Читать книгу The Slaveholding Indians (Vol.1-3) - Annie Heloise Abel - Страница 9

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The provisional government of the Confederate States showed itself no less anxious and no less prompt than the individual states in its endeavor to secure the Indian country and the Indian alliance. On the twenty-first of February, 1861, the very same day that the law was passed for the establishment of a War Department of which Leroy P. Walker of Alabama took immediate charge, William P. Chilton, member201 of the Provisional Congress from Alabama, offered in that body a resolution to the effect, that the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of opening up negotiations with the Indian tribes of the West in relation to all matters concerning the mutual welfare of said tribes and the people of the Confederate States.202 The resolution was adopted. Four days later, Edward Sparrow of Louisiana asked that the same committee be instructed to consider the advisability of appointing agents to those same Indian tribes.203 The Indian committee, at the time, was composed of Jackson Morton of Florida, Lawrence M. Keitt of South Carolina, and Thomas N. Waul of Texas. Robert W. Johnson became a member after Arkansas had seceded and had been admitted to the Confederacy.

Preliminary steps such as these led naturally to a comprehension of the need for a Bureau of Indian Affairs204 and, on the twelfth of March, President Davis recommended205 that one be organized and a commissioner of Indian affairs appointed. His recommendations were acted upon without delay and a law206 in conformity with them passed. This happened on the fifteenth of March and on the day following, the last of the session, Davis nominated David Hubbard,207 ex-commissioner208 from Alabama to Arkansas, for the Indian portfolio. For some time, however, Hubbard had little to do.209 It is wise therefore to leave him for a while and resume the examination of congressional work.

The journal entries through February and March show that the Provisional Congress had, not infrequently, Indian matters placed before it and, at times presumably, communications direct from the tribes. On the fourth of March, Robert Toombs, himself on the Finance Committee and at the same time Secretary of State,210 offered the following resolution:211

Resolved, That the President be, and he is hereby authorized to send a suitable person as special agent of this Government to the Indian tribes west of the State of Arkansas.

Whether this was called forth by the investigations of the Committee on Indian Affairs under the Chilton resolution of the twenty-first of February or whether it grew out of a correspondence between Toombs and Albert Pike does not appear. Toombs and Pike were friends, brother Masons212 in fact, and then or soon afterwards in intimate correspondence on the subject of Indian relations. The resolution passed, but there the matter seems to have rested for a time. On the tenth of May, William B. Ochiltree proposed213 that the Committee on Indian Affairs consider the condition of Reserve Indians in Texas; and, on the fifteenth, a most important measure was introduced214 in the shape of a bill, reported by Keitt from the Committee on Indian Affairs, “for the protection of certain Indian tribes.” This opened up the whole subject of prospective relations with the great tribes of Indian Territory and, taken in connection with the provision for a special commissioner, was fruitful of great results.

On the seventh of May, Thomas A. Harris of Missouri had made the Provisional Congress acquainted with some Choctaw and Chickasaw resolutions,215 which, in themselves, seemed indicative of a friendly disposition towards the South. This fact lent to the bill for the assumption of a protectorate a large significance. Congress considered it, for the most part, in secret session. The text of the act as finally passed does not appear in any of the published216 statutes of the Confederate States; but, under the act, Albert Pike, special commissioner for the purpose appointed by President Davis, negotiated all his remarkable treaties with the western tribes. Three sections of the law, those added to the original bill by way of amendment, appear in the Provisional Congress Journal.217 They are strictly financial in their nature and are as follows:

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the Confederate States do hereby assume the duty and obligation of collecting and paying over as trustees to the several Indian tribes now located in the Indian Territory south of Kansas, all sums of money accruing, whether from interest or capital of the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held by the Government of the United States as trustees for said Indians or any of them; and the said interest and capital as collected shall be paid over to said Indians or invested for their account, as the case may be, in accordance with the several treaties and contracts now existing between said Indians and the Government of the United States.

Sec. 7. That the several States of this Confederacy be requested to provide by legislation or otherwise that the capital and interest of the bonds issued by them respectively, and held by the Government of the United States in trust for said Indians, or any of them, shall not be paid to said Government of the United States, but shall be paid to this Government in trust for said Indians.

Sec. 8. That it shall be the duty of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to obtain and publish, at as early a period as practicable, a list of all the bonds of the several States of this Confederacy now held in trust by the Government of the United States as aforesaid, and to give notice in said publication that the capital and interest of said bonds are to be paid to this Government and to no other holder thereof whatever.

Before this bill for the protection of the Indians had come up for discussion or had even emerged from the rooms of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Albert Pike, in letters to Toombs and R. W. Johnson, had pointed out most emphatically the military necessity of securing218 the Indian country. His conviction was strong that the United States had no idea of permanently abandoning the same but would soon replace the regular troops, it had withdrawn from thence, by volunteers. Pike discussed the matter with N. Bart Pearce and the two agreed219 that there was no time to lose and that something must be done forthwith to prevent the possibility of Federal emissaries gaining a foothold among the great tribes; for, if they did gain such a foothold, their influence was likely to be very great, especially among the Cherokees who might be regarded as predisposed to favor them, they having many abolitionists on their tribal rolls. Whether, at so early a date, Pike thought formal negotiation, as had been customary, the preferable method of procedure, we are not prepared to say, positively. Formal negotiation was scarcely consistent with the southern argument of Jackson’s time or consonant with present state-rights doctrine. When writing220 to Johnson on the eleventh of May, Pike seems to have been thinking simply of Indian enlistment and of the use of white and red troops in the defense of the Indian country. At that date his own appointment221 as diplomatic agent for the negotiation of treaties of amity and alliance was certainly not prominently before him. He expressed himself to Johnson in such a way, indeed, as would lead us to suppose that the position he half expected to get, and did not altogether want, was that of commander of an Indian Department which he hoped would be created.

For such a position Pike was not entirely unfitted. He had served in the Mexican War and had attained the rank of captain; but his tastes were certainly not what one would call military. He was a poet222 of acknowledged reputation and a lawyer of eminence. Arkansas had recognized him as one of her foremost citizens by sending him as her one and only delegate to the Commercial Convention223 of Southern and Western States, held at Charleston, South Carolina, April, 1854. Just recently, at the time when the question of secession was before the people of Arkansas, he had issued a pamphlet, entitled, State or Province, Bond or Free, described by a contemporary as, “a most specious argument for secession, but a re-production of the political heresies, that thirty years ago called down on John C. Calhoun, the anathema maranatha of Andrew Jackson.”224 To the men of his time, it seemed all the more astonishing that Albert Pike should take such a pronounced stand on the subject of state rights, not because he was a New Englander by birth, for there were many such in Arkansas and in the ranks of the secessionists, but because he was the author of that stirring poem against the idea of national disintegration, published some time before under the title of, “Disunion.”225

On the twentieth of May, Pike wrote226 again to Toombs and by that time he certainly knew227 of his commission to treat with the Indian tribes, but had apparently not received any very definite instructions as to the scope of his authority. One little passage in the letter brings out very clearly the essential fair-mindedness of the man, a marked characteristic in all228 his dealings with the Indians, but at once his strength and his weakness. He succeeded with the red man for the very same reason that he failed with the white, because he gave to the Indians the consideration and the[Pg 138-140] justice which were their due. This is the significant passage from his letter to Toombs:229

I very much regret that I have not received distinct authority to give the Indians guarantees of all their legal and just rights under treaties. It cannot be expected they will join us without them, and it would be very ungenerous, as well as unwise and useless, in me to ask them to do it. Why should they, if we will not bind ourselves to give them what they hazard in giving us their rights under treaties?

As you have told me to act at my discretion, and as I am not directed not to give the guarantees, I shall give them, formal, full, and ample, by treaty, if the Indians will accept them and make treaties. General McCulloch will join me in this, and so, I hope and suppose, will Mr. Hubbard, and when we shall have done so we shall, I am sure, not look in vain to you, at least, to affirm these guarantees and insist they shall be carried out in good faith.

There was an implied doubt of Hubbard in Pike’s reference to him and a single future declaration almost justified the doubt, notwithstanding the fact that Hubbard was supposed to have been chosen as commissioner of Indian affairs because of his “well known sympathy for the Indian tribes and the deep concern” he had ever “manifested in their welfare.” Hubbard’s official position was that of Commissioner of Indian Affairs; but the unorganized character of the Confederate administration in early 1861 is well attested by the way Secretary Walker confounded the name and functions of that office with those of an ordinary superintendent. On the fourteenth of May, he addressed Hubbard as “Superintendent of Indian Affairs” and instructed him

To proceed to the Creek Nation, and to make known to them, as well as to the rest of the tribes west of Arkansas and south of Kansas ... the earnest desire of the Confederate States to defend and protect them against the rapacious and avaricious designs of their and our enemies at the North.... You will, in an especial manner, impress upon the Creek Nation and surrounding Indian tribes the imperious fact that they will doubtless recognize, that the real design of the North and the Government at Washington in regard to them has been and still is the same entertained and sought to be enforced against ourselves, and if suffered to be consummated, will terminate in the emancipation of their slaves and the robbery of their lands. To these nefarious ends all the schemes of the North have tended for many years past, as the Indian nations and tribes well know from the character and conduct of those emissaries who have been in their midst, preaching up abolition sentiments under the disguise of the holy religion of Christ, and denouncing slaveholders as abandoned by God and unfit associates for humanity on earth.

You will be diligent to explain to them, under these circumstances, how their cause has become our cause, and themselves and ourselves stand inseparably associated in respect to national existence and property interests; and in view of this identification of cause and interests between them and ourselves, entailing a common destiny, give to them profound assurances that the Government of the Confederate States of America, now powerfully constituted through an immense league of sovereign political societies, great forces in the field, and abundant resources, will assume all the expense and responsibility of protecting them against all adversaries....

Give them to understand, in this connection, that a brigadier-general of character and experience has been assigned to the military district embracing the Indian Territories south of Kansas, with three regiments under his command, while in Texas another military district has been formed....

In addition to these things, regarded of primary importance, you will, without committing the Government to any especial conduct, express our serious anxiety to establish and enforce the debts and annuities due to them from the Government at Washington, which otherwise they will never obtain, as that Government would, undoubtedly, sooner rob them of their lands, emancipate their slaves, and utterly exterminate them, than render to them justice. Finally, communicate to them the abiding solicitude of the Confederate States of America to advance their condition in the direction of a proud political society, with a distinctive civilization, and holding lands in severalty under well-defined laws, by forming them into a Territorial government; but you will give no assurance of State organization and independence, as they still require the strong arm of protecting power, and may probably always need our fostering care; and, so far as the agents of the late Government of the United States may be concerned, you will converse with them, and such of them as are willing to act with you in the policy herein set forth you are authorized to substantiate in the employment of this Government at their present compensation....230

Hubbard’s mission to the west was quite independent231 of Pike’s, although both missions were undoubtedly part of the one general plan of securing as quickly, as surely, and as easily as possible the friendly coöperation of the Indians. At about the same moment that they were devised, the Confederacy took yet another means of accomplishing the same object and one referred to in the letter of Secretary Walker just quoted. On the thirteenth of this same month of May, 1861, it assigned Brigadier-general Ben McCulloch “to the command of the district embracing the Indian Territory lying west of Arkansas and south of Kansas.” McCulloch’s orders232 were “to guard that Territory against invasion from Kansas or elsewhere,” and, for the purpose, in addition to three regiments of white troops, “to engage, if possible, the service of any of the Indian tribes occupying the Territory referred to in numbers equal to two regiments.”

Hubbard’s part in the prosecution of this great endeavor may as well be disposed of first. It was of short duration and seemingly barren of direct results. Hubbard was long in reaching the western boundary of Arkansas. On the way out he was seized with pneumonia and otherwise delayed by wind and weather. On the second of June he was still in Little Rock, apparently much more interested233 in the local situation in Arkansas than in the real object of his mission. His intention was to “go up the river to Fort Smith,” June third. From that point, on the twelfth, he addressed the Cherokee chief, John Ross, and the Confederate general, Ben McCulloch. The letter was more particularly meant for the former.

As Commissioner of Indian Affairs of the Confederate States it was my intention to have called upon you and consulted as to the mutual interests of our people. Sickness has put it out of my power to travel, and those interests require immediate consideration, and therefore I have determined to write, and make what I think a plain statement of the case for your consideration, which I think stands thus: If we succeed in the South—succeed in this controversy, and I have no doubt of the fact, for we are daily gaining friends among the powers of Europe, and our people are arming with unanimity scarcely ever seen in the world before—then your lands, your slaves, and your separate nationality are secured and made perpetual, and in addition nearly all your debts are in Southern bonds, and these we will also secure. If the North succeeds you will most certainly lose all. First your slaves they will take from you; that is one object of the war, to enable them to abolish slavery in such manner and at such time as they choose. Another, and perhaps the chief cause, is to get upon your rich lands and settle their squatters, who do not like to settle in slave States. They will settle upon your lands as fast as they choose, and the Northern people will force their Government to allow it. It is true they will allow your people small reserves—they give chiefs pretty large ones—but they will settle among you, overshadow you, and totally destroy the power of your chiefs and your nationality, and then trade your people out of the residue of their lands. Go North among the once powerful tribes of that country and see if you can find Indians living and enjoying power and property and liberty as do your people and the neighboring tribes from the South. If you can, then say I am a liar, and the Northern States have been better to the Indian than the Southern States. If you are obliged to admit the truth of what I say, then join us and preserve your people, their slaves, their vast possessions in land, and their nationality.

Another consideration is your debts, annuities, &c., school funds due you. Nearly all are in bonds of Southern States and held by the Government at Washington, and these debts are nearly all forfeited already by the act of war made upon the States by that Government. These we will secure you beyond question if you join us. If you join the North they are forever forfeited, and you will have no right to believe that the Northern people would vote to pay you this forfeited debt. Admit that there may be some danger take which side you may, I think the danger tenfold greater to the Cherokee people if they take sides against us than for us. Neutrality will scarcely be possible. As long as your people retain their national character your country cannot be abolitionized, and it is our interest therefore that you should hold your possessions in perpetuity.234

The effect that such a communication as the foregoing might well have had upon the Indians can scarcely be overestimated. Time out of number they had been over-reached in dealings financial. Only the year before, bonds in which Indian trust funds were invested had been abstracted235 from the vaults of the Interior Department; and, for this cause and other causes, Indian money had not been readily forthcoming for the much needed relief of Indian sufferers from the fearful drought that devastated Indian Territory, Kansas, and other parts of the great American desert in 1860.

Comment upon Hubbard’s letter from the standpoint of historical inaccuracy seems hardly necessary here. Suffice it to say that the distortion of facts and the shifting of responsibility for previous Indian wrongs from the shoulders of Southern States to those of a federal government made up entirely of northern states must have seemed preposterous in the extreme to the Indians. One can not help wondering how Hubbard dared to say such things to the Indian exiles from Southern States and particularly to John Ross who like all of his tribe and of associated tribes was the victim of southern aggression and not in any sense whatsoever of northern.

To Hubbard’s gross amplification and even defiance of his instructions, also to his extravagant utterances touching the repudiation of debts and southern versus northern justice and generosity, Chief Ross replied,236 by way of strong contrast, in terms dignified and convincing:

It is not the province of the Cherokees to determine the character of the conflict going on in the States. It is their duty to keep themselves, if possible, disentangled, and afford no grounds to either party to interfere with their rights. The obligations of every character, pecuniary and otherwise, which existed prior to the present state of affairs between the Cherokee Nation and the Government are equally valid now as then. If the Government owe us, I do not believe it will repudiate its debts. If States embraced in the Confederacy owe us, I do not believe they will repudiate their debts. I consider our annuity safe in any contingency.

A comparison of Northern and Southern philanthropy, as illustrated in their dealings toward the Indians within their respective limits, would not affect the merits of the question now under consideration, which is simply one of duty under existing circumstances. I therefore pass it over, merely remarking that the “settled policy” of former years was a favorite policy with both sections when extended to the acquisition of Indian lands, and that but few Indians now press their feet upon the banks of either the Ohio or the Tennessee....

Judging from all the instructions that Secretary Walker sent out on Indian matters in May of 1861, it would seem that he had very much at heart the enlistment of the Indians and their actual participation in the war. Mention has already been made of how General McCulloch was told by Adjutant-general Cooper to add, if possible, two Indian regiments to his brigade and of how Walker had written Hubbard urging him to persuade the Indians to join forces and raising the number of Indian regiments desired from two to three. In a similar strain Walker wrote237 to Douglas H. Cooper on the occasion of definitely asking him to give his services to the South. In all these letters no special stress was laid upon an intention to use the Indians as home guards exclusively. On the contrary, one might easily draw, from the letters, a quite opposite inference and conclude that the Indian troops, if raised, were to be used very generally and exactly as any other volunteers might be used. This is important in view of the stand, and a very positive one it was, that Albert Pike took some time afterwards. In his own letter238 to Johnson of May 11, 1861, he does not specifically say that the Indian soldiers, whose mustering he has in contemplation, are not to be used outside of the Indian country; but he does insist that that country be occupied by them and by a certain number of white regiments—another important point as subsequent events will divulge.

General McCulloch took up his part of the task of securing the Indians in his own characteristic way. He had great energy and great enthusiasm and both qualities were displayed to the fullest extent on the present occasion. He first laid his plans for taking possession forthwith of the Indian country, it having come to his knowledge that Colonel Emory with the Federal forces had abandoned it.239 Apparently, it had never occurred to McCulloch that the Indians themselves might be averse to such a proceeding on his part but he was soon made aware of it; for when he consulted240 with John Ross, he found, to his discomfiture and deep chagrin, that the desire and the determination of this greatest of all the Indians was to remain strictly neutral. On the twelfth of June, McCulloch still further communicated241 with Ross and informed him that he would respect his wishes in so far as expediency justified but that he would have to insist upon the inherent right of the individual Cherokees to organize themselves into a force of Home Guards should they feel so inclined. Then he closed his letter by this note of warning:

Should a body of men march into your Territory from the North, or if I have an intimation that a body is in line of march for the Territory from that quarter, I must assure you that I will at once advance into your country, if I deem it advisable.

Once again the forbearance of Chief Ross had been put to a severe test, but he none the less replied to McCulloch with his customary dignity. Ross was then at Park Hill, McCulloch at Fort Smith, where he had halted hoping that the permission would be forthcoming for him to cross the line. Ross’s reply242 came by return mail, so to speak, and was dated the seventeenth. It was largely a reiteration of the reasons he had already given for preserving neutrality, but it was also a positive refusal to allow the individual Cherokees to organize a Home Guard. The concluding paragraph gives the lie direct to those intriguing and self-interested politicians who, in later years, endeavored to impugn Ross’s sincerity:

Your demand that those people of the nation who are in favor of joining the Confederacy be allowed to organize into military companies as Home Guards, for the purpose of defending themselves in case of invasion from the North, is most respectfully declined. I cannot give my consent to any such organization for very obvious reasons: First, it would be a palpable violation of my position as a neutral; second, it would place in our midst organized companies not authorized by our laws but in violation of treaty, and who would soon become efficient instruments in stirring up domestic strife and creating internal difficulties among the Cherokee people. As in this connection you have misapprehended a remark made in conversation at our interview some eight or ten days ago, I hope you will allow me to repeat what I did say. I informed you that I had taken a neutral position, and would maintain it honestly, but that in case of a foreign invasion, old as I am, I would assist in repelling it....

It will develop later how Ross’s wishes with respect to the enrollment of Home Guards were successfully and adroitly circumvented, with the connivance of General McCulloch, by men of the Ridge faction in Cherokee politics. From the beginning, McCulloch seemed determined not to take Ross seriously, yet he duly informed Secretary Walker of the turn events were taking. On the twelfth of June, for instance, he wrote243 to him and gave an account of his recent interview with the Cherokee chief. It was rather a misleading account, however; for it conveyed to Walker the idea that Ross was only waiting for provocation from the North to throw in his lot with the Confederacy. On the twenty-second of June, McCulloch wrote244 to Walker again and to the same effect as far as his belief that Ross was not sincere in his professions of neutrality was concerned, even though, in the interval between the two letters, he had been carefully corrected by Ross himself and even though he was, at the very time, sending on to Richmond, the correspondence that denied the truth of his own statement. He did, however, add that his belief now was that Ross was awaiting a favorable moment to join forces with the North.

Albert Pike, special commissioner from the State Department of the Confederate States to the Indian tribes west of Arkansas, had accompanied General McCulloch on his visit to Ross, the latter part of May, and had been present at the resulting interview. He had told245 Toombs that he would leave Little Rock for Fort Smith the twenty-second and go at once246 to the Cherokee country. At Fort Smith, Pike met McCulloch and the two, seeking the same object, agreed to go forward together,247 having already been approached by an anti-Ross element of the Cherokee Nation.248 Ross, as has been shown, insisted upon maintaining an attitude of strict neutrality, which probably did not surprise his interviewers, since, according to Pike’s own testimony, he and McCulloch had not gone to Park Hill expecting to be able to effect any arrangement with Chief Ross.249 Ross, however, did go so far as to promise250 that within a short while he would call a meeting of the Cherokee Executive Council and confer with it further on the policy to be pursued. Ross doubtless felt that it was a part of political wisdom to do this. His was an exceedingly difficult position; for, within the nation, there was a large element in favor of secession. It was a minority party, it is true; but, none the less, it represented for the most part, the intelligence and the property and the influence of the tribe. Opposed to it and in favor of neutrality, was the large majority, not nearly so influential because made up of the full-bloods and of those otherwise poverty-stricken and obscure. In the light of previous tribal discords, the minority party was the old Ridge, or Treaty, Party, now headed by Stand Watie and E. C. Boudinot, while the majority party was the Ross, or Non-treaty Party. Ross himself, his nephew, William P. Ross, and a few others were the great exceptions to the foregoing characterization of their following. Of sturdy Scotch extraction and honest to the core, they personally stood out in strong contrast to the rank and file of the non-secessionists and it was they who so guided public sentiment that John Ross had the nation back of him when, on May 17, 1861, he issued his memorable Proclamation of Neutrality:251

Proclamation to the Cherokee people

Owing to the momentous state of affairs pending among the people of the several States, I, John Ross, Principal Chief, hereby issue this my proclamation to the people of the Cherokee Nation, reminding them of the obligations arising under their treaties with the United States, and urging them to the faithful observance of said treaties by the maintenance of peace and friendship toward the people of all the States.

The better to obtain these important ends, I earnestly impress upon all my fellow-citizens the propriety of attending to their ordinary avocations and abstaining from unprofitable discussions of events transpiring in the States and from partisan demonstrations in regard to the same.

They should not be alarmed by false reports thrown into circulation by designing men, but cultivate harmony among themselves and observe in good faith strict neutrality between the States threatening civil war. By these means alone can the Cherokee people hope to maintain their rights unimpaired and to have their own soil and firesides spared from the baleful effects of a devastating war. There has been no declaration of war between the opposing parties, and the conflict may yet be averted by compromise or a peaceful separation.

The peculiar circumstances of their condition admonish the Cherokees to the exercise of prudence in regard to a state of affairs to the existence of which they have in no way contributed; and they should avoid the performance of any act or the adoption of any policy calculated to destroy or endanger their territorial and civil rights. By honest adherence to this course they can give no just cause for aggression or invasion nor any pretext for making their country the scene of military operations, and will be in a situation to claim and retain all their rights in the final adjustment that will take place between the several States. For these reasons I earnestly impress upon the Cherokee people the importance of non-interference in the affairs of the people of the States and the observance of unswerving neutrality between them.

Trusting that God will not only keep from our own borders the desolations of war, but that He will in infinite mercy and power stay its ravages among the brotherhood of States.

Given under my hand at the executive office at Park Hill this 17th day of May, 1861.

Jno. Ross, Principal Chief Cherokee Nation.

The discretion of the Cherokees, their wily diplomacy if, under the circumstances, you should please to call it such, was more than counterbalanced by the indiscretion and the impetuosity of some of their neighbors. It has already been noted how the Chickasaws expressed their southern sympathies in the legislative resolves252 of the twenty-fifth of May, but not as yet how the Choctaws took an equally strong stand. Both tribes were so very pronounced in their show of affection for the Confederacy that they gave a secessionist color to the whole of the Indian Territory, so much so, in fact, that Lieutenant-colonel Hyams could report253 to Governor Moore of Louisiana, on the twenty-eighth of May, and upon information given him by some Indian agent.

... That the nations on the borders of this State (Arkansas) are anxious and desirous to be armed; that they can and will muster into the service 25,000 men; that they have immense supplies of beeves, sufficient to supply the meat for the whole Confederate service. All they ask is arms and enrollment. If within your power to forward their views with the President, it would be a great step in the right direction, and erect a more effectual barrier against the Kansas marauders than any force that could be sent against them, and thereby protect the northern boundary of both Arkansas and Louisiana. The reasons why every effort should be made to arm these people (now heart and soul with us) to defend themselves and us are so palpable, that I do not attempt to urge them upon you, but do solicit your attention, so far as is compatible with your high position, to this matter, to impress its importance on the President, and use your well-known influence to effect this much desirable result....

General McCulloch, in a letter254 also of the twenty-eighth of May, more particularly specified the tribes that were friendly to the South, but he too mentioned some of them, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, as “anxious to join the Southern Confederacy.” It should not be a matter of surprise then to find that on the fourteenth of June, George Hudson, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, acting in accordance with the will of the General Council, which had met four days before, publicly declared255 the Choctaw Nation, “free and independent.” The chief’s proclamation was, in effect, a conscription act and provided for the enrollment, for military service in the interests of the Confederacy, of all competent males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. The General Council had authorized this and had further arranged for the appointment of commissioners “to negotiate a treaty of alliance and amity” with the Confederate States.

Under such conditions, the work of Albert Pike must have seemed all plain sailing when once he was safely beyond the Cherokee limits; but his efforts,256 vain though they were, to persuade that tribe into an alliance did not end257 with the first recorded interview with Ross. He kept up his intercourse with the Ridge faction; but finally decided that as far as Ross and the nation as a whole were concerned it would be best to await the issue of events. It was only too apparent to all the southern agents and commissioners that Ross would never yield his opinion unless compelled thereto by one of three things or a combination of any or all of them. The three things were, pressure from within the tribe; some extraordinary display of Confederate strength that would presage ultimate success for southern arms; and encroachment by the Federals. It was the combination that eventually won the day. Pike, meanwhile, had passed on to the Creek country.

At the North Fork Village, in the Creek country, the work of negotiating Indian treaties in the interests of the Confederacy really began and it did not end until a rather long series of them had been concluded. The series consisted of nine main treaties258 and the nine group themselves into three distinct classes. The basis of classification is the relative strength or power of the tribe, or better, the degree of concession which the Confederacy, on account of that strength or that power or under stress of its own dire needs, felt itself obliged to make. This is the list as classified:

FIRST CLASS

1. Creek, negotiated at North Fork, Creek Nation, July259 10, 1861

2. Choctaw and Chickasaw, negotiated at North Fork, July 12, 1861

3. Seminole, negotiated at the Seminole Council House, August 1, 1861

4. Cherokee, negotiated at Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, October 7, 1861

SECOND CLASS

1. Osage, negotiated at Park Hill, Cherokee Nation, October 2, 1861

2. Seneca and Shawnee, negotiated at Park Hill, October 4, 1861

3. Quapaw, negotiated at Park Hill, October 4, 1861

THIRD CLASS

1. Wichita, etc., negotiated at the Wichita Agency near the False Washita River, August 12, 1861

2. Comanche, negotiated at the Wichita Agency, August 12, 1861

Although all the treaties, made in 1861 by Albert Pike, were negotiated under authority260 of the Act of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, approved May 21, 1861, by which the Confederacy offered and agreed to accept the protectorate of the Indian tribes west of Arkansas and Missouri, only those made with the great tribes contained a statement,261 definitely showing that the protectorate had been formally offered, formally accepted and formally assumed. Thus, in a very unequivocal way, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Cherokees, all signified262 their willingness to transfer their allegiance from the United to the Confederate States. The smaller tribes seem not to have been asked to make the same concession and their nationality was, in no sense, recognized. They acted more or less under duress or compulsion, and the very negotiation of treaties with them was taken as a full compliance with the confederate scheme.

The nationality of the great tribes, or more properly speaking, their political importance, was still further recognized by clauses guaranteeing territorial and political integrity,263 representation by delegates264 in the[Pg 160 & 161] Confederate Congress, and the prospect265 of ultimate statehood. The guarantee of territorial integrity was, of a certainty, not new. It had been inserted into various removal treaties as a safeguard against a repetition of the injustice that had been meted out to the Indians by the Southern States in Jackson’s day. It comprised, in effect, a solemn promise that no state or territorial lines should ever again circumscribe the particular domain of the Indian nation securing the guarantee; and that state or territorial laws, as the case might be, should have no operation within the Indian country. The idea of congressional representation266 was also not new, but where it had previously been but a promise or a mere contingency, it was now an assured fact, a thing definitely provided for. Ultimate statehood had, however, attached to it the old time elements of uncertainty, which is not at all surprising, considering that Walker, in his instructions267 to Hubbard, had positively spoken against it.

All the treaties, without distinction of class, recognized the land rights of the Indians and their existing territorial limits, but with the usual restriction upon alienation to foreign powers. A sale or cession to a foreign state, without the consent of the Confederate States, was to result in forfeiture and reversion to the Confederate States. By the Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty, the arrangement,268 already satisfactorily reached, for a Chickasaw country distinct from a Choctaw was continued, the Indians of both tribes being given the privilege of having their particular land surveyed and sectionized whenever they might so please, provided it be done by regular legislative process.269 The same treaty transferred270 the lease of the Wichita Reserve from the United to the Confederate States and limited it to ninety-nine years. Practically the same bands of Indians were to be accommodated in this Leased District as before; namely, those whose permanent ranges were south of the Canadian or between it and the Arkansas. The New Mexican Indians were still to be absolutely excluded. The Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians reserved the right to pass upon the accommodation of any other Indians than those specifically mentioned in the treaty. The individual bands, so accommodated in the Leased District, were to be settled upon reserves and to hold the same in fee. Finally, the treaty placed,271 for the time being, the Wichitas and their fellow reservees exclusively under the control of the Confederate States with a limited jurisdiction resting in the Choctaw Nation and a full right of settlement in Choctaws and Chickasaws.

In regard to special features of the land rights of tribes other than those already mentioned, it is well to observe, perhaps, that the title to the reservation then occupied by the Seminoles was admitted to be dependent upon Creek sufferance;272 that the United States patent of December 31, 1838, was recognized273 as protecting the Cherokee; and that the Osage lands in Kansas were inferentially covered by the Confederate guarantee, given that tribe, of title in perpetuity.274 The Confederate States, moreover, agreed to indemnify275 the Cherokees should their Neutral Lands be lost to them through the misfortune of the war. It is rather interesting to see that this new government, in promising the insignificant tribes a permanent occupancy of their present holdings, made use of the same high-flown, meaningless language that the United States had so long used; but Albert Pike knew better than to assure the truly powerful tribes that they should hold their lands themselves and in common “as long as the grass should grow and the waters run.” That language could yet be made appealing and effective, though, in official dealings with weak Wichitas,276 Senecas, and Shawnees,277 and, strange as it may seem, even with Creeks.278 In reciprocal fashion, the wild Comanches could most naïvely promise279 to hold the Confederate States “by the hand, and have but one heart with them always.”

Speaking of indemnification, we are reminded of other very important financial obligations assumed by the Confederacy when it made its famous treaties with the Indians west of Arkansas. Those financial obligations comprised the payment of annuities due the tribes from the United States in return for land cessions of enormous extent. They also comprised the interest on various funds, such as the Orphan Creek fund, education funds, and the like. Albert Pike had been given no specific authority to do this but he knew well that no treaties could possibly be made without it. It was not very likely that the slaveholding tribes would surrender so much wealth for nothing, and so Pike argued, when justifying himself and his actions later on. In his capacity as commissioner with plenary powers, he also promised the Indians that the Confederacy would see to it that their trust funds, secured by southern bonds, should be rendered safe and negotiable. Over and above all this, the government of the Confederate States made itself responsible for claims for damages of various sorts that the different tribes had brought or were to bring against the United States. Three good instances of the same are the following: the claim of the Cherokees for losses, personal and national, incident to the removal from Georgia; the claim280 of the Seminoles for losses sustained by reason of General Thomas S. Jesup’s emancipation281 order during the progress of the Second Seminole War; and the claim of the Wichitas against the United States government for having granted to the Choctaws the land that belonged by hereditary preëmption to them and had so belonged from time out of mind. It is exceedingly interesting to know that these Wichitas had been colonized on the very land they claimed as indisputably their own.

In all the treaties, negotiated by Pike, except the two of the Third Class,282 the Wichita and the Comanche, the institution of slavery was positively and particularly recognized, recognized as legal and as having existed from time immemorial. Property rights in slaves were guaranteed. Fugitive Slave Laws were declared operative within the Indian country, and the mutual rendition of fugitives was promised throughout the length and breadth of the Confederacy. The First Class of treaties differs from the Second in this matter but only in a very slight degree. The latter condenses in one clause283 all that bears upon slavery in its various aspects, the former separates the discussion of the legality of the institution from that of the rendition of slaves. Of the First Class, the Creek Treaty284 constituted the model; of the Second, the Osage.285

Aside from the things to which reference has already been made, the Confederate Indian treaties were, in a variety of ways and to the same extent that the Confederate constitution itself was, a reflection upon past history. To avoid the friction that had always been present between the red men and their neighbors, an attempt was now made to redefine and to readjust the relations of Indians with each other both within and without the tribe; their relations with white men considered apart from any political organization; their relations, either as individuals or as tribes, with the several states of the Confederacy; and their relations with the central government. In general, their rights, civil, political, and judicial, as men and as semi-independent communities were now specified under such conditions as made for what in times past would have been regarded as full recognition, and even for enlargement. Indian rights were at a premium because Indian alliances were in demand.

The relations of Indians with Indians need not be considered at length. Suffice it to say that many clauses were devoted to the regulation of the affairs of those tribes that were, either politically or ethnologically, closely connected with each other; as, for example, the Choctaws and Chickasaws on the one hand and the Creeks and Seminoles on the other. Still other clauses assured the tribes of protection against hostile invasion from red men and from white, and assured all the great tribes, except the Cherokees,286 of similar protection against domestic violence.287 The Cherokees, very possibly, were made an exception because of the known intensity of their factional strife and hatred, which, purely for its own selfish ends, the Confederacy had done so much to augment. There may also have been some lingering doubt of John Ross’s sincerity in the matter of devotion to the Confederacy. The time had been and might come again when the Confederacy would find it very expedient to play off one faction against another. Injuries coming to the Indians from a failure to protect were to be indemnified out of the Confederate treasury. Could the United States, throughout the more than a hundred years of its history have had just such a law, its national treasury would have been saved millions and millions of dollars paid out in claims, just and unjust, of white men against the Indians.

As affecting their relations with white men, the Indians were conceded the right to determine absolutely, by their own legislation, the conditions of their own tribal citizenship. This would mean, of course, the free continuance of the custom of adoption, a custom more pernicious in Indian history than even the principle of equal apportionment in Frankish; because it was the entering wedge to territorial encroachment. The white man, once adopted into the tribe as a citizen, was to be protected against unjust discrimination or against the forfeiture of his acquired status. The provisions against intruders were legitimately severe, those of the United States had never been severe enough. The executive power had always been very weak and very lax but now it was to reside in the tribal Council and would bid fair to be firm because interested, or, perhaps, we should say disinterested. The Confederacy, on its part, promised that the aid of the military should be forthcoming for the expulsion of intruders on application by the agent, should the tribal authority prove inadequate. The Indians might compel the removal of obnoxious men from agency and military reserves. Unauthorized settlement within the Indian country by citizens of the Confederate States was absolutely forbidden under pain of punishment by the tribe encroached upon.

With respect to Indian trade, there was considerable innovation and considerable modification of existing laws. For years past, the Indians of the great tribes had chafed under the restrictions which the United States government had placed upon their trade and, unquestionably, no other single thing had irritated them more than the very evident monopoly right which the United States had given to a few white men over it. Indian trade, under federal regulations, was nothing more nor less than an extension of the protective policy, a policy that was destructive of all competition and that put the Indian, often to the contempt of his intelligence, at the mercy of the white sharper. Indian commissioner after Indian commissioner had protested against it, but all in vain. George W. Manypenny, particularly, had tried288 to effect a change; for he was himself convinced that, if the Indians were capable of self-government, they were certainly capable of conducting their own trade. Needless to say, Manypenny’s efforts were entirely unavailing. The Indian trade in the hands of the licensed white trader, although a pernicious thing for the Indian, was an exceedingly lucrative business for enterprising American citizens, white men who were, unfortunately, in possession of the elective franchise but of little else that was honorable and the government, controlled by constituents with local interests, dared not surrender it to the unenfranchised Indians no matter how highly competent they might be. Thus the Indian country, throughout its entire extent, was exploited for the sake of the frontiersman. Moreover, the annuity money, a just tax upon a government that had received so much real estate from the aborigines, instead of being spent judiciously to meet the ends of civilization and in such a way as to reflect credit upon the donor, who after all was a self-constituted guardian, went right back into the pockets of United States citizens but, of necessity, into those of only a very limited number of them.

Because it was a matter of expediency and not because it was a principle that it believed in, otherwise it would have given it to the weak tribes as well as to the strong, the Confederacy gave to the Indians of the great tribes, but not to all in exactly the same measure,289 the control of their own trade. It did not do away with the post trader, as it ought to have done in order to make its reform complete, but it did deprive him of his monopoly privileges. It hedged his license about with restrictions,290 made it subject, on complaint of the Indian and in the event of arrearages, to revocation; and, to all of the great tribes except the Seminoles, it gave the power of taxing his goods, his stock in trade, usually a rather paltry outfit. No better precaution could have possibly been devised against exorbitant charging. An ad valorem tax would most certainly have quite eliminated the fifty, the one hundred, and the two hundred per cents of profit. As a matter of fact, the extravagantly high prices of the ordinary Indian trader would be, for most persons, positively prohibitive. The Confederacy further bound itself to pay to the Indians an annual compensation for the land and timber used by the trader.

The questions settled as between the several states and the Indian tribes were chiefly291 of property rights and of civil and criminal rights and procedure. In addition to their property right in slaves, the Indians were at last admitted to have a possible right in other things, in land, for instance, that might lie within the limits of a state. This they were henceforth to hold, dispose of as they pleased, and bequeath by will.292 Restrictions, likewise, upon their power freely to dispose of their chattels,293 were removed, a coördinate concession, but one that did not so much affect their relations with a given individual state as their relations with the central government. To such294 of the Indians as were not to be brought within the jurisdiction of the Confederate States District Courts295 that were to be created within the Indian country, the right was given to sue and to implead in any of the courts of the several states. To Indians generally of the great tribes was given the right to be held competent as witnesses296 in state courts, and, if indicted there themselves, to subpoena witnesses and to employ counsel.297 The Cherokees, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws were also granted the right of recovery298 as against citizens of the Confederate States. Should recovery not be possible, the Confederacy was to stand the loss. But more than anything else reciprocal right of extradition was henceforth to be accorded. This was to exist as between tribe and tribe299 and, with some slight exceptions, as between tribe and state. An examination of the various treaties reveals a steady development in the matter of this concession. The Creek Treaty,300 which was the first to be negotiated, made extradition a rather one-sided301 affair. The tribe was to yield the criminal to the state, but, not reciprocally, the state to the tribe. This verbal inequality would not have so much mattered had there been a possibility that in the sequel it would have been interpreted, as in the states, in terms of executive courtesy and discretion; but the chances were that a state would have made it a matter of absolute obligation with the tribe. Reciprocity302 found its way into the second treaty, however, and also into all the later ones of the First Class. Finally, be it remarked, that as a climax to this series of judicial concessions, full faith and credit303 were to be given by the one Indian nation or Confederate state, as the case might be, to all legal processes, decisions, and acts of the other.

There yet remain two provisions304 of importance that were intended to put the Indian nations on a basis of equality with the states. They are provisions rather particular in their nature, however, and, in their full operation, would have affected Texas and Arkansas much more nearly than any other members of the Southern Confederacy. The first of these provisions is to be found, as a grant of mutual rights, only in treaties of the First Class and in two only of those, the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Cherokee. The omission from the Creek and Seminole treaties was due, most likely, to geographical conditions; but the lack of reciprocity in the Osage, the one treaty of the Second Class in which a suggestion of the provision occurs, was just as surely due to the weakness of the tribe from which the privilege was exacted. The provision comprehended the use of navigable streams within the limits of the Confederacy and the Indians specified were to have the same rights in the premises as the citizens of the Confederate States. Osage305 streams and water courses were, however, to be open to white people but not conversely Confederate waters to the Osages. The clauses in treaties of the First Class, embodying this provision, comprehended all navigable streams whatsoever but had particular application to the Red and Arkansas Rivers, the Choctaw306 and Chickasaw to the former and the Cherokee307 to the latter. The rights of ferrying on these streams were to be open alike to white and red men living upon their banks.

The second provision was couched in terms of general amnesty. The Indians were to forgive wholesale the citizens of the individual Confederate states for their past offences and, reciprocally, the states were to forgive and pardon the Indians for theirs, or, rather, the government of the Confederate States was to use its good offices to persuade and induce them to do so.308 The Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty contained, in addition to this general clause, a particular one bringing out again the close connection with Texas and Arkansas. It reads thus:

... And the Confederate States will especially request the States of Arkansas and Texas to grant the like amnesty as to all offences committed by Choctaw or Chickasaw against the laws of those States respectively, and the Governor of each to reprieve or pardon the same, if necessary.309

Some evidence of the special interest Texas might have in the matter came out rather prominently in the treaties of the Third Class, the amnesty in them was particular while the amnesty in the treaties of the other two classes was general. This is what the Wichita and Comanche say:

It is distinctly understood by the said several tribes and bands, that the State of Texas is one of the Confederate States, and joins this Convention, and signs it when the Commissioner signs it, and is bound by it; and all hostilities and enmities between it and them are now ended and are to be forgotten and forgiven on both sides.310

It soon developed that Texas was not pleased to find her consent so thoroughly taken for granted and that the Reserve Indians were no better satisfied. The enmity between the two continued as before.

As regarded the relations between the Indian tribes and the Confederate States proper, the Pike treaties were old law in so far as they duplicated the earlier United States treaty arrangements and new law only in so far as they met conditions incident to the war. United States laws and treaties were specifically continued in force wherever possible, and, in most cases, the name of the one government was simply substituted for that of the other. Considerable emphasis was laid upon the right of eminent domain. The Indians conceded to the Confederacy the power to establish agency reserves,311 military posts312 and fortifications, to maintain post and military roads,313 and to grant the right of way,314 upon payment of an indemnity,315 to certain corporations for purposes of internal improvement, mainly railway and telegraph lines. Most of this would have contributed very materially to the good of the southern cause in guarding one of the approaches to Texas and in increasing the convenience of communication. The Confederate States assumed the wardship of the tribes, exacted a pledge of loyalty from the weaker and one of alliance,316 offensive and defensive, but without the entail of pecuniary responsibility, from the stronger. In its turn, the Confederacy promised to the Indians many things, deserving of serious mention and far too important for mere enumeration. As a matter of fact, the South paid pretty dearly, from the view-point of historical consistency, for its Indian alliance. In the light of Indian political history, it yielded far more than at first glance appears and, as a consequence, the great tribes gained nearly everything that they had been contending for for half a century.

As has just been intimated, the concessions made by the Confederacy to the Indians were somewhat significant. In addition to the things noted a few paragraphs back, congressional delegates, control of trade, and others of like import, Pike, the lawyer commissioner and the man of justice, promised the establishment of Confederate States courts within the Indian country. There were to be two of them, one in the Choctaw country317 and one in the Cherokee.318 They were to be District Courts with a limited Circuit Court jurisdiction. The importance of the concession cannot well be over-estimated; for it struck at the root of one of the chief Indian grievances. The territorial extent of the districts was left a little vague and the jurisdiction was not fairly distributed. Here again we have an illustration of might conditioning right. The Osages,319 the Senecas and Shawnees,320 and the Quapaws321 were all brought within the limits of the Cha-lah-ki, or Cherokee district, but it is not clear that, as far as they were concerned, any other offences than those against the Fugitive Slave322 laws, were to come within the purview of the court. The Wichitas and Comanches were left entirely unassigned, although naturally, they would have come within the Tush-ca-hom-ma, or Choctaw district.

The Confederacy reinstituted the agency system and continued it with modifications. These modifications were in line with reiterated complaints of the Indians. They restricted the government patronage to some extent and, in certain instances, allowed a good deal of tribal control. As a general thing, to each tribe was allowed one agent and to each language, one interpreter. An exception to the first provision was to be found wherever it had been found under the earlier régime. Thus there was a single agent for the Choctaws and Chickasaws, another for the fragmentary tribes of the Leased District, and another for those of the Neosho River country. In the minor treaties, it was stipulated, for very evident and very sound reasons, most of them based upon experiences of past neglect, that the agent should be faithful in the performance of his duties, that he should reside at his agency continually, and never be absent for long at a time or without good and sufficient cause.

There were also certain things the Indians were forbidden to do, many of them familiar to us in any ordinary Bill of Rights and having reference to ex-post facto laws, laws impairing the obligation of contracts, due process of law, and the like. The Confederacy, in turn, bound itself not to allow farming on government reserves or settlement there except under certain conditions and not to treat323 with Cherokee factions. It inserted into the treaties with the minor tribes the usual number of civilization clauses, promising agricultural and industrial support; and into the Cherokee some things that were entirely new, notably a provision that the congressional delegation from each of the great tribes should have the right to nominate a youth to membership in any military academy that might be established.324 It also promised to maintain a postal system throughout the Indian country, one that should be, in every particular, a part of the postal system of the Confederate States with the same rates, stamps, and so on. To the Cherokees, it promised the additional privilege325 of having the postmasters selected and appointed from among their own people. From the foregoing analysis of the treaties, it is clearly seen that the characteristic feature of them all was conciliation and conciliation written very, very large. Of the great tribes, the Confederacy asked an alliance full and complete; of the middle tribes, such as the Osage, it asked a limited alliance and peace; and of the most insignificant tribes it asked simply peace but that it was prepared, not only to ask, but, if need be, to demand. Between the Cherokees and the Wichitas, there was a wide, wide gulf and one that could be measured only in terms of political and military importance.

So much for the contents of the treaties but what about the detailed history of their negotiation? When Albert Pike first came within reach of the Indian country, he communicated326 officially or semi-officially with the men belonging or recently belonging to the Indian field service, agents and agency employees, or, at least, with those of them that were known as Confederate sympathizers. A few very necessary changes had been made in the service with the inauguration of President Lincoln but the changes were not always such as could, in any wise, have strengthened the Federal position. First, as regards the southern superintendency, an attempt had been made to find a successor to Elias Rector327 at about the same time that Harrison B. Branch328 of Missouri had been appointed central superintendent in the stead of A. M. Robinson. The man chosen was Samuel L. Griffith329 of Fort Smith to whom the new Secretary of the Interior, Caleb B. Smith, telegraphed on the fifth of April, tendering the position. Similarly by wire, on the ninth, Griffith accepted; and, on the tenth, explained330 the delay in the following letter:

Being a member of our State Convention on the Union side, I hesitated a day or two, as to the propriety of accepting, fearing it might affect the union cause, but on mature deliberation and counsel with union friends, and on the receipt of a memorial signed by a large number of names of men of all parties, I concluded to accept....

Col. W. H. Garret Agt. for the Creeks, passed through this place on the 8th....

Col. S. Rutherford left here this morning for his agency (the Seminole). I desired him to ascertain on his way through the Creek and Choctaw Nations, the facts, as to the rumor that two men from Texas were in the Creek Nation for the purpose of meeting the several nations in Council &c. and to report to me immediately....

Dr. Griffith’s solicitude for the Union interests apparently soon vanished. On the twentieth of April, he wrote331 that, “under the circumstances,” he could not hold office. Coffin of Indiana was then selected332 for the place of southern superintendent and, in a very little while, Griffith was among the applicants333 for the corresponding position in the Confederate States. Between the dates of the two activities, moreover, he had been appointed by the Arkansas Convention one of the three special agents to interview the Indian tribes in the interests of secession. That was on the tenth of May.

The changes in the agency incumbents proved equally temporary and unfortunate. Particularly was this the case with two determined334 upon on the sixth of April. Four days later, William Quesenbury335 of Fayetteville, Arkansas was notified that he had been appointed to succeed William H. Garrett as agent for the Creeks, and John Crawford336 of the same place that he had been appointed to succeed Robert J. Cowart as agent for the Cherokees. Both went over to the Confederacy. Nothing else could well have been expected of Crawford, or of Quesenbury either for that matter, and it is rather surprising that their past records were not more thoroughly examined. Quesenbury, like Richard P. Pulliam, was a sort of protégé of Elias Rector. Pulliam had been Rector’s clerk in the office and Quesenbury his clerk in the field.337 Crawford had been very prominent338 in the Arkansas legislature the preceding winter in the expression of ideas and sentiments hostile to Abraham Lincoln. He accepted the office of Cherokee agent under Lincoln, notwithstanding, and he subsequently said339 that he did so because the Indians would not have liked a northern man to come among them. Before Crawford’s commission arrived, Cowart had departed340 and Cherokee affairs were in dire confusion.341 John J. Humphreys342 of Tennessee had meanwhile been offered the Wichita Agency343 and Peter P. Elder344 of Kansas, the Neosho River. The Choctaw and Chickasaw Agency seems to have been left vacant. Truth to tell, there was no longer any such agency under United States control. Cooper had thrown in his lot with the secessionists and was already working actively in their cause.

The defection of Douglas H. Cooper, United States agent for the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, can not be passed by so very lightly; for it had such far reaching effects. The time came during and after the war, when the United States Indian Office came to have in its possession various documents345 that proved conclusively that Douglas H. Cooper had been most instrumental in organizing the secession movement among the Indians of at least his own agency. It was even reported346 that material was forthcoming to show how he “was engaged in raising troops for the Rebel Army, during the months of April, May, and June, 1861, while holding the office of U. S. Indian Agent.” His successor had been appointed considerably before the end of that time, however, and, when the war was over, the Indians themselves exonerated him from all responsibility in the matter of their own defection.347 Notwithstanding, he most certainly did manifest unusual activity in behalf of the slaveholding power. Even his motives for manifesting activity are, in a sense, impugned as instanced by the following most extraordinary letter, which, written by Cooper to Rector privately and in confidence and later transmitted to Washington out of the ordinary course of official business, has already been quoted once for the purpose of forming a correct estimate of the recipient’s character. It is gratifying to know that such letters are very rare in connection with the history of the American Civil War.

Private & Confidential

[Copy]

Fort Smith May 1st 1861.

Major Elias Rector

Dr. Sir: I have concluded to act upon the suggestion yours of the 28th Ultimo contains.

If we work this thing shrewdly we can make a fortune each, satisfy the Indians, stand fair before the North, and revel in the unwavering confidence of our Southern Confederacy.

My share of the eighty thousand in gold348 you can leave on deposite with Meyer Bro. subject to my order. Write me soon.

Cooper.

When Captain Pike349 reached the North Fork Village, very probably still attended by the escort that the Military Board of Arkansas had graciously—or perhaps officially since Pike, according to his own con[Pg 190 & 191]fession, was acting as commissioner from Arkansas350 as well as from the Confederacy—furnished351 him,352 he found the Creeks awaiting his approach with some anxiety. Among them were Motey Kennard,353 principal chief of the Lower Creeks, and Echo Harjo, principal chief of the Upper Creeks, both of whom had been absent354 in Washington at the time the inter-tribal council of the spring had been planned. They had gone to Washington, in company with John G. Smith, as a delegation, greatly concerned about the prospect of Creek finances and the continuance of Creek integrity should the quarrel between the North and the South continue. Greenwood had tried to reassure them; but, when shortly afterwards, all Indian allowances were suspended355 by the United States Indian Office for fear that remittances might fall, en route, into the hands of the disaffected, the distrust and the dissatisfaction of the Indians revived and increased, thus rendering them peculiarly susceptible to the plausible secessionist arguments of men like Agent Garrett. Sometime in May, therefore, a delegation was sent to Montgomery356 to confer with authorities of the Confederate States, who by the time of the arrival of the Creeks had moved on to Richmond.

At the North Fork Village, everything seemed to be working in Pike’s favor. There was scarcely a white man357 around who was willing to say a word for the North; and leading Indians, who were known to be anti-secessionists, were away358 treating with the Indians of the Plains. Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, who was to become the stanch leader of the opposition, was not with the absentees, it would seem; but then that, at the time, did not so much signify because he was not a ranking chief and so had little influence.359 On the tenth of July, the treaty that Pike and the Creek commissioners had been working on for days was finally submitted for signature and the names of Motey Kennard, Echo Harjo, Chilly McIntosh, Samuel Checote and many other less prominent Creeks were attached to it. On the twentieth, the general council approved it and more names were attached, that of Jacob Derrysaw being among them. On one or the other occasion, several white men signed. William Quesenbury, who was acting as Pike’s secretary, Agent Garrett, Interpreter G. W. Stidham,360 and W. L. Pike. Soon came the return of the travellers and much subsequent commotion. They expressed themselves as opposed to the whole proceeding, yet three of them found that, in their absence, their names had been forged361 to the document that was passing as a treaty between the Creeks and the Confederate States. The three whose names were forged were, Ok-ta-ha-hassee Harjo (better known subsequently as “Sands” and who became in reconstruction days the great rival of Samuel Checote for the office of principal chief), Tallise Fixico, and Mikko Hutke. It is a matter of dispute what course Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la had taken362 in the treaty conference but not what he did afterwards; for he became the intrepid leader of the so-called “Loyal Creeks” and the foremost of the “Refugees.”

If the Creeks were disturbed about their national finances, the Choctaws363 were even more so. There were many suspicious circumstances connected with a certain corn contract and with the expenditure generally of the huge sum of money that the United States Congress had appropriated in satisfaction of claims arising under the treaty of removal, payment on which it had recently suspended to the displeasure of the Indians and the discomfiture of the speculators. Wherever suspicion rested, Pike attempted elaborate explanations and, wherever affairs could be turned to the account of the Confederacy, he labored with redoubled zeal. His task was an easy one comparatively-speaking, though, for the Choctaws were already committed364 to the southern cause. The two Folsoms, Peter and Sampson, who were among the special commissioners sent to Washington to inquire about the money and who had lingered at Montgomery, were his eager coadjutors. Just how far George Hudson, principal chief, was readily compliant, it is difficult to say. It is supposed that he issued his proclamation365 of June 14, announcing independence and calling for troops, under compulsion and, in July, he may still have been secretly in favor of neutrality. The joint treaty for the Choctaws and Chickasaws was completed on the twelfth of July and again prominent men, the most prominent in the tribes, no doubt, endorsed the action by affixing their signatures. R. M. Jones, the chief366 of the secessionists, W. B. Pitchlynn, Winchester Colbert, and James Gamble,367 who was soon afterwards selected as the first delegate368 to the Confederate Congress, were among the signers; but Agent Cooper was not. Perchance, he and Pike had already begun to dispute over the propriety of an Indian agent’s holding a colonelcy in the Confederate army. Cooper369 wanted to be both agent and colonel.

Having disposed satisfactorily of the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, Pike passed on, with his group of white and red friends, to the Seminoles and met them in council370 at their own agency. Rector was now371 one of his assistants. The poor Seminoles, according to their own story of what happened, were taken completely unawares;372 and, after some skilful maneuvering, Pike succeeded in inducing about half373 of them, headed by one of their principal chiefs, John Jumper,374 and a town chief, Pas-co-fa, to agree to “perpetual peace and friendship” with the Confederate States. There was nothing specifically said about an alliance, offensive and defensive, but it was understood and was immediately provided for.375 The head chief, Billy Bowlegs,376 and other chiefs of present and future importance, like John Chup-co,377 refused378 to sign the treaty and, before many days had elapsed, joined the party of the “Loyal Creeks.” Various ones of the “Southern” Creeks, notably Motey Kennard, were present at the treaty-making and used their influence to strengthen that of Pike, Rector, Agent Rutherford,379 Contractor Charles B. Johnson, and a host of minor enthusiasts, like J. J. Sturm and H. P. Jones, all of whom had formerly been in the United States employ and were now, or soon to be, in the Confederate.380

Pike’s military escort had surely left him by this time and had returned to Arkansas and yet never had it been more needed; for the Confederate commissioner and his party were about to go into the western country to confer with the tribes of the Leased District whose friendship as yet could scarcely be counted upon, notwithstanding the fact that their agent had openly thrown in his fortunes with the South381 and was using every form of persuasive art to induce them to do the same. Fearing, perhaps, some show of hostility from the Wichitas, Comanches, and Tonkawas, and hoping that a show of force on his part would intimidate them, Pike gathered together, before proceeding to the Leased District, a company of fifty-six382 mounted men, friendly Creeks and Seminoles, and with them left the Seminole Council House. The Leased District once reached, some of the hardest work of the whole negotiation began and two treaties383 were ultimately concluded, one with some of the legitimate residents of the locality and one with wandering bands who came in for the purpose. It is well to note at the outset, however, that the Wichitas proper refused to be either cajoled or intimidated and that, in consequence, they who had always, under United States control, been the most important of the reservees, the ones to give the name to the entire group, were now reduced to a subordinate position and some of the Comanches384 elevated to the first rank. The first treaty then, the one made with reservees, was thus designated, “Treaty with Comanches and Other Tribes and Bands.” The second treaty, made with Indians belonging outside the Leased District was designated, “Treaty with the Comanches of the Prairies and Staked Plain.”

The negotiation of the remaining treaties of the Pike series came as an immediate effect of Confederate military successes and belongs, in its description, to the next chapter. It is proper now to return to a consideration of the work of the Confederate Congress, in so far, at least, as that work had a bearing upon the alliance with the tribes. On the twenty-eighth of August, Hugh F. Thomason of Arkansas, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Committee on Indian Affairs be instructed to inquire whether any, and if so what, treaties have been made with any of the Indian tribes, and if so, with which of them; and whether any, and if so, what legislation is necessary in consequence thereof; and that they have leave to report at such time and in such manner as to them shall seem proper.385

There the matter rested until after the whole series of treaties had been completed which was in ample time for President Davis to submit386 Pike’s report387 and the tangible evidence of his successful work to the Provisional Congress at its winter session.

President Davis’s message of December 12, 1861, transmitting the Pike treaties to the Provisional Congress, summarized their merits and their defects and gave direction to the consideration and discussion that ended in their ratification. It called particular attention to the pecuniary obligations388 assumed and to the contemplated change of status. Regarding the latter, Davis said,

Important modifications are proposed in favor of the respective local governments of these Indians, to which your special attention is invited. That their advancement in civilization justified an enlargement of their power in that regard will scarcely admit of a doubt; but whether the proposed concessions in favor of their local governments are within the bounds of a wise policy may well claim your serious consideration. In this connection your attention is specially invited to the clauses giving to certain tribes the unqualified right of admission as a State into the compact of the Confederacy, and in the meantime allowing each of these tribes to have a delegate in Congress. These provisions are regarded not only as impolitic but unconstitutional, it not being within the limits of the treaty-making power to admit a State or to control the House of Representatives in the matter of admission to its privileges. I recommend that the former provision be rejected, and that the latter be so modified as to leave the question to the future action of Congress; and also do recommend the rejection of those articles in the treaties which confer upon Indians the right to testify in the State courts, believing that the States have the power to decide that question, each for itself, independently of any action of the Confederate Government.389

Again Arkansas was in the lead in the exhibition of interest and, on the motion390 of one of her delegation, Robert W. Johnson, the president’s message and the documents accompanying it were referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. This was on the thirteenth of December and Johnson was the chairman of the committee. On the nineteenth, the treaties began to be considered391 in executive session. The first to be so considered was the Choctaw and Chickasaw, and interest concentrated on its twenty-seventh article,392 the one giving to the two tribes jointly a delegate in the Confederate Congress. This provision was finally amended393 so as to leave the delegate’s status, his rights and his privileges, just as Davis had recommended, to the House of Representatives. Then came the consideration of the twenty-eighth article,394 which promised ultimate statehood, and that also was amended in such a way as to leave the final determination to Congress,

By whose act alone, under the Constitution, new States can be admitted and whose consent it is not in the power of the President or the present Congress to guarantee in advance....395

In the afternoon of December twenty-first, the Provisional Congress resumed396 its consideration of the Indian treaties. The day previous, it had decided upon this order of procedure and had agreed397 that the Comanche treaties, being of the least importance, should be left to the last. The work of the twenty-first was on the judicial clauses and, on the question of the qualification of the Indians to be competent witnesses in civil and criminal suits. Article XXXVI398 of the Osage Treaty, dealing with the right to subpoena witnesses and to have counsel, seemed likely to create prejudice.399 At length Waul of Texas suggested400 that Commissioner Pike be invited to be present at future sessions in order that some very necessary explanations of scope, of motives, and of reasons might be forthcoming. In the end, the only changes made in the grant of judicial privileges were along the line of safe-guarding the existing rights of the individual states. In illustration of this, take the Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty as typical of all of the treaties of the First Class. Articles XLIII and XLIV were amended. To the former was added,

And the Confederate States will request the several States of the Confederacy to adopt and enact the provisions of this article, in respect to suits and proceedings in their several courts.401

From the latter, the phrase, “or of a State,” was stricken out and this substitution made; “or of a State, subject to the laws of the State.”402

On the whole, the Indian treaties took up a very large share of the attention of the Confederate Congress throughout the month of December; and, after debate, President Davis’s advice in every particular was followed, even to the assumption of the pecuniary obligations. On the twenty-third of December, Johnson reported403 back the treaty with the Cherokees and some of its clauses were then considered. On the same day, Johnson offered404 a resolution of ratification for the Seminole Treaty and it was unanimously adopted, the same changes identically having been made in the treaty as had been made in the Choctaw and Chickasaw in so far as the two treaties corresponded originally with each other. Congress also ratified a supplementary article to the Seminole Treaty. The last of the month, the Comanche treaties were reached405 and soon pushed through with only very slight modifications. Then came the final consideration of the treaty with the Creek Indians. It was ratified406 with the customary amendments the same day. The Quapaw Treaty came407 next and with its congressional ratification, the work of diplomatically securing the Indians was practically done. The later Indian ratification was more or less perfunctory.