Читать книгу The History of American Indian in the Period of Reconstruction - Annie Heloise Abel - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The existence of Indian refugees was the best indication that all projects, made while the Civil War was still in progress, for the removal southward of Kansas tribes and for the organization of Indian Territory were decidedly premature and altogether out of place. For a season, indeed, they were almost presumptuous. Disaster followed disaster and it seemed wellnigh impossible for the Federals ever to regain what they had so lightly thrown aside in 1861. At the very moment when the removal policy was being re-enacted there were upwards of fifteen thousand Indians living as exiles and outcasts solely because the United States government was not able to give them protection in their own homes. Nevertheless, with strange inconsistency and the total ignoring of most patent facts, its law-makers discussed in all seriousness, as is the habit of politicians, the re-populating with new northern tribes the very country that the army had abandoned and had not yet recovered. Meanwhile, as if to add to the incongruity of the whole matter, three full regiments of Indian Home Guards, composed largely of the legitimate owners of the territory in question, were fighting on the Union side.

The earlier misfortunes of the Indian refugees have been described with fullness of detail in the preceding volume of this work. A large proportion of the first Indians, who had fled for safety across the border, had been conducted, at vast expense, with much murmuring, and some show of resistance, to the Sac and Fox Agency. There they were yet, the old men, women, and children, that is; for the braves were away fighting. They included Creeks who had accompanied Opoethleyohola in his flight, a few Euchees, Kickapoos, and Choctaws, about two hundred and twenty-five Chickasaws, and about three hundred Cherokees. At Neosho Falls, were the refugee Seminoles, some seven hundred and sixty, not counting the enlisted warriors. On the Ottawa Reservation, were the nonfighting Quapaws and the Senecas and Shawnees, while, encamped on the Verdigris and Fall rivers, in the neighborhood of Belmont, were almost two thousand Indian refugees from the Leased District. They had come there following the outbreak that had resulted in the brutal murder of Agent Leeper. Beyond them and beyond the reach of aid, as it proved, at the Big Bend of the Arkansas, were Comanches, one band, and scattering elements of other wild tribes.

At the opening of 1863, the great bulk of the Cherokees were in southwestern Missouri, exposed to every conceivable kind of danger incident to a state of war. They were the larger part of those who, when the Confederates successfully invaded and occupied the Nation, had escaped to the Neutral Lands, a portion of their own tribal domain but within the limits of Kansas, and had been discovered, in October of 1862, settled upon Drywood Creek, about twelve miles south of Fort Scott. The Indian Office field employees had ministered to their needs promptly, if not efficiently; but, towards the close of the year, to the great surprise and financial embarrassment of Superintendent Coffin and under pretext of restoring them immediately to their homes, the army, ordered thereto by General Blunt, had removed them, bag and baggage, to Neosho. There they had remained, their position increasingly precarious and their condition, because of the desolateness of the region and its inaccessibility to adequate supplies, increasingly miserable, until March, 1863.

By that time, General Blunt had made his peace with Superintendent Coffin although he had failed to keep his promises to the Indians, who, as a result of unrealized hopes, were becoming daily more fractious, both the refugees and their kin in the Indian Brigade. Colonel Phillips of the Third Indian Regiment, which was wholly Cherokee, sympathised with them; for only too well he knew the lack of consideration shown the loyal Indian and the secondary place he was forced to occupy in the public estimation. Despised, disappointed, discouraged, the Indian Home Guards were getting mutinous. Moreover, southwestern Missouri, if not "a perfect den of rebels," as Coffin, in his chagrin and indignation had described it, was no fit place for helpless women and children.

With the first indication of the breaking up of winter, Colonel Phillips recommended, in strong terms, the resumption of the task of refugee restoration and solicited, for it, the assistance of the southern superintendent, heretofore ignored. Coffin responded with secret elation; for, by appealing to him, the military authorities had tacitly acknowledged the ineptitude of which he constantly accused them. Agents Justin Harlan and A. G. Proctor were detailed to conduct the expedition and early in April the majority of the Cherokee refugees were again in their own country.

Before departing from Neosho, Harlan had come to an understanding with Phillips by which the two had agreed that the reconstruction work should begin on the Tahlequah side of the Arkansas, where beeves and milch cows were yet to be had. Seeds had been provided by the Department of Agriculture and gardening implements by that of the Interior, so all was in readiness; but Phillips with the vacillation, which seems to have been his crowning fault, changed the plan at the last moment and without seeking further advice from his fellow in authority. He crossed the line at about the same time Harlan's company did and at once issued an order for the establishment of six different posts, or points of distribution. As a result, the refugees scattered in all directions. The problem of protecting them became a serious one. The Confederates were still lingering in the country. No attempt had been made to oust them before undertaking the return of the refugees. No expected accretion came to swell Phillips's command. Indeed, before very long he was in danger of having to fall back into Kansas; for Blunt's troops were nearly all being drawn off "for the purpose of re-enforcing General Herron in Missouri." The Indian Brigade, Phillips in command, intrenched itself at Fort Gibson and there, too, the now doubly disappointed refugees eventually huddled so as to profit by the protection of its garrison, their range limited, scarcely any farming possible. It was most vexatious, since, if the original plan had been carried out, a force of about two hundred men might have been ample to protect Tahlequah. Harlan was beside himself with indignation and especially so when its own meagre resources exhausted, the brigade had to borrow from the produce intended for the subsistence of the refugees. The replenishment of supplies was something no one dared count upon with any certainty. There was nothing to be obtained south of Fort Scott; for the country intervening between that place and Fort Gibson was totally uncultivated. It had been devastated over and over again and was now practically denuded of everything upon which to support life. Moreover, it was infested with bushwhackers, who roamed hither and thither, raiding when they could, terrorizing, murdering. And then, not one of them but like unto them, there was Stand Watie, Cherokee chief of the Ridge faction, staunch Confederate, who, insatiably bent upon vengeance, harrowed the country right and left or lay in wait, with his secessionist tribesmen, for any chance supply train that might be wending its way towards Gibson.

As the summer advanced, the wants of the restored refugees grew apace and proportionately their despair. So pitiable was their state, mentally and physically, with no prospect of amelioration that the most hard-hearted of the onlookers was moved to compassion. Rumors were afloat that they were to be sent back to Kansas, since military protection, poor as it was, might at any moment have to be withdrawn. Such a confession of failure was unavoidable under the circumstances. The situation was most perplexing. As late as June, Blunt was not able to furnish large enough escorts for supply trains, so depleted was his army, and recruits had to be sought for from among the refugees at Belmont. The turn in the tide came, fortunately, soon afterwards and Phillips received his long-lookedfor re-enforcements. Local conditions were not much improved, however, and stories about the necessity of forcing another exodus still continued to circulate. They had their foundation in fact and Coffin was in agreement with Phillips that return across the border might be advisable for the winter months. In southern Kansas, provisions were plentiful and cheap, while supply trains were a costly experiment and a provocation to the enemy.

Superintendent Coffin expressed exasperation at the whole proceeding. "The contrariness and interference manifested by the military authorities" 67 had annoyed him exceedingly and he rated restoration under their auspices as at the maximum in impudence and at the minimum in accomplishment. If they would but do their rightful part, clear the country of Confederates and render it safe for occupancy by the defenceless wards of the nation, the remaining refugees, those living miscellaneously in Kansas, might be returned.

With effective military protection as a prerequisite, he accordingly recommended their return. That was in September, when he made his annual report. His prerequisite was a large order; for it was most unlikely that the War Department would arrange its affairs with reference to Indian comfort and safety as matters for primary concern. It had never thus far been overzealous to co-operate with the Indian Office. As compared with the great needs of the nation, in times so critical, the welfare of aborigines was a mere bagatelle. It might be thrown to the winds; they, in fact, annihilated and no thought taken.

The reasons for expediting refugee restoration were many and more than balanced, in importance at all events, the elements of previous failure. They were chiefly of two kinds, financial and personal. The cost of maintenance had been a heavy charge upon tribal funds, both regular and diverted. The expenditure of relief money had given satisfaction to nobody unless, possibly, to contractors. The estimates had mounted every quarter. To Coffin, Dole had conceded a large discretion. He probably knew his man and his own conduct may not have been impeccable. At any rate, from the official point of view, Coffin greatly abused the trust reposed in him and, even if not guilty of positive dishonesty as charged by his enemies, was not always wise in his decisions. To Dole's disgust, he spent refugee relief money for resident Kansas tribes, temporarily embarrassed, although they had large tribal funds of their own and, in individual cases, were really well to do. At the same time, he grumbled because he was forced to stint the true refugees, his allowance not being nearly enough, and he begrudged any portion of it to the Cherokees in Indian Territory, who, though ostensibly restored, were in a most distressful state, wretchedly poor.

The Indians in all localities were dissatisfied. They were tired of privation, tired of changed habits of life, and they were homesick. "The strange attachment of these Indians," wrote P.P. Elder, "to their country and homes from which they were driven, and their great desire to return thither, continue unabated." Elder wrote thus of the insignificant Neosho Agency tribes; but what he said might have applied to any. The Seminoles, who at Neosho Falls were more comfortable than most of the refugees, suffering less, put up a pitiful plea. Their old chief, Billy Bowlegs, wellknown to the government because of his exploits in Florida, was away with the army at Camp Bentonville; but he wrote sadly of his own hope of return to the country that he had not set foot in since the war began. That country was endeared to him, not because it held the bones of his ancestors but simply because it was home. Home recovered would mean re-union with his family. He envied the Cherokee soldiers, who were now in close touch with their women and children. He admitted there was great confusion in the Indian Territory; but he had noticed empty houses there, deserted, in which he was childishly confident his people might find shelter. His communications fired the enthusiasm of those same people and they begged their Great Father to send them back. They would go, no matter what impediments athwart their way and they would go that very fall. Agent Snow doubted their being able to maintain themselves in their devastated country during the winter; but the thought did not deter them. They had known a scarcity of food in Kansas the preceding year and might fare better farther south. Anyhow, they could burn green wood as they pleased, which they had not been allowed to do on the white man's land. They had taken everything into consideration and where the Great Father's energy ended theirs would begin.

The homesickness of the refugees was due to a variety of causes and not of least consequence was the enforced change in their habits of living. Let it be remembered that they had come from homes of comfort and plenty. In Indian Territory, they had lived in up-to-date houses and had fed upon fruit and vegetables and abundantly upon meat. In Kansas, cast-off army tents were their portion and frequently damaged grain their diet. The tents had not been enough to protect them from the inclemency of the weather, their clothes were threadbare, their bodies under-nourished. The mortality among them had been appalling and only very recently on the decline. Moreover, they were apprehensive of what was being charged against their account; for they, from long experience, had no illusions as to the white man's generosity. The whisperings of graft and peculation were not unheeded by them and their mutterings echoed political recriminations. They were conscious that they had outstayed their welcome in Kansas, that citizens, who were not profiting from the expenditure of the relief money, were clamoring for them to be gone. On the Ottawa Reservation, and to some extent on the Sac and Fox, their red hosts had ceased to be sympathetic.

Practically, all of the agents in the southern superintendency with the exception of Harlan advised the return of the refugees to Indian Territory and they advised that it be undertaken early. Coleman apparently seconded the urgent appeal of his charges that they be sent home "the earliest practicable moment."

A return in the autumn or the winter would permit them to "gather cattle and hogs sufficient to furnish meat, and at the same time prepare their fields for a spring crop, thereby obviating the obligation of the government to subsist and clothe them." The Creeks were, however, afraid to venture before assurance was forthcoming that their enemies had certainly been cleaned out. Were that assurance to come, it would bring conviction of another thing, that secessionist Indians, now despondent, had returned to their allegiance to the United States government. There were many indications that they were wavering in their adherence to the Confederacy. For their return, as for refugee restoration, military protection would have to be a preliminary provision and it would have to extend beyond the confines of Fort Gibson and southward as well as northward of the Arkansas River. That river ought to be opened to navigation. Were transit once rendered safe, the Indians would haul their own supplies; but they wanted more than the Cherokee country cleared and protected. The Chickasaws, for instance, could not go back until such time as Forts Washita and Arbuckle had been seized and garrisoned. A small incompetent force in Indian Territory was worse than none at all. It simply invited attack and, if not augmented, should be withdrawn.

The wheels of governmental action turn slowly and the winter months of 1863 came and went with no forward movement for refugee restoration. In January of the next year, the agitation for it reached Congress and, on the twenty-seventh, the Senate Indian committee, through its chairman, called upon Usher for his opinion as to whether "the state of affairs" would not allow a return to Indian Territory in time for the raising of a crop. On the fifth of February, Dole consulted with General Blunt, who was then in Washington and who might be presumed to possess some expert knowledge of the subject. Blunt replied to the effect that the refugees ought most assuredly to be reinstated in their own country to prevent demoralization among them; but that the serious obstacle to the carrying out of so desirable a policy was the lack of military protection. "Since the creation of the Department of Kansas all the troops heretofore serving in the District of the Frontier, except three Regiments of Indian Home Guards at Fort Gibson (very much decimated) are reporting to General Steele in the Department of Missouri." The Indian country was somewhat removed from all convenient sources of supply, the Arkansas was closed to navigation, and stores had to be transported long distances over interior lines. It "required a large portion of the small military force there to protect the trains." The difficulties in the way of obtaining supplies were the main reasons why the Federals were occupying so small a section of the Indian country. Blunt's recommendation was, a reorganization of the western departments so as to give to General Curtis, in command of the Department of Kansas, the control of the "two western tiers of the counties of Arkansas" and most certainly of Fort Smith, the supply depot of Indian Territory. Sufficient troops must be furnished to permit of "successful operations both defensive and offensive."

Possessed of this additional information, the Senate carried its inquiries to the War Department and ascertained from its secretary that no reason was known there why the refugees should not return. Accordingly, on the third of March, James H. Lane introduced a joint resolution calling for their removal from Kansas. He gave their number as ninety-two hundred and the monthly cost of their maintenance as sixty thousand dollars. The resolution was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. On the twenty-second, he sent to Dole a paper, signed by members of the Indian committee of each house, earnestly recommending an immediate return to Indian Territory so as to make the putting in of a crop that season possible. Congress appropriated the requisite funds.

How Secretary Stanton, with all the facts before him, the facts alleged by General Blunt and true, could have conscientiously conveyed the impression that he did convey to the Senate Indian committee is a mystery. The restored Cherokees had not been sent back to Kansas as at one time proposed. Their own feelings would have been against such a move had it ever been seriously contemplated; but for reasons, military and economic, not to say political, they had been retained in Indian Territory. More and more their numbers were in one way added to and in another taken from. Malnutrition, overcrowding and bad hygienic conditions generally offered fertile soil for diseases. Small-pox alone carried the refugees off by hundreds. Medical aid, reported by Agent Cox as "indispensably necessary," was not to be had and military protection was even less of a factor in the alleviation of misery than it had been. Guerrillas raided and robbed at will. It was only directly under the guns of Fort Gibson that life and property were at all secure.

Late in the autumn, the Cherokee authorities, taking cognizance of all such facts and fearing lest longer delay might result in unmitigated woe to the nation, resolved to make one last desperate appeal for effective military aid. The National Council, therefore, authorized the appointment of a deputation that should call upon General McNeil and acquaint him with all the circumstances of the case. The special boon asked of him should be, either such a disposition of the Indian Brigade as would be a defence in actuality or permission to raise a real Home Guard. In course of time, news of the mission reached Washington and its object was brought through the instrumentality of General Canby to the attention of the War Department. The official comment to the effect that the commander of the Department of Kansas would no doubt afford protection to the restored refugees was almost ironical in view of the fact that, by general orders of April seventeenth, Indian Territory was detached from that department and given to General Steele, commanding the rival one of Arkansas. Of so little account had been General Blunt's intimation that a part of Arkansas should be added to Curtis' command if anything really remedial were in contemplation for the refugees, restored or to be restored.

The expeditious removal of a horde of human beings, more or less helpless by reason of sex, age or condition, was not the easy undertaking some people thought it. Anticipatory of congressional action, Superintendent Coffin prepared, in February, to transfer his office to Fort Smith by April first; but at that point his activity halted. Kansas food contractors were interested in the further detention of the refugees and they had one unanswerable argument, the same that Thomas Carney advanced in a letter of April twelfth to Dole, that it was already too late in the season to remove prospective agriculturists. In Indian Territory, the spring opens in March. The law, appropriating the necessary funds, was not enacted until May. Nevertheless, the senatorial advocates of removal persisted in prodding the Indian Office and, on April fourteenth, a resolution was passed requesting the president "to communicate to the Senate the reasons, if any exist, why the refugee Indians in the State of Kansas are not returned to their homes." The response, which Dole communicated to Usher, May 11, 1864, ought to have been disconcerting to more than one department of the government since it was a plain statement of discreditable facts that funds had not been forthcoming and that the same causes that made the southern Indians refugees still operated, their country being exposed perpetually "to incursions of roving bands of rebels or hostile Indians."

The shortcomings of the military arrangement that had separated Indian Territory from Kansas became startlingly obvious when Coffin applied for an armed escort and found that Curtis could furnish him with one to the border only. General Steele was far away "at or near Shreveport" and therefore Coffin telegraphed to Dole, hoping that he might be able to get an order for troops direct from the War Department. The Red River expedition was in progress and it was not to be wondered at that Steele, absorbed in affairs of great import, affairs that were to terminate so disastrously, was inattentive to Coffin's call. The superintendent's preparations went on notwithstanding, the obstacles in his way multiplying daily; for the refugees, informed as to the military situation, were averse to courting new and untried dangers, small-pox raged among the Seminoles, and he had little latitude in the expenditure of funds, Congress having so hedged its appropriation about with restrictions. He still pleaded for an additional armed force and his prayer was eventually answered. On May twenty-sixth, Stanton notified Usher that General Steele had been directed to furnish an escort from the Kansas border onward.

The getting of the refugees ready for removal was, to Coffin's mind, the most difficult job he had ever undertaken. The Leased District Indians refused pointblank to go. Fort Gibson was not in the direction of home for them and they preferred to hazard subsisting themselves on the Walnut, where antelope and buffalo ranged, to journeying thither. For a time it seemed impossible to procure enough teams. The Indians were "very fearful." Some of the Creeks had to be left behind sick at the Sac and Fox Agency and quite a lot of the Seminoles at Neosho Falls No attempt was made, on this occasion, to lure the Quapaws and their neighbors from the Ottawa Reservation. Their home not being even passably safe, they were to remain north, for a period, with Agent Elder, their differences with their hosts being no longer cause for uneasiness. The procession, when it finally started, included nearly five thousand refugees and, by the end of May, it had reached, without molestation, the Osage Catholic Mission. There it awaited the coming of the supplementary escort.

Meanwhile, affairs were in bad shape at Fort Gibson. There was discord everywhere, between white and red people and between civilians and soldiery, and the food contractors were responsible for most of it. Those were the days when cattle-stealing became a public scandal but more of it anon. The discord between white and red people existed both inside and outside the army. Inside the army, it was a matter as between officers and men and was most apparent when Colonel Phillips took the Indian Brigade on an expedition towards the Red River early in the year. The bickerings that arose between the white officers and the Indian rank and file soon grew notorious and were chiefly caused by the disputed ownership of ponies. Litigation succeeded altercation and there was no end to the bad feeling engendered. Fortunately, the Indian plaintiff had friends at court in the person of government agents and the brigade commander, Colonel Phillips standing well the test of "earnest and substantial friend."

The troubles caused by the contractors were more widespread and of more lasting effect. They grew out of peculations and the delivery of inferior goods. Flour furnished for the refugees, when inspected, was found to be worthless as far as its food properties and appetizing qualities were concerned. "Some of it was nothing but 'shorts,' the rest, the poorest flour manufactured." Agent Harlan accepted it only because "the Indians had been over 30 days without bread," and he knew, if he rejected it, that "they would get none until spring." T. C. Stevens and Company were contractors in this affair and the only circumstance that Coffin could offer in extenuation of their conduct was the great difficulty always "experienced in obtaining a good article of flour in southern Kansas . . . in consequence of the inferior character of the mills in that new and sparsely settled country . ., " Similar complaints were made of the firm of Mac-Donald and Fuller. Was it any wonder that the refugees felt themselves neglected, abused, and outraged?

The advance guard of Coffin's refugee train reached Fort Gibson June 15. Its progress had been hampered by minor vicissitudes, cattle thieves and thunderstorms, all natural to the region. The condition of affairs north of the Arkansas was at the time most unsatisfactory; for the Federals had military control of Forts Smith and Gibson only and "everything," so complained the superintendent, "done out of range of the guns of the forts has to be done under an escort or guard." The Creeks, who comprised the major portion of the refugees, could not be taken to their own country unless General Thayer should consent to erect a military post within its limits. For the time being they were, therefore, to remain with the Cherokees, a bad arrangement. The Chickasaws were to go eastward to Fort Smith where they would be a trifle nearer home than would be the case were they to remain at Gibson. Their own country, though, was considerably far to the westward, beyond the Choctaw. It was now too late to put in regular crops and consequently subsistence would have to be furnished as before and at a far greater cost. Coffin estimated the number of refugees at close upon sixteen thousand and the expense, he feared, would "be truly enormous." The Indians would have to be put at once "on the shortest kind of rations." Coffee, sugar, vinegar, condiments and everything else that could by any manner of means be dispensed with would have to be "cut off altogether." The prospect was not encouraging and Coffin, almost at his wit's end, despairingly wrote that "the military have most wonderfully changed their tune."

There was soon occasion for more particular criticism of army practices. In April, General Blunt had issued an order, well-intentioned no doubt, restraining the Indians from selling their stock. He had likewise ordered the seizure of certain salt-works, "salines," the value of which to the Indians can be calculated only by reference to the prominence given in all early records to the salt-licks used in turn by buffalos, aborgines, settlers. In the case of each of Blunt's orders, the immediate object in view was the benefit, not of private individuals, but of soldiers. Moreover, as the Indian crops matured, those same soldiers helped themselves freely to grain and other produce, the outcome of the labour of "helpless women and children," and they did it quite regardless of Indian needs. A real grievance existed and the intervention of the War Department was besought for its redress. Things went from bad to worse. Illicit traffic in Indian cattle added its nefariousness to the general disorder and the conduct of the military authorities was deemed as iniquitous as that of the contractors. Phillips himself did not pass muster. He was as unpopular with one set of men as Blunt was with another. Before long Indians, too, came to share in the cattle-driving. The Wichita Agency tribes were the chief offenders and they stole from the Creek country mostly; but they also made excursions into the Cherokee and down into Texas. White men went frequently with them. It was commonly supposed that few of such raiders ever returned alive; but the profits were worth the risk. And there was raiding in other directions. Supply trains preferred to go unescorted; for the military guard had more than once been a raiding party in disguise. Everything conduced to confusion.

Moreover, there was suffering nearly everywhere. Positive destitution made its appearance in July. It was then that Coffin resented the expenditure of money for the support of John Ross and the rest of the Cherokee delegation in Washington. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs tried to get Choctaw bonds diverted to refugee relief. When the autumn came, clothing and blankets were solicited as well as food. Appealed to for the amelioration of an all too-evident distress, President Lincoln gave his approval to the making of purchases on credit. In Kansas, conditions among the Indians were equally bad. The Seminoles at Neosho Falls were reported naked and famishing in August. Earlier yet a cry of want had come from the Weas, Peorias, Kaskaskias, and Piankeshaws, whose lands were on the Missouri border and subject to raids and whose funds had not materialized during the war. They had been invested in interest-bearing stock by the United States government and, in some mysterious way and without consultation with the Indians, had been converted, just previous to the outbreak of hostilities, into stock of the secessionist states. There were those in Congress who repudiated every idea of responsibility resting upon the government for the substitution and, while senators quibbled over whether relief should be furnished as of right or as a matter of charity, the despoiled and too-trusting Indians starved.

A disposition to shirk responsibility did not reveal itself in connection with the matter of the substituted stocks only but came out again in the Senate debate on the condition and treatment of the restored refugees, restored only in the sense that they had been taken back into the Indian country. An item in the annual Indian appropriation bill carried seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for their relief. It was no mean figure and it was based as much upon past expenditures as upon present needs. Senator Brown considered that the Indians had less claim upon the generosity - if that be what it should be called - of the government than had the people of Missouri, his constituents, or than had the unpaid soldier everywhere. Doolittle disputed the point by recalling the circumstances of the abandonment by the United States, the consequent exposure to intimidation and attack, and the expulsion from home with all its attendant miseries. The terrible havoc wrought in the Cherokee country he expatiated upon with vigor, contending that the argument put up by the opposition to the effect that the spoliation, desolation, destruction were the work of Indians, guilty of defection, only made the matter worse for the government and the consequent obligation resting upon it all the greater; since the United States had sworn to protect against both foreign and domestic foe. Brown's concluding charge that three-fourths of the ''donation" would, in his belief, "go in the shape of fraudulent contracts," it was not so easy to refute and Doolittle discreetly ignored it. Like Banquo's ghost, however, it was bound to reappear; for charges against the contractors and their accomplices or abettors were constantly being insinuated if not formally lodged. The whole matter would have to be threshed out, investigated thoroughly, ere many moons had passed.

The abuses of the system, supposing that the way the refugees were provided for can be distinguished by so dignified a name, were all the time creeping out. Charges and countercharges against individuals as responsible for the abuses were of disgusting and appalling frequency and, even if large allowance be made for personal malice, tribal animosities, trade rivalries as well as for the old Indian distrust of white men and for the old jealousy between civil and military authorities there was yet enough to merit the strongest opprobrium then and now. The money was going and yet there was absolutely no visible alleviation of misery. There was much of truth in Senator Sherman's observations that "if we could protect them (the Indians) from our own race, if we could leave them alone without a dollar, with no white man, woman, or child within fifty miles of them, they could take better care of themselves than we could with all our appropriations for them. Their troubles have grown out of their contact with white men ... I do not know but that we had better bring these fifteen thousand Indians to the city of New York and send them to the Astor House or some other comfortable place and take care of them. The same rule applied to the support of all the people of the United States would ruin us as a nation in six months . . .

A particular instance of the mismanagement and shortsightedness of the powers that were is to be found in the very location of refugees other than Cherokee. The Creeks were detained near Fort Gibson and, in the dead of winter, were encamped on the west side of the Grand River in a low wet swamp within two or three miles of their own boundary. The pretext for their detention was that the government could not protect them far from the fort. Within sight of home, precariously sustained by what was, in popular ignorance dubbed charity, they yet had the mortification of knowing that their country was being denuded of its cattle and that very cattle sold by contractors to the government for refugee consumption. Military authorities regarded the cattle as contraband, not so the Indians. It was their opinion that all property left in the Creek country ought rightfully to belong to that part of the Nation that had remained loyal.