The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War Part 16

"You will carefully look into the condition of the country, ascertain the quant.i.ty of Stock, Hogs, and Cattle, also the quant.i.ty of Corn, wheat etc. which may be in the hands of the loyal Indians, and the amount of the crops in the ground the present season, their condition and prospects.

"You are requested to communicate with me at this office at every suitable opportunity on all the above mentioned points, in order to enable me to keep the Hon. Com'r of Indian Aff'rs well advised of the condition of affairs in the Indian Territory, and that the necessary steps may be taken at the earliest possible moment, consistent with safety and economy, to restore the loyal Indians now in Kansas to their homes.

"Should any considerable number of the Indians, now in the Army, remain in the Indian Territory, or join you from the loyal Indians, now located therein you will very probably find it best, to remain with them, until I can get there with those, who are now here. But of these matters you will be more able to judge on the ground."--Extract from Coffin's instructions to Carruth, June 16, 1862, Ibid., Similar instructions, under date of June 23, 1862, were sent to H.W.

Martin.]

somewhat ludicrous in their uniforms,[309] were not much behind their comrades of the Ninth and Tenth Kansas[310] in earnestness and in attention to duty.[311] Nevertheless, they had been very reluctant to leave their families and were, one and all, very apprehensive as to the future.

[Footnote 309: "I have just returned from Humboldt--the army there under Col. Weer consisting of the 10th Kansas Regiment 4 Companys of the 9th Kansas Aliens Battery of Six Tenths Parrot Guns and the first and second Indian Regements left for the Indian Territory in good stile and in fine spirits the Indians with their new uniforms and small Military caps on their Hugh Heads of Hair made rather a Comecal Ludecrous apperance they marched off in Columns of 4 a breast singing the war song all joining in the chourse and a more animated seen is not often witnessed. The officers in command of the Indian Regements have labored incessantly and the improvement the Indians have made in drilling is much greater than I supposed them capabell of and I think the opinion and confidence of all in the eficency of the Indian Regements was very much greater when they left than at any previous period and I have little doubt that for the kind of service that will be required of them they will be the most efecient troops in the Expedition."--COFFIN to Dole, June 25, 1862, Indian Office General Files, _Southern Superintendency_, 1859-1862, C 1684.]

[Footnote 310: Weer took with him as white anxiliary "the Tenth Kansas, Allen's battery, three companies Ninth Kansas..." [_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 441]. It seems to have been his intention to take the Second Kansas also; but that regiment was determined to stay at Humboldt until it had effected a change in its colonels in favor of Owen A. Ba.s.sett [Ibid., 434].]

[Footnote 311: Weer was disgusted with conditions surrounding his white force. This is his complaint, on the eve of his departure:

"Commissions to officers from the Governor are pouring in daily. I am told that the Tenth is rapidly becoming a regiment of officers. To add to these difficulties there are continual intrigues, from colonels down, for promotions and positions of command. Officers are leaving their posts for Fort Leavenworth and elsewhere to engage in these intrigues for more prominent places. The camps are filled with rumors of the success of this or that man. Factions are forming, and a general state of demoralization being produced..."--WEER to Moonlight, June 21, 1862, Ibid., 441-442.]

V. THE MARCH TO TAHLEQUAH AND THE RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF THE "WHITE AUXILIARY"

Towards the end of June, the various elements designed to comprise the First Indian Expedition had encamped at Baxter Springs[312] and two brigades formed. As finally organized, the First Brigade was put under the command of Colonel Salomon and the Second, of Colonel William R. Judson. To the former, was attached the Second Indian Regiment, incomplete, and, to the latter, the First. Brigaded with the Indian regiments was the white auxiliary that had been promised and that the Indians had almost pathetically counted upon to a.s.sist them in their straits. Colonel Weer's intention was not to have the white and red people responsible for the same duties nor immediately march together.

The red were believed to be excellent for scouting and, as it would be necessary to scout far and wide all the way down into the Indian Territory, the country being full of bushwhackers, also, most likely, of the miscellaneous forces of General Rains, Colonel Coffee, and Colonel Stand Watie, they were to be reserved for that work.

The forward movement of the Indian Expedition began at daybreak on the twenty-eighth of June. It was then that the First Brigade started, its white contingent, "two sections Indiana Battery, one battalion of

[Footnote 312: Baxter Springs was a government post, established on Spring River in the southwest corner of the Cherokee Neutral Lands, subsequent to the Battle of Pea Ridge [Kansas Historical Society, _Collections_, vol. vi, 150].]

Second Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, and six companies of Ninth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry,"[313] taking the military road across the Quapaw Strip and entering the Indian Territory, unmolested. A day's journey in the rear and travelling by the same route came the white contingent of the Second Brigade and so much of the First Indian as was unmounted.[314] Beyond the border, the cavalcade proceeded to Hudson's Crossing of the Neosho River, where it halted to await the coming of supply trains from Fort Scott. In the meantime, the Second Indian Regiment, under Colonel John Ritchie, followed, a day apart, by the mounted men of the First under Major William A. Phillips,[315] had also set out, its orders[316] being to leave the military road and to cross to the east bank of Spring River, from thence to march southward and scour the country thoroughly between Grand River and the Missouri state line.

The halt at Hudson's Crossing occupied the better part of two days and then the main body of the Indian Expedition resumed its forward march.

It crossed the Neosho and moved on, down the west side of Grand River, to a fording place, Carey's Ford, at which point, it pa.s.sed over to the east side of the river and camped, a short distance from the ford, at Round Grove, on Cowskin Prairie, Cherokee ground, and the scene of Doubleday's recent encounter with the enemy. At this

[Footnote 313: Salomon to Weer, June 30, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 458.]

[Footnote 314: James A. Phillips to Judson, June 28, 1862 [_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 456].]

[Footnote 315: William A. Phillips, a Scotsman by birth, went out to Kansas in the autumn of 1855 as regular staff correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ [Kansas Historical Society _Collections_, vol. v, 100, 102]. He was a personal friend of Dana's [Britton, _Memoirs_, 89], became with Lane an active Free State man and later was appointed on Lane's staff [_Daily Conservative_, January 24, 31, 1862]. He served as correspondent of the _Daily Conservative_ at the time when that newspaper was most guilty of incendiarism.]

[Footnote 316: James A. Phillips to Judson, June 28, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 456.]

place it anxiously awaited the return of Lieutenant-colonel Ratliff, who had been despatched to Neosho in response to an urgency call from General E.B. Brown in charge of the Southwestern Division of the District of Missouri.[317]

The Confederates were still in the vicinity, promiscuously wandering about, perhaps; but, none the less, determined to check, if possible, the Federal further progress; for they knew that only by holding the territorial vantage, which they had secured through gross Federal negligence months before, could they hope to maintain intact the Indian alliance with the Southern States. Stand Watie's home farm was in the neighborhood of Weer's camp and Stand Watie himself was even then scouting in the Spavinaw hills.[318]

In the latter part of May, under directions from General Beauregard[319] but apparently without the avowed knowledge of the Confederate War Department and certainly without its official[320]

sanction, Thomas C.

[Footnote 317: Weer to Moonlight, June 23, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 445, and same to same, July 2, 1862, Ibid., 459-461.]

[Footnote 318: Anderson, _Life of General Stand Watie_, 18.]

[Footnote 319: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 28.]

[Footnote 320: The emphasis should be upon the word, _official_, since the government must a.s.suredly have acquiesced in Hindman's appointment. Hindman declared that the Secretary of War, in communicating on the subject to the House of Representatives, "ignored facts which had been officially communicated to him," in order to convey the impression that Hindman had undertaken to fill the post of commander in the Trans-Mississippi Department without rightful authority [Hindman to Holmes, February 8, 1863, Ibid., vol.

xxii, part 2, p. 785]. The following telegram shows that President Davis had been apprised of Hindman's selection, and of its tentative character.

BALDWIN, June 5, 1862.

(Received 6th.)

THE PRESIDENT:

Do not send any one just now to command the Trans-Mississippi District. It will bring trouble to this army. Hindman has been sent there temporarily. Price will be on to see you soon.

EARL VAN DORN, Major-General.

[Ibid., vol. lii, part 2, supplement, p. 320.]]

Hindman had a.s.sumed the command of the Trans-Mississippi Department.[321] As an Arkansan, deeply moved by the misfortunes and distress of his native state, he had stepped into Van Dorn's place with alacrity, intent upon forcing everything within his reach to subserve the interests of the Confederate cause in that particular part of the southern world. To the Indians and to their rights, natural or acquired, he was as utterly indifferent as were most other American men and all too soon that fact became obvious, most obvious, indeed, to General Pike, the one person who had, for reasons best known to himself, made the Indian cause his own.

General Hindman took formal command of the Trans-Mississippi Department at Little Rock, May 31. It was a critical moment and he was most critically placed; for he had not the sign of an army, Curtis's advance was only about thirty-five miles away, and Arkansas was yet, in the miserable plight in which Van Dorn had left her in charge of Brigadier-general J.S. Roane, it is true, but practically denuded of troops. Pike was at Fort McCulloch, and he had a force not wholly to be despised.[322] It was to him, therefore, that Hindman

[Footnote 321: _Department_ seems to be the more proper word to use to designate Hindman's command, although _District_ and _Department_ are frequently used interchangeably in the records.

In Hindman's time and in Holmes's, the Trans-Mississippi Department was not the same as the Trans-Mississippi District of Department No.

2 [See Thomas Jordan, Chief of Staff, to Hindman, July 17, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 855]. On the very date of Hindman's a.s.signment, the boundaries of his command were defined as follows:

"The boundary of the Trans-Mississippi Department will embrace the States of Missouri and Arkansas, including Indian Territory, the State of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, and the State of Texas."--Ibid., 829.]

[Footnote 322: Yet Hindman did, in a sense, despise it and, from the start, he showed a tendency to disparage Pike's abilities and efforts.

On the nineteenth of June, he reported to Adjutant-general Cooper, among other things, that he had ordered Pike to establish his headquarters at Fort Gibson and added, "His force does not amount to much, but there is no earthly need of its (cont.)]

made one of his first appeals for help and he ordered him so to dispose of his men that some of the more efficient, the white, might be sent to Little Rock and the less efficient, the red, moved upward "to prevent the incursions of marauding parties," from Kansas.[323]

The orders were repeated about a fortnight later; but Pike had already complied to the best of his ability, although not without protest[324]

for he had collected his brigade and accoutered it by his own energies and his own contrivances solely. Moreover, he had done it for the defence of Indian Territory exclusively.

Included among the marauders, whose enterprises General Hindman was bent upon checking, were Doubleday's men; for, as General Curtis shrewdly surmised,[325] some inkling of Doubleday's contemplated maneuvers had most certainly reached Little Rock. Subsequently, when the Indian Expedition was ma.s.sing at Baxter Springs, more vigorous measures than any yet taken were prepared for and all with the view of delaying or defeating it. June 23, Pike ordered Colonel Douglas H.

Cooper to repair to the country north of the Canadian River and to take command of all troops, except Jumper's Seminole battalion, that should be there or placed there.[326] Similarly, June 26, Hindman, in ignorance of Pike's action, a.s.signed Colonel J.J. Clarkson[327] to the supreme command, under

[Footnote 322: (cont.) remaining 150 miles south of the Kansas line throwing up intrenchments." [_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 837].]

[Footnote 323: Hindman to Pike, May 31, 1862 [Ibid., 934].]

[Footnote 324: Pike to Hindman, June 8, 1862 [Ibid., 936-943].]

[Footnote 325:--Ibid., 398, 401.]

[Footnote 326: General Orders, Ibid., 839, 844-845.]