and
only that part of it west of the Mississippi constituted the District
of Louisiana. Governor Moore had vigorously protested against a
previous division, one that "tacked" "all north of Red River" "onto
Arkansas" [_Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 819].]
[Footnote 516:--Ibid., vol. xiii, 46-47.]
[Footnote 517: Nominally, Ross was yet a prisoner, although, as a
matter of fact, he had started upon a mission to Washington, his
desire being to confer with President Lincoln in person regarding the
condition of the Cherokees [Blunt to Lincoln, August 13, 1862, ibid.,
565-566].]
back certain white troops in support of the Indian.[518] Dr.
Gillpatrick, who was the bearer of the orders, imparted verbal
instructions that the expeditionary force so sent should proceed to
Tahlequah and complete what Colonel Phillips had confessed he had not
had sufficient time for, the making of diplomatic overtures to the
Cherokee authorities.[519]
Blunt's expeditionary force had proceeded to Tahlequah and to Park
Hill and there, under the direction of Colonel William F. Cloud, had
seized John Ross and his family, their valuables, also official papers
and the treasury of the Cherokee Nation.[520] The departure of the
Principal Chief had had a demoralizing effect upon the Cherokees;
for, when his restraining influence was removed, likewise the Federal
support, political factions, the Pins, or full-bloods, and the
Secessionists, mostly half-breeds, had been able to indulge their
thirst for vengeance uninterruptedly.[521] Chaos had well-nigh
resulted.
The departure of the expeditionary force had meant more than mere
demoralization among the Indians. It had meant the abandonment of
their country to the Confederates and the Confederates, once realizing
that, delaying nothing, took possession. The secessionist Cherokees
then called a convention, formally deposed John Ross, and elected
Stand Watie as Principal Chief in his stead.[522] Back of all such
revolutionary work, was General Hindman and it was not long before
Hindman himself was in Tahlequah.[523] Once there, he proceeded to set
his stamp upon things with customary
[Footnote 518: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 531-532.]
[Footnote 519:--Ibid., 182.]
[Footnote 520:--Ibid., 552.]
[Footnote 521:--Ibid., 623, 648.]
[Footnote 522: _Confederate Military History_, vol. x, 129.]
[Footnote 523: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 42.]
vigor and order was shortly restored both north and south of the
Arkansas. Guerrilla warfare was summarily suppressed, marauding
stopped, and the perpetrators of atrocities so deservedly punished
that all who would have imitated them lost their taste for such
fiendish sport. As far north as the Moravian Mission, the Confederates
were undeniably in possession; but, at that juncture, Holmes called
Hindman to other scenes. A sort of apathy then settled like a cloud
upon the Cherokee Nation[524]. Almost lifeless, it awaited the next
invader.
One part of the programme, arranged for at the time of the
re-districting of the Trans-Mississippi Department, had called for a
scheme to reënter southwest Missouri. Hindman was to lead but Rains,
Shelby, Cooper, and others were to constitute a sort of outpost and
were to make a dash, first of all, to recover the lead mines at
Granby. The Indians of both armies were drawn thitherward, the one
group to help make the advance, the other to resist it. At Newtonia on
September 30 the first collision of any moment came and it came and it
ended with victory for the Confederates[525]. Cooper's Choctaws and
Chickasaws fought valiantly but so also did Phillips's Cherokees. They
lost heavily in horses[526], their own poorly shod ponies; but they
themselves stood fire well. To rally them after defeat proved,
however, a difficult matter. Their
[Footnote 524: Report of M.W. Buster to Cooper, September 19, 1862,
_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 273-277.]
[Footnote 525: For detailed accounts of the Battle of Newtonia, see
Ibid., 296-307; Edwards, _Shelby and his Men_, 83-89;
Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. i, 355-363; Anderson,
_Life of General Stand Watie_, 20; Crawford, _Kansas in the
Sixties_, 54; _Confederate Military History_, vol. x, 132.]
[Footnote 526: Evan Jones to Dole, January 8, 1864, Indian Office
General Files, Cherokee, 1859-1865, J 401.]
disciplining had yet left much to be desired.[527] Scalping[528] of
the dead took place as on the battle-field of Pea Ridge; but, in other
respects, the Indians of both armies acquitted themselves well and far
better than might have been expected.
The participation of the Indians in the Battle of Newtonia was
significant. Federals and Confederates had alike resorted to it for
purposes other than the red man's own. The Indian Expedition had now
for a surety definitely abandoned the intention for which it was
originally organized and outfitted. As a matter of fact, it had long
since ceased to exist. The military
[Footnote 527: "Since leaving the Fugitive Indians on Dry Wood Creek,
nothing has occurred of material interest other than you will receive
through official Dispatches from the Officers of our Army. The Indians
under Col. Phillips fought well at the Battle Newtonia, they have at
all times stood fire. The great difficulty of their officers is in
keeping them together in a retreat, and should such be necessary on
the field in presence of an enemy in their present state of discipline
it would be almost impossible to again return them to the attack in
good order--Another Battle was fought at this place in which the enemy
were defeated with considerable loss, four of their guns being taken
by a charge of the 2d Kansas.
"In this Contest the Indians behaved well, the officers and soldiers
of our own regiments now freely acknowledge them to be valuable Allies
and in no case have they as yet faltered, untill ordered to retire,
the prejudice once existing against them is fast disappearing from our
Army and it is now generaly conceded that they will do good service
in our border warfare. This we have never doubted and confident as we
have been of their fitness for border warfare we have been content to
await, untill they had proven to the country not only their loyalty
but their ability to fight. Since their organization they have been
engaged in several battles and in every case successfully, one of us
will start in a day or two for Tahlequah and may find something of
interest on the march. We are now in the Cherokee Nation. An effort
is now being made by Gen'l Blunt to punish plundering in the country.
Union People have suffered from this as much as rebels. We have before
called the attention of our Army Officers to this fact; with our
Fifteen Hundred Cherokee Warriors in the service of our government--we
feel that every possible protection should be extended to them as a
people" [Carruth to Coffin, October 25, 1862, enclosed in Coffin to
Dole, November 16, 1862, Indian Office General Files, _Southern
Superintendency_ 1859-1862].]
[Footnote 528: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 894.]
organization, of which the Indian regiments in the Federal service now
formed a part, was Blunt's division of the Army of the Frontier and
it had other objects in view, other tasks to perform, than the simple
recovery of Indian Territory.
It is true General Blunt had set his heart upon that particular
accomplishment but he was scarcely a free agent in the matter. Men
above him in rank had quite other aims and his, perforce, had to be
subordinated to theirs. In August, Blunt had planned a kind of second
Indian Expedition to go south to Fort Gibson and to restore the
refugees to their homes.[529] It had started upon its way when the
powers higher up interposed.
General Schofield, anticipating the renewed endeavor of the
Confederates to push their line forward, had called upon Blunt for
assistance and Blunt had responded with such alacrity as was possible,
considering that many of the troops he summoned for Schofield's use
were those that had been doing hard service within and on the border
of the Indian country for full two months. During all that time their
horses had been deprived entirely of grain feed and had been compelled
to subsist upon prairie grass. They were in a bad way.[530] Once
outside the Indian Territory, the Indian regiments, begrudging the
service demanded of them, were kept more fully occupied than were the
white; for there was
[Footnote 529: "Orders have been given by General Blunt for the Indian
Expedition to go South soon; he says the families of the Indians may
go"--CARRUTH to Coffin, August 29, 1862, enclosed in Coffin to
Mix, August 30, 1862, Indian Office General Files, _Southern
Superintendence_, 1859-1862.
"Enclosed you will find an order from General James G. Blunt in
regard to the removal of the Indian families to their homes. I start
to-morrow for Fort Scott, Kansas, to overtake the second Indian
expedition, commanded by General Blunt in person."--Carruth to Coffin,
September 19, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p.
166.]
[Footnote 530: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. i, 337.]
always scouting[531] for them to do and frequently skirmishing. On
Cowskin River, Phillips's Third Indian and, near Shirley's Ford on
Spring River, Ritchie's Second had each engaged the Confederates with
success, although not entirely with credit. Ritchie had allowed his
men to run amuck even to the extent of attacking their comrades in
Colonel Weer's brigade, which was the second in Blunt's reorganized
army. On account of his lack of control over his troops, Ritchie was
reported upon for dismissal from the service.[532]
The Battle of Newtonia was inconclusive. Subsequent to it, the
Federals were greatly reënforced and, in the first days of October,
Schofield and Blunt, who had both arrived recently upon the scene,
coming to the aid of Salomon, who had been the vanquished one at
Newtonia, were able, in combination with Totten, to deprive Cooper of
all the substantial fruits of victory. He was obliged to fall back
into Arkansas, whither a part of Blunt's division pursued him and
encamped themselves on the old battle-field of Pea Ridge.[533]
Cooper was far from being defeated, however, and, under orders from
Rains, soon made plans for attempting an invasion of Kansas; but
Blunt, ably seconded by Crawford of the Second Kansas, was too quick
for him. He followed him to Maysville and then a little beyond the
Cherokee border to old Fort Wayne in the present Delaware District of
the Nation. There, on the open prairie, a battle was fought,[534] on
October 22, so
[Footnote 531: Phillips to Blunt, September 5, 1862, _Official
Records_, vol. xiii, 614-615.]
[Footnote 532: Weer to Moonlight, September 12, 1862, ibid., 627; Weer
to Blunt, September 24, 1862, ibid., 665-666; Britton, _Civil War on
the Border_, vol. i, 352.]
[Footnote 533: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. i, 366;
Crawford, _Kansas in the Sixties_, 54.]
[Footnote 534: Anderson, _Life of General Stand Watie_, 20;
Crawford, _Kansas in the_ (cont.)]
disastrous to the Confederates, who, by the by, were greatly
outnumbered, that they fled, a demoralized host, by way of Fort Gibson
across the Arkansas River to Cantonment Davis,[535] Stand Watie and
his doughty Cherokees covering their retreat. The Federals had then
once again an undisputed possession of Indian Territory north of the
Arkansas.[536]
Such was the condition of affairs when Pike emerged from his
self-imposed retreat in Texas. The case for the Confederate cause
among the Indians was becoming desperate. So many things that called
for apprehension were occurring. Cooper and Rains were both in
disgrace, the failure of the recent campaign having been attributed
largely to their physical unfitness for duty. Both were now facing an
investigation of charges for drunkenness. Moreover, the brutal attack
upon and consequent murder of Agent Leeper had just shocked the
community. Hearing of that murder and considering that he was still
the most responsible party in Indian Territory, General Pike made
preparations to proceed forthwith to the Leased District. His plans
were frustrated by his own arrest at the command of General Holmes.
His unfriendliness to Pike was in part due to Holmes's own
necessities. It was to his interest to assert authority over the man
who could procure supplies for Indian Territory and when occasion
offered, if that man should dare to prove obdurate, to ignore his
position altogether. Nevertheless, Holmes had not seen fit in early
October to deny Pike his title of
[Footnote 534: (cont.) _Sixties_, 56-62; Edwards, _Shelby and
his Men, 90; Official Records, vol. xiii, 43, 324. 325, 325-328,
329-331, 331-332, 332-336, 336-337, 759_; Britton, _Civil War on
the Border_, vol. i, _364-375_.]
[Footnote 535: _Official Records, vol. xiii, 765_.]
[Footnote 536: Blunt was ordered "to clean out the Indian country"
[Ibid., 762].]
commander and had personally addressed him by it.[537] Yet all the
time he was encroaching upon that commander's prerogatives, was
withholding his supplies, just as Hindman had done, and was exploiting
Indian Territory, in various ways, for his own purposes. Rumors came
that Pike was holding back munition trains in Texas and then that
he was conspiring with Texan Unionists against the Confederacy. To
further his own designs, Holmes chose to credit the rumors and
made them subserve the one and the same end; for he needed Pike's
ammunition and he wanted Pike himself out of the way. He affected to
believe that Pike was a traitor and, when he reappeared as brigade
commander, to consider that he had unlawfully reassumed his old
functions. Accordingly, he issued an order to Roane,[538] to whom
he had entrusted the Indians, for Pike's arrest; but he had already
called Pike to account for holding back the munition trains and had
ordered him, if the charge were really true, to report in person at
Little Rock.[539]
The order for General Pike's arrest bore date of November 3. Roane,
the man to whom the ungracious task was assigned, was well suited to
it. He had been adjudged by Holmes himself as absolutely worthless
as a commander and, being so, had been sent to take care of the
Indians,[540] a severe commentary upon Holmes's own fitness for
the supreme control of anything that had to do with them or their
concerns. Others had an equally poor opinion of Roane's generalship
and character. John S. Phelps, indeed, was writing at this very time,
the autumn of 1862, to Secretary
[Footnote 537: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 924.]
[Footnote 538:--Ibid., 923, 980, 981.]
[Footnote 539:--Ibid., 904.]
[Footnote 540:--Ibid., 899.]
Stanton in testimony of Roane's unsavory reputation.[541]
The arrest of Pike took place November 14 at Tishomingo in the
Chickasaw country and a detachment of Shelby's brigade was detailed
to convey him to Little Rock.[542] Then, as once before, his reported
resignation saved him from long confinement and from extreme
ignominy. On the fifth of November, President Davis instructed the
adjutant-general to accept Pike's resignation forthwith and five days
thereafter,[543] before the arrest had actually taken place, Holmes
advised Hindman that he had better let Pike go free so soon as he
should leave the Indian country; inasmuch as his resignation was now
an assured thing.[544] Holmes evidently feared to let the release take
place within the limits of Pike's old command; for some of the Indians
were still devotedly attached to him and were still pinning their
faith upon his plighted word. John Jumper and his Seminole braves were
among those most loyal to Pike; and Holmes was afraid that wholesale
desertions from their ranks would follow inevitably Pike's
degradation. Many desertions had already occurred, ostensibly because
of lack of food and raiment. Commissioner Scott had complained to
Holmes of the Indian privations[545] and Holmes had been forced to
concede, although only at the eleventh hour, the Indian claim to some
consideration. He had arbitrarily shared tribal quota of supplies,
bought with tribal money, with white troops and had lamely excused
himself by saying that he had done it to prevent
[Footnote 541: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 752.]
[Footnote 542:--Ibid., 921.]
[Footnote 543:--Ibid., vol. liii, supplement, 821.]
[Footnote 544:--Ibid., vol. xiii, 913.]
[Footnote 545:--Ibid., 920.]
grumbling[546] and the charge of favoritism. One other offence of
which Holmes was guilty he did not attempt to palliate, the taking of
the Indians out of their own country without their consent. To the
very last Pike had expostulated[547] against such violation of treaty
promises; but Holmes and Hindman were deaf alike to entreaty and to
reprimand.
General Pike, poet and student, was now finally deprived of his
command and the Indians left to their own devices or at the mercy of
men, who could not be trusted or were not greatly needed elsewhere. No
one attempted any longer to conceal the truth that alliance with the
Indians was a supremely selfish consideration, and nothing more,
on the part of those who coveted Indian Territory because of its
geographical position, its strategic and economic importance. For a
little while longer, Pike contended with his enemies by means of the
best weapon he had, his facile pen. His acrimonious correspondence
with the chief of those enemies, Hindman and Holmes, reached its
highest point of criticism in a letter of December 30 to the latter.
That letter summed up his grievances and was practically his last
charge. Having made it, he retired from the scene, not to reappear
until near the close of the war, when Kirby Smith found it
advantageous to reëmploy him for service among the red men.
[Footnote 546: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 928.]
[Footnote 547:--Ibid., 905, 963.]
IX. THE REMOVAL OF THE REFUGEES TO THE SAC AND FOX AGENCY
General Blunt's decision to restore the Indian refugees in Kansas to
their own country precipitated a word war of disagreeable significance
between the civil and military authorities. The numbers of the
refugees had been very greatly augmented in the course of the summer,
notwithstanding the fact that so large a proportion of the men had
joined the Indian Expedition. It is true they had not all stayed with
it. The retrograde movement of Colonel Salomon and his failure later
on to obey Blunt's order to the letter[548] that he should return
to the support of the Indians had disheartened them and many of the
enlisted braves had deserted the ranks, as chance offered, and had
strayed back to their families in the refugee camps of southern
Kansas.[549]
[Footnote 548: Blunt to Caleb Smith, November 21, 1862 [Indian Office
General Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1859-1862, I 860].]
[Footnote 549: One of the first notices of their desertion was the
following:
"We are getting along well, very well. The Indians seem happy and
contented, and seemingly get enough to eat and wear. At least I hear
no complaint. For the last two or three days the Indian soldiers have
been stragling back, until now there are some three or four hundred
in, and they are still coming. I held a council with them to-day to
try and find out why they are here. But they don't seem to have any
idea themselves. All I could learn was that Old George started and the
rest followed. The Col. it seems told them to go some where else. I
shall send an express to Col. Furness in the morning to find out if
possible what it means. It seems to me it will not do to give the
provisions purchased for the women and children to the soldiers....
"The soldiers look clean and hearty, and complain of being
treated like dogs, starved etc, which I must say their looks
belie...."--GEO.A. CUTLER to Wm. G. Coffin, August 13, 1862,
Ibid.]
Then the numbers had been augmented in other ways. The Quapaws, who
had been early driven from their homes and once restored,[550] had
left them again when they found that their country had been denuded of
all its portable resources. It was exposed to inroads of many sorts.
Even the Federal army preyed upon it and, as all the able-bodied male
Quapaws were gradually drawn into that army, there was no way of
defending it. Its inhabitants, therefore, returned as exiles to the
country around about Leroy.[551]
It was much the same with near neighbors of the Quapaws, with the
Senecas and the Seneca-Shawnees. These Indians had been induced to
accept one payment of their annuities from the Confederate agent[552]
but had later repented their digression from the old allegiance to
the United States and had solicited its protection in order that they
might remain true. Some of them stayed with Agent Elder near Fort
Scott,[553] others moved northward and lived upon the charity of the
Shawnees near Lawrence.[554] But those Shawnees were doomed themselves
to be depredated upon, especially that group of them known as Black
Bob's Band, a band that had been assigned a settlement in Johnson
[Footnote 550: Coffin to Elder, August 9, 1862; Coffin to Mix, August
16, 1862, Indian Office General Files, _Neosho_, C 1745 of 1862.]
[Footnote 551: Some of the Quapaws that went to Leroy were not _bona
fide_ refugees. Elder reported them as lured thither by the idea
of getting fed [Elder to Dole, July 9, 1862, Ibid., E 114 of
1862].]
[Footnote 552: Coffin to Dole, May 31, 1862, Indian Office General
Files, _Neosho_.]
[Footnote 553: Coffin to Mix, July 30, 1862, Ibid., C 1732 of
1862.]
[Footnote 554: J.J. Lawler to Mix, August 2, 1862, Ibid.,
_Shawnee_, 1855-1862; Abbott to Branch, July 26, 1862,
Ibid. Some of the Senecas, about one hundred twenty-three, went
as far as Wyandot City. For them and their relief, the Senecas in
New York interceded. See Chief John Melton to Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, September 2, 1862, Ibid., _Neosho_, H 541; Mix to
Coffin, September 11, 1862, Indian Office _Letter Book_, no. 69,
99.]