Part 29 (1/2)

sheer humbug. The army was not doing that and why should the defenceless Indians be expected to do it. As it was, they seem to have been reduced to plundering in Kansas.[612] On the whole, it is difficult to explain Blunt's plan for the concentration of the Cherokee refugees at Neosho, since there were, at the time, many indications that Hindman was considering another advance and an invasion of southwest Missouri.

The November operations of the Federals in northeastern Arkansas were directed toward arresting Hindman's progress, if progress were contemplated. Meanwhile, Phillips with detachments of his Indian brigade was continuing his reconnoissances and, when word came that Stand Watie had ventured north of the Arkansas, Blunt sent him to compel a recrossing.[613] Stand Watie's exploit was undoubtedly a preliminary to a general Confederate plan for the recovery of northwestern Arkansas and the Indian Territory, a plan, which Blunt, vigorous and aggressive, was determined to circ.u.mvent. In the action at Cane Hill,[614] the latter part of November, and in the Battle of Prairie Grove,[615] December seventh, the mettle of the Federals was put to a severe test which it stood successfully and Blunt's cardinal purpose was fully accomplished.[616] In both engagements, the Indians played a part and played it

[Footnote 612: These Indians must have been the ones referred to in Richard C. Vaughn's letter to Colonel W.D. Wood, December i, 1862 [_Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 796].]

[Footnote 613: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. i, p.

382.]

[Footnote 614:--Ibid., vol. i, chapter xxix.]

[Footnote 615:--Ibid., vol. i, chapter x.x.x; _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 66-82, 82-158, vol. liii, supplement, 458-461, 866, 867; Livermore, _The Story of the Civil War_, part iii, bk. 1, 84-85.]

[Footnote 616: One opinion is to the effect that the result of the Battle of Prairie Grove, Fayetteville, or Illinois Creek, was virtually to end the war north of the Arkansas River [Ibid., p.

85; _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 82]. (cont.)]

conspicuously and well, the northern regiments so well,[617] indeed, that shortly afterwards two additional ones, the Fourth and the Fifth, were projected.[618] Towards the end of the year, Phillips, whom Blunt had sent upon another excursion into Indian Territory,[619] could report

[Footnote 616: (cont.) Bishop wrote, ”After the battle of Prairie Grove, and the gradual retrogression of the Army of the Frontier into Missouri, Fayetteville was still held as a military post, and those of us who remained there were given to understand that the place would not be abandoned ... The demoralized enemy had fallen back to Little Rock, with the exception of weak nomadic forces that, like Stygian ghosts, wandered up and down the Arkansas from Dardanelle to Fort Smith....” [_Loyalty on the Frontier_, 205]. Schofield was of the opinion, however, that the Battle of Prairie Grove was a hard-won victory. ”Blunt and Herron were badly beaten in detail, and owed their escape to a false report of my arrival with re-enforcements.”

[_Official Records_, vol. xxii, part ii, p. 6].]

[Footnote 617: And yet it was only a short time previously that Major A.C. Ellithorpe, commanding the First Regiment Indian Home Guards, had had cause to complain seriously of the Creeks of that regiment. On November 7, he wrote from Camp Bowen that Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la was enticing the Indians away from the performance of their duties. ”You will now perceive that we are on the border of the Indian country and a very large portion of the Indians are now scouting through their own Territory. What I now desire is that every man who was enlisted as a soldier shall at once return to his command by the way of Fort Scott unless otherwise ordered by competent authority....” [Indian Office Land Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1855-1870, C 1933].

Coffin, as usual, appeared as an apologist for the Indians and attempted to exonerate Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la from all blame [Letter to Dole, December 3, 1862, Ibid.]. He called the aged chief, ”that n.o.ble old Roman of the Indians,” and the chief himself protested against the injustice and untruth of Ellithrope's accusation [Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la to Coffin, November 24, 1862, Ibid.].]

[Footnote 618: Officers for these two regiments were appointed by the president, December 26, 1862, and ordered to report to Blunt, who, in turn ordered them to report to Phillips. When the officers arrived in Indian Territory, they found no such regiments as the Fourth and Fifth Indian [_U.S. Senate Report_, 41st congress, third session, no.

359]. They never did materialize as a matter of fact; but the officers did duty, nevertheless, and were regularly mustered out of the service in 1863. In 1864, Congress pa.s.sed an act for the adjudication of their claim for salary [_U.S. Statutes at Large_, vol. xiii, 413]. It is rather surprising that the regiments were not organized; inasmuch as many new recruits were constantly presenting themselves.]

[Footnote 619: Phillips to Blunt, December 25, 1862 [_Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 873-874].]

that Stand Watie and Cooper had been pushed considerably below the Arkansas, that many of the buildings at Fort Davis had been demolished,[620] that one of the Creek regiments was about to retire from the Confederate service, and that the Choctaws, once so deeply committed, were wavering in their allegiance to the South.[621]

[Footnote 620: The buildings at Fort Davis were burnt, and deliberately, by Phillips's orders. [See his own admission, Ibid., part ii, 56, 62].]

[Footnote 621: Blunt to Weed, December 30, 1862, Ibid., part i, 168.]

X. NEGOTIATIONS WITH UNION INDIANS

As though the Indians had not afflictions enough to endure merely because of their proximity to the contending whites, life was made miserable for them, during the period of the Civil War, as much as before and after, by the insatiable land-hunger of politicians, speculators, and would-be captains of industry, who were more often than not, rogues in the disguise of public benefactors. Nearly all of them were citizens of Kansas. The cessions of 1854, negotiated by George W. Manypenny, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, were but a prelude to the many that followed. For years and years there was in reality never a time when some sort of negotiation, _sub rosa_ or official, was not going on. The order of procedure was pretty much what it had always been: a promise that the remaining land should be the Indian's, undisturbed by white men and protected by government guarantee, forever; encroachment by enterprising, covetous, and lawless whites; conflict between the two races, the outraged and the aggressive; the advent of the schemer, the man with political capital and undeveloped or perverted sense of honor, whose vision was such that he saw the Indian owner as the only obstacle in the way of vast material and national progress; political pressure upon the administration in Was.h.i.+ngton, lobbying in Congress; authorization of negotiations with the bewildered Indians; delimitation of the meaning of the solemn and grandly-sounding word, _forever_.

When the war broke out, negotiations, begun in the

border warfare days, were still going on. This was most true as regarded the Osages, whose immense holding in southern Kansas was something not to be tolerated, so the politicians reasoned, indefinitely. Pet.i.tions,[622] praying that the lands be opened to white settlement were constantly being sent in and intruders,[623] who intended to force action, becoming more and more numerous and more and more recalcitrant. One of the first official communications of Superintendent Coffin embodied a plea for getting a treaty of cession for which the signs had seemed favorable the previous year.

Coffin, however, discredited[624] a certain Dr. J.B. Chapman, who, notwithstanding he represented white capitalists,[625] had yet found favor with the Osages. To their

[Footnote 622: For example, take the pet.i.tions forwarded by M.W.

Delahay, surveyor-general of Kansas [Indian Office Consolidated Files, _Neosho_, D 455 of 1861]. One of the pet.i.tions contains this statement: ”... The lands being largely settled upon and improved and those adjacent being all claimed and settled upon by residents--while a large emigration from Texas and other rebellious States are forced to seek homes in a more northern and uncongenial climate greatly against their interests and inclinations....”]

[Footnote 623: Intruders upon the Osage lands, as upon the Cherokee Neutral, were numerous for years before the war. Agent Dorn was continually complaining of them, chiefly because they were free-state in politics. He again and again asked for military a.s.sistance in removing them. See his letter to Greenwood, February 26, 1860, _Neosho_, 1833-1865, D 107. Buchanan's administration had conceived the idea of locating other Kansas Indians upon the huge Osage Reserve. See Dorn to Greenwood, March 26, 1860, Ibid., D 119. Apparently, the fragments of tribes in the northeastern corner of Indian Territory had been approached on the same subject, but they did not favor it and Agent Dorn was doubtful if the Osages would [Dorn to Greenwood, April 17, 1860, Ibid., D 129].]