Part 20 (1/2)
by white troops, the need of which, for moral as well as for physical strength, he had always insisted upon.
It is quite believable that Van Dorn was the person most responsible for Hindman's interference with Pike, although, of course, the very seriousness and desperateness of Hindman's situation would have impelled him to turn to the only place where ready help was to be had.
Three days prior to the time that Hindman had been a.s.signed to the Trans-Mississippi Department, Roane, an old antagonist of Pike[396]
and the commander to whose immediate care Van Dorn had confided Arkansas,[397] had asked of Pike at Van Dorn's suggestion[398] all the white forces he could spare, Roane having practically none of his own.
Pike had refused the request, if request it was, and in refusing it, had represented how insufficient his forces actually were for purposes of his own department and how exceedingly difficult had been the task, which was his and his alone, of getting them together. At the time of writing he had not a single dollar of public money for his army and only a very limited amount of ammunition and other supplies.[399]
Pike received Hindman's communication of May 31 late in the afternoon of June 8 and he replied to it that same evening immediately after he had made arrangements[400] for complying in part with its requirements.
The reply[401] as it stands in the records today is a strong indictment of the Confederate management of Indian
[Footnote 396: Pike had fought a duel with Roane, Roane having challenged him because he had dared to criticize his conduct in the Mexican War [Hallura, _Biographical and Pictorial History of Arkansas_, vol. i, 229; _Confederate Military History_, vol.
x, 99].]
[Footnote 397: Maury to Roane, May 11, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 827.]
[Footnote 398: Maury to Pike, May 19, 1862, Ibid.]
[Footnote 399: Pike to Roane, June 1, 1862, Ibid., 935-936.]
[Footnote 400: General Orders, June 8, 1862, Ibid., 943.]
[Footnote 401: Pike to Hindman, June 8, 1862, Ibid., 936-943.]
affairs in the West and should be dealt with a.n.a.lytically, yet also as a whole; since no paraphrase, no mere synopsis of contents could ever do the subject justice. From the facts presented, it is only too evident that very little had been attempted or done by the Richmond authorities for the Indian regiments. Neither officers nor men had been regularly or fully paid. And not all the good intentions, few as they were, of the central government had been allowed realization.
They had been checkmated by the men in control west of the Mississippi. In fact, the army men in Arkansas had virtually exploited Pike's command, had appropriated for their own use his money, his supplies, and had never permitted anything to pa.s.s on to Indian Territory, notwithstanding that it had been bought with Indian funds, ”that was fit to be sent anywhere else.” The Indian's portion was the ”refuse,” as Pike so truly, bitterly, and emphatically put it, or, in other words of his, the ”crumbs” that fell from the white man's table.
Pike's compliance with Hindman's orders was only partial and he offered not the vestige of an apology that it was so. What he did send was Dawson's[402] infantry regiment and Woodruff's battery which went duly on to Little Rock with the requisite thirty days' subsistence and the caution that not a single cartridge was to be fired along the way.
The caution Pike must have repeated in almost ironical vein; for the way to Little Rock lay through Indian Territory and cartridges like everything else under Pike's control had been collected solely for its defense.
Respecting the forward movement of the Indian troops, Pike made not the slightest observation in his
[Footnote 402: C.L. Dawson of the Nineteenth Regiment of Arkansas Volunteers had joined Pike at Fort McCulloch in April [_Fort Smith Papers_].]
reply. His silence was ominous. Perhaps it was intended as a warning to Hindman not to encroach too far upon his department; but that is mere conjecture; inasmuch as Pike had not yet seen fit to question outright Hindman's authority over himself. As if antic.i.p.ating an echo from Little Rock of criticisms that were rife elsewhere, he ventured an explanation of his conduct in establis.h.i.+ng himself in the extreme southern part of Indian Territory and towards the west and in fortifying on an open prairie, far from any recognized base.[403] He had gone down into the Red River country, he a.s.serted, in order to be near Texas where supplies might be had in abundance and where, since he had no means of defence, he would be safe from attack. He deplored the seeming necessity of merging his department in another and larger one. His reasons were probably many but the one reason he stressed was, for present purposes, the best he could have offered. It was, that the Indians could not be expected to render to him as a subordinate the same obedience they had rendered to him as the chief officer in command. Were his authority to be superseded in any degree, the Indians would naturally infer that his influence at Richmond had declined, likewise his power to protect them and their interests.
During the night Pike must have pondered deeply
[Footnote 403: His enemies were particularly scornful of his work in this regard. They poked fun at him on every possible occasion.
Edwards, in _Shelby and His Men_, 63, but echoed the general criticism,
”Pike, also a Brigadier, had retreated with his Indian contingent out of North West Arkansas, unpursued, through the Cherokee country, the Chickasaw country, and the country of the Choctaws, two hundred and fifty miles to the southward, only halting on the 'Little Blue', an unknown thread of a stream, twenty miles from Red river, where he constructed fortifications on the open prairie, erected a saw-mill remote from any timber, and devoted himself to gastronomy and poetic meditation, with elegant accompaniments...”]
over things omitted from his reply to Hindman and over all that was wanting to make his compliance with Hindman's instructions full and satisfactory. On the ninth, his a.s.sistant-adjutant, O.F. Russell, prepared a fairly comprehensive report[404] of the conditions in and surrounding his command. Pike's force,[405] so the report stated, was anything but complete. With Dawson gone, there would be in camp, of Arkansas troops, one company of cavalry and one of artillery and, of Texas, two companies of cavalry. When men, furloughed for the wheat harvest, should return, there would be ”in addition two regiments and one company of cavalry, and one company of artillery, about 80 strong.”[406] The withdrawal of white troops from the Territory would be interpreted by the Indians to mean its abandonment.
Of the Indian contingent, Russell had this to say:
The two Cherokee regiments are near the Kansas line, operating on that frontier. Col. Stand Watie has recently had a skirmish there, in which, as always, he and his men fought gallantly, and were successful. Col. D.N. McIntosh's Creek Regiment is under orders to advance up the Verdigris, toward the Santa Fe road. Lieut. Col.
Chilly McIntosh's Creek Battalion, Lieut. Col. John Jumper's Seminole Battalion, and Lieut. Col. J.D. Harris' Chickasaw Battalion are under orders, and part of them now in motion toward the Salt Plains, to take Fort Larned, the post at Walnut Creek, and perhaps Fort Wise, and intercept trains going to New Mexico.
The First Choctaw (new)[407] Regiment, of Col. Sampson Folsom, and the Choctaw Battalion (three companies), of Maj. Simpson (N.) Folsom, are at Middle Boggy, 23 miles northeast of this point.