Part 10 (1/2)

towards the end of January and their condition was then so bad, so wretched that it was impossible for him to depict it. Prairie gra.s.ses were ”their only protection from the snow” upon which they were lying ”and from the wind and weather sc.r.a.ps and rags stretched upon switches.” Ho-go-bo-foh-yah, the second Creek chief, was ill with a fever and ”his tent (to give it that name) was no larger than a small blanket stretched over a switch ridge pole, two feet from the ground, and did not reach it by a foot from the ground on either side of him.” Campbell further said that the refugees were greatly in need of medical a.s.sistance. They were suffering ”with inflammatory diseases of the chest, throat, and eyes.” Many had ”their toes frozen off,”

others, ”their feet wounded.” But few had ”either shoes or moccasins.”

Dead horses were lying around in every direction and the sanitary conditions were so bad that the food was contaminated and the newly-arriving refugees became sick as soon as they ate.[169]

Other details of their dest.i.tution were furnished by Coffin's son who was acting as his clerk and who was among the first to attempt alleviation of their misery.[170] As far as relief went, however, the supply was so out of proportion to the demand that there was never any time that spring when it could be said that they were fairly comfortable and their ordinary wants satisfied. Campbell frankly admitted that he ”selected the nakedest of the naked” and doled out to them the few articles he

[Footnote 168: (cont.) of January 18, 1862, the _Daily Conservative_ has this to say: ”The Kansas Seventh has been ordered to move to Humboldt, Allen Co. to give relief to Refugees encamped on Fall River. Lt. Col. Chas. T. Clark, 1st Battalion, Kansas Tenth, is now at Humboldt and well acquainted with the conditions.”]

[Footnote 169: Commissioner of Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1862, pp. 151-152.]

[Footnote 170: O.S. Coffin to William G. Coffin, January 26, 1862, Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, _Southern Superintendency_, C 1506 of 1862.]

had. When all was gone, how pitiful it must have been for him to see the ”hundreds of anxious faces” for whom there was nothing! Captain Turner, from Hunter's commissary department, had similar experiences.

According to him, the refugees were ”in want of every necessary of life.” That was his report the eleventh of February.[171] On the fifteenth of February, the army stopped giving supplies altogether and the refugees were thrown back entirely upon the extremely limited resources of the southern superintendency.

Dole[172] had had warning from Hunter[173] that such would have to be the case and had done his best to be prepared for the emergency.

Secretary Smith authorized expenditure for relief in advance of congressional appropriation, but that simply increased the moral obligation to practice economy and, with hundreds of loyal Indians on the brink of starvation,[174] it was no

[Footnote 171: Commissioner of Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1862, pp. 152-154.]

[Footnote 172: Dole had an interview with the Indians immediately upon his arrival in Kansas [Moore, _Rebellion Record_, vol. iv, 59-60, Doc. 21].]

[Footnote 173: Hunter to Dole, February 6, 1862, forwarded by Edward Wolcott to Mix, February 10, 1862 [Indian Office General Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1859-1862, W 513 and D 576 of 1862; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1862, p. 150].]

[Footnote 174: Agent G.C. Snow reported, February 13, 1862, on the utter dest.i.tution of the Seminoles [Indian Office General Files, _Seminole_, 1858-1869] and, on the same day, Coffin [Ibid., _Southern Superintendency_, 1859-1862, C 1526] to the same effect about the refugees as a whole. They were coming in, he said, about twenty to sixty a day. The ”dest.i.tution, misery and suffering amongst them is beyond the power of any pen to portray, it must be seen to be realised--there are now here over two thousand men, women, and children entirely barefooted and more than that number that have not rags enough to hide their nakedness, many have died and they are constantly dying. I should think at a rough guess that from 12 to 15 hundred dead Ponies are laying around in the camp and in the river.

On this account so soon as the weather gets a little warm, a removal of this camp will be indespensable, there are perhaps now two thousand Ponies living, they are very poor and many of them must die before gra.s.s comes which we expect here from the first to the 10th of March.

We are issuing a little corn to (cont.)]

time for economy. The inadequacy of the Indian service and the inefficiency of the Federal never showed up more plainly, to the utter discredit of the nation, than at this period and in this connection.

Besides getting permission from Secretary Smith to go ahead and supply the more pressing needs of the refugees, Dole accomplished another thing greatly to their interest. He secured from the staff of General Lane a special agent, Dr. William Kile of Illinois,[175] who had formerly been a business partner of his own[176] and, like Superintendent Coffin, his more or less intimate friend. Kile's particular duty as special agent was to be the purchasing of supplies for the refugees[177] and he at once visited their encampment in order the better to determine their requirements. His investigations more than corroborated the earlier accounts of their sufferings and privations and his appointment under the circ.u.mstances seemed fully justified, notwithstanding that on the surface of things it appeared very suggestive of a near approach to nepotism, and of nepotism Dole, Coffin, and many others were unquestionably guilty. They worked into the service just as many of their own relatives and friends as they conveniently and safely could. The official pickings were considered by them as their proper perquisites. ”'Twas ever thus” in American politics, city, county, state, and national.

The Indian encampment upon the occasion of

[Footnote 174: (cont.) the Indians and they are feeding them a little....” See also Moore, _Rebellion Record_, vol. iv, 30.]

[Footnote 175: Dole was from Illinois also, from Edgar County; Coffin was from Indiana [Indian Office Miscellaneous Records, no. 8, p.

432].]

[Footnote 176: _Daily Conservative_, February 8, 1862.]

[Footnote 177: Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Southern Superintendency_, D 576 of 1862; _Letter Book_, no. 67, pp.

450-452.]

Kile's[178] visit was no longer on Fall River. Gradually, since first discovered, the main body of the refugees had moved forward within the New York Indian Lands to the Verdigris River and had halted in the neighborhood of Fort Roe, where the government agents had received them; but smaller or larger groups, chiefly of the sick and their friends, were scattered all along the way from Walnut Creek.[179] Some of the very belated exiles were as far westward as the Arkansas, over a hundred miles distant. Obviously, the thing to do first was to get them all together in one place. There were reasons why the Verdigris Valley was a most desirable location for the refugees. Only a very few white people were settled there and, as they were intruders and had not a shadow of legal claim to the land upon which they had squatted, any objections that they might make to the presence of the Indians could be ignored.[180]

For a few days, therefore, all efforts were directed, at large expense, towards converting the Verdigris Valley, in the vicinity of Fort Roe, into a concentration camp; but no precautions were taken against allowing unhygienic conditions to arise. The Indians themselves were much diseased. They had few opportunities for personal cleanliness and less ambition. Some of the food doled out to them was stuff that the army had condemned and rejected as unfit for use. They were emaciated, sick, discouraged. Finally, with