Map showing free Negro Settlements in the Creek country

When Calhoun mapped out the Indian country in his elaborate report of 1825, the selection of the trans-Missouri region might well have been regarded as judicious. Had the plan of general removal been adopted then, before sectional interests had wholly vitiated it, the United States government might have gained and, in a measure, would have richly deserved the credit of doing at least one thing for the protection and preservation of the aborigines from motives, not self-interested, but purely humanitarian. The moment was opportune. The territory of the United States was then limited by the confines of the Louisiana Purchase and its settlements by the great American desert. Traders only had penetrated to any considerable extent to the base of the Rockies; but experience already gained might have taught that their presence was portentous and significant of the need of haste; that is, if Calhoun’s selection were to continue judicious; for traders, as has been amply proved in both British and American history, have ever been but the advance agents of settlers.

Unfortunately for the cause of pure philanthropy, the United States government was exceedingly slow in adopting the plan of Indian removal; but its citizens were by no means equally slow in developing the spirit of territorial expansion. Their successful seizure of West Florida had fired their ambition and their cupidity. With Texas annexed and lower Oregon occupied, the selection of the trans-Missouri region had ceased to be judicious. How could the Indians expect to be secure in a country that was the natural highway to a magnificent country beyond, invitingly open to settlement! But this very pertinent and patent fact the officials at Washington singularly failed to realize and they went on calmly assuring the Indians that they should never be disturbed again, that the federal government would protect them in their rights and against all enemies, that no white man should be allowed to intrude upon them, that they should hold their lands undiminished forever, and that no state or territorial lines should ever again circumscribe them. Such promises were decidedly fatuous, dead letters long before the ink that recorded them had had time to dry. The Mexican War followed the annexation of Texas and its conquests necessitated a further use of the Indian highway. Soldiers that fought in that war saw the Indian land and straightway coveted it. Forty-niners saw it and coveted it also. Prospectors and adventurers of all sorts laid plans for exploiting it. It entered as a determining factor into Benton’s great scheme for building a national road that should connect the Atlantic and Pacific shores and with the inception of that came a very sudden and a very real danger; for the same great scheme precipitated, although in an indirect sort of way, the agitation for the opening up of Kansas and Nebraska to white settlement, which, of course, meant that the recent Indian colonists, in spite of all the solemn governmental guaranties that had been given to them, would have to be ousted, for would not the “sovereign” people of America demand it? Then, too, the Dred Scott decision, the result of a dishonorable political collusion as it was,15 militated indirectly against Indian interests. It is true that it was only in its extra-legal aspect that it did this but it did it none the less; for, if the authority of the federal government was not supreme in the territories and not supreme in any part of the country not yet organized into states, then the Indian landed property rights in the West that rested exclusively upon federal grant, under the Removal Act of 1830, were virtually nil. It is rather interesting to observe, in this connection, how inconsistent human nature is when political expediency is the thing at stake; for it happened that the same people and the same party, identically, that, in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, had tried to convince the Indians, and against their better judgment too, that the red man would be forever unmolested in the western country because the federal government owned it absolutely and could give a title in perpetuity, argued, in the fourth and fifth decades, that the states were the sole proprietors, that they were, in fact, the joint owners of everything heretofore considered as national. Inferentially, therefore, Indians, like negroes, had no rights that white men were bound to respect.

The crucial point has now been reached in this discussion. From the date of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the sectional affiliation of the Indian country became a thing of more than passing moment. Whatever may have been John C. Calhoun’s ulterior and real motive in urging that the trans-Missouri region be closed to white settlement forever, whether he did, as some of his abolitionist enemies have charged, plan thus to block free-state expansion and so frustrate the natural operations of the Missouri Compromise, certain it is, that southern politicians, after his time, became the chief advocates of Indian territorial integrity, the ones that pleaded most often and most noisily that guaranties to Indians be faithfully respected. They had in mind the northern part of the Indian country and that alone; but, no doubt, the circumstance was purely accidental, since at that time, the early fifties, the northern16 was the only part likely to be encroached upon.17 Their interest in the southern part took an entirely different direction and that also may have been accidental or occasioned by conditions quite local and present. For this southern part, by the way, they recommended American citizenship and the creation of American states18 in the Union, also a territorial organization immediately that should look towards that end. Such advice came as early as 1853, at least, and was more natural than would at first glance appear; for the southern tribes were huge in population, in land, and in resources. They were civilized, had governments and laws modelled upon the American, and more than all else, they were southern in origin, in characteristics, and in institutions.

The project for organizing19 the territories of Kansas and Nebraska caused much excitement, as well it might, among the Indian immigrants, even though the Wyandots, in 1852, had, in a measure, anticipated it by initiating a somewhat similar movement in their own restricted locality.20 Most of the tribes comprehended to the full the ominous import of territorial organization; for, obviously, it could not be undertaken except at a sacrifice of Indian guaranties. At the moment some of the tribes, notably the Choctaw and Chickasaw,21 were having domestic troubles that threatened a neighborhood war and the new fear of the white man’s further aggrandizement threw them into despair. The southern Indians, generally, were much more exercised and much more alarmed than were the northern.22 Being more highly civilized, they were better able to comprehend the drift of events. Experience had made them unduly sagacious where their territorial and treaty rights were concerned, and well they knew that, although the Douglas measure did not in itself directly affect them or their country, it might easily become the forerunner of one that would.

The border strife, following upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, disturbed in no slight degree the Indians on the Kansas reservations, which, by-the-by, had been very greatly reduced in area by the Manypenny treaties of 1853-1854. Some of the reserves lay right in the heart of the contested territory, free-state men intrenching themselves among the Delawares and pro-slavery men among the Shawnees,23 the former north and the latter south of the Kansas River. But even remoteness of situation constituted no safeguard against encroachment. All along the Missouri line the squatters took possession. The distant Cherokee Neutral Lands24 and the Osage and New York Indian reservations25 were all invaded.26 The Territorial Act had expressly excluded Indian land from local governmental control; but the Kansas authorities of both parties utterly ignored, in their administration of affairs, this provision. The first districting of the territory for election purposes comprehended, for instance, the Indian lands, yet little criticism has ever been passed upon that grossly illegal act. Needless to say, the controversy between slavocracy and freedom obscured and obliterated, in those years, all other considerations.

As the year 1860 approached, appearances assumed an even more serious aspect. Kansas settlers and would-be settlers demanded that the Indians, so recently the only legal occupants of the territory, vacate it altogether. So soon had the policy of granting them peace and undisturbed repose on diminished reserves proved futile. The only place for the Indian to go, were he indeed to be driven out of Kansas, was present Oklahoma; but his going there would, perforce, mean an invasion of the property rights of the southern tribes, a matter of great moment to them but seemingly of no moment whatsoever to the white man. Some of the Kansas Indians saw in removal southward a temporary refuge—they surely could not have supposed it would be other than temporary—and were glad to go, making their arrangements accordingly.27 Some, however, had to be cajoled into promising to go and some had to be forced. A few held out determinedly against all thought of going. Among the especially obstinate ones were the Osages,28 natives of the soil. The Buchanan government failed utterly to convince them of the wisdom of going and was, thereupon, charged by the free-state Kansans with bad faith, with not being sincere and sufficiently persistent in its endeavors to treat, its secret purpose being to keep the free-state line as far north as possible. The breaking out of the Civil War prevented the immediate removal of any of the tribes but did not put a stop to negotiations looking towards that end.

All this time there was another influence within the Indian country, north and south, that boded good or ill as the case might be. This influence emanated from the religious denominations represented on the various reserves. Nowhere in the United States, perhaps, was the rivalry among churches that had divided along sectional lines in the forties and fifties stronger than within the Indian country. There the churches contended with each other at close range. The Indian country was free and open to all faiths, while, in the states, the different churches kept strictly to their own sections, the southern contingent of each denomination staying close to the institution it supported. Of course the United States government, through its civilization fund, was in a position to show very pointedly its sectional predilections. It will probably never be known, because so difficult of determination, just how much the churches aided or retarded the spread of slavery.29

Among the tribes of Kansas, denominational strength was distributed as follows: The Kickapoos30 and Wyandots31 were Methodists; but, while the former were a unit in their adherence to the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the latter were divided and among them the older church continued strong. The American Baptist Missionary Union had a school on the Delaware reservation and, previous to 1855, had had one also on the Shawnee, which the political uproar in Kansas had obliged to close its doors. These same Northern Baptists were established also among the Ottawas, as the Moravians were among the Munsees and the Roman Catholics32 among the Osages and the Potawatomies. The Southern Baptists were likewise to be found among the Potawatomies33 and the Southern Methodists among the Shawnees. The Shawnee Manual Labor School, under the Southern Methodists, was, however, only very grudgingly patronized by the Indians. Its situation near the Missouri border was partly accountable for this as it was for the selection of the school as the meeting-place of the pro-slavery legislature in 1855. The management of the institution was from time to time severely criticized and the superintendent, the Reverend Thomas Johnson, an intense pro-slavery agitator,34 was strongly suspected of malfeasance,35 of enriching himself, forsooth, at the expense of the Indians. The school found a formidable rival, from this and many another cause, in a Quaker establishment, which likewise existed on the Shawnee Reserve but independently of either tribal or governmental aid.

If church influences and church quarrels were discernible among the northern tribes, they were certainly very much more so among the southern. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational) that had labored so zealously for the Cherokees, when they were east of the Mississippi, extended its interest to them undiminished in the west; and, in the period just before the Civil War,36 was the strongest religious force in their country. There it had no less than four mission stations37 and a flourishing school in connection with each. The same organization was similarly influential among the Choctaws38 or, in the light of what eventually happened, it might better be said its missionaries were. Both Southern and Northern Baptists and Southern Methodists likewise were to be found among the Cherokees;39 Presbyterians40 and Southern Methodists among the Chickasaws and Choctaws; and Presbyterians only among the Creeks and Seminoles. In every Indian nation south, except the Creek and Seminole,41 the work of denominational schools was supplemented, or maybe neutralized, by that of public and neighborhood schools.

True to the traditions and to the practices of the old Puritans and of the Plymouth church, the missionaries of the American Board,42 so strongly installed among the Choctaws and the Cherokees, took an active interest in passing political affairs, particularly in connection with the slavery agitation. On that question, they early divided themselves into two camps; those among the Choctaws, led by the Reverend Cyrus Kingsbury,43 supporting slavery; and those among the Cherokees, led by the Reverend S. A. Worcester,44 opposing it. The actions of the former led to a controversy with the American Board and, in 1855, the malcontents, or pro-slavery sympathizers, expressed a desire to separate themselves and their charges from its patronage.45 When, eventually, this separation did occur, 1859-1860, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (Old School) stepped into the breach.46

The rebellious conduct of the Congregational missionaries met with the undisguised approval of the Choctaw agent, Douglas H. Cooper,47 formerly of Mississippi. It was he who had already voiced a nervous apprehension, as exhibited in the following document,48 that the Indian country was in grave danger of being abolitionized:

If things go on as they are now doing, in 5 years slavery will be abolished in the whole of your superintendency.

(Private) I am convinced that something must be done speedily to arrest the systematic efforts of the Missionaries to abolitionize the Indian Country.

Otherwise we shall have a great run-away harbor, a sort of Canada—with “underground rail-roads” leading to & through it—adjoining Arkansas and Texas.

It is of no use to look to the General Government—its arm is paralized by the abolition strength of the North.

I see no way except secretly to induce the Choctaws & Cherokees & Creeks to allow slave-holders to settle among their people & control the movement now going on to abolish slavery among them.

C—

Cooper sent this note, in 1854, as a private memorandum to the southern superintendent, who at the time was Charles W. Dean. In 1859, it was possible for him to write to Dean’s successor, Elias Rector, in a very different tone. The missionaries had then taken the stand he himself advocated and there was reason for congratulation. Under such circumstances, Cooper wrote,

I cannot close this report without calling your attention to the admirable tone and feeling pervading the reports of superintendents of schools and missionaries among the Choctaws, and particularly to that of the Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin, one of the oldest missionaries among the Choctaws, who, in referring to past political disturbances, says: “We have looked upon our rulers as the ‘powers that be, are ordained of God,’ and have respected them for this reason. ‘Whomsoever, therefore, resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God’ (Romans, xiii, 2). This has been our rule of action during the political excitement. We believe that the Bible is the best guide for us to follow. Our best citizens are those most influenced by Bible truth.”

I rejoice to believe the above sentiments are entertained by most, if not all, the missionaries now among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and that they entirely repudiate the higher-law doctrine49 of northern and religious fanatics. It is but lately, as I learn, that the Choctaw mission, for many years under the control of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (whose headquarters are at Boston) has been cut off, because they preferred to follow the teachings of the Bible, as understood by them, rather than obey the dogmas contained in Dr. Treat’s letter and the edicts of the parent board.

It is a matter of congratulation among the friends of the old Choctaw missionaries, who have labored for thirty years among them, and intend to die with armor on, that all connection with the Boston board has been dissolved. If it had been done years ago, when their freedom of conscience and of missionary action was attempted to be controlled by the parent board, much of suspicion, of ill-feeling, and diminished usefulness, which attached to the Choctaw missionaries in consequence of their connection with and sustenance by a board avowedly and openly hostile to southern institutions, would have been prevented.50

In the next year, 1860, Cooper was still sanguine as to affairs among the Indians of his agency and he could report to Rector, unhesitatingly, as if confident of official endorsement both at Forth Smith and at Washington,51

Great excitement has prevailed along the Texas border, in consequence of the incendiary course pursued in that State by horse thieves and religious fanatics; but I am glad to say, as yet, so far as I am informed, no necessity has existed in this agency for the organization of “vigilance committees” ... No doubt we have among us free-soilers; perhaps abolitionists in sentiment; but, so far as I am informed, persons from the North, residing among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who entertain opinions unfriendly to our system of domestic slavery, keep their opinions to themselves and attend to their legitimate business.52

George Butler, the United States agent for the Cherokees, seems to have been, no less than Cooper, an adherent of the State Rights Party and an upholder of the institution of slavery. In 1859, he ascribed the very great material progress of the Cherokees to the fact that they were slaveholders.53 Slavery, in Butler’s opinion, had operated as an incentive to all industrial pursuits. To an extent this may have been true, since all Indians, no matter how high their type, have an aversion for work. As Professor Shaler once said, they are the truest aristocrats the world has ever known. But the slaveholders among the great tribes of the South were, for the most part, the half-breeds, the cleverest and often, much as we may regret to have to admit it, the most unscrupulous men of the community.

Butler’s commission as Indian agent expired in March, 1860, and he was not reappointed, Robert J. Cowart of Georgia54 being preferred. This man, illiterate and unprincipled, immediately set to work to perform a task to which his predecessor had proved unequal. The task was the removal of white intruders from the Cherokee country. For some time past, the southern superintendent and the agents under him, to say nothing of Commissioner Greenwood and Secretary Thompson, the one a citizen of Arkansas and the other of Mississippi, had resented most bitterly the invasion of the Cherokee Neutral Lands by Kansas free-soilers and the division of it into counties by the unlawfully assumed authority of the Kansas legislature. The resentment was thoroughly justifiable; for the whole proceeding of the legislature was contrary to the express enactment of Congress; but no doubt, enthusiasm for the strict enforcement of the federal law came largely from political predilections, precisely as the Kansan’s outrageous defiance of it came from a deep-rooted distrust of the Buchanan administration.

There were, however, other intruders that Cowart and Rector and Greenwood designed to remove and they wanted to remove them on the ground that they were making mischief within the tribe and interfering with its institutions, or, more specifically, with slavery. The intruders meant were principally the missionaries against whom Greenwood had even the audacity to lay the charge of inciting to murder. Newspapers of bordering slave states were full of criticism,55 just before the war, of these same men and, notably, of the Reverend Evan56 and John Jones, the reputed ringleaders. The official excuse for removing them is rather interesting because it is so similar to that given, some thirty years earlier, in connection with the removal from Georgia. Ulterior motives can so easily be hidden under cold official phrase.

That the cause of slavery within the Cherokee country was in jeopardy in the spring and summer of 1860 can not well be denied. To the men of the time the evidence was easily obtainable. Almost as if by magic, a “search organization” started up among the full-bloods, an organization profoundly secret in its membership and in its purposes, but believed to be for no other object than the overthrow of the “peculiar institution.” Its existence was promptly reported to the United States government and, as was to be expected, the missionaries were held responsible for both its inception and its continuance. It was then that Greenwood made57 his most serious charge against these men and prepared, under color of law, to have them removed. Later, in this same year of 1860, Quantrill, the Hagerstown, Maryland man of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, who afterwards became such a notorious frontier guerrilla in the interests of the Confederate cause, leagued himself with some abolitionists for the sake of making an expedition to the Cherokee country and rescuing negroes, there held in bondage.58 The timely distrust of Quantrill, however, caused the enterprise to be abandoned even before its preliminaries had been thoroughly well arranged; yet, had the rescue been carried to completion, it would not have been entirely without precedent59 and its very contrivance indicated an uncertainty and a precariousness of situation south of the Kansas line.

Ever since their compulsory removal from Georgia under circumstances truly tragic, the Cherokees had been much given to factional strife. This was largely in consequence of the underhand means taken by the state and federal authorities to accomplish removal. The Cherokees had, under the necessities of the situation, divided themselves into the Ross, or Anti-removal Party, and the Ridge, or Treaty Party.60 Removal took place in spite of the steady opposition of the Rossites and the Cherokees went west, piloted by the United States army. Once in the west a new division arose in their ranks; for, as newcomers, they came into jealous contact with members of their tribe who had emigrated many years previously and who came to figure, in subsequent Cherokee history, as the Old Settlers’ Party.61 In 1846, the United States government attempted to assume the role of mediator in a settlement of Cherokee tribal differences but without much success.62 The old wrongs were unredressed, so the old divisions remained and formed nuclei for new disintegrating issues. Thus, in 1857, there were no less than three factions created in consequence of a project for selling the Cherokee Neutral Lands63. Each faction had its own opinion how best to dispose of the proceeds, should a sale take place. In 1860, there were two factions, the selling and the non-selling64. This tendency of the Cherokees perpetually to quarrel among themselves and to bear long-standing grudges against each other is most important; inasmuch as that marked peculiarity of internal politics very largely determined the unique position of the tribe with reference to the Civil War.

The other great tribes had also occasions for quarrel in these same critical years. The disgraceful circumstances of their removal had widened the gulf, once simply geographical, between the Upper and the Lower Creeks. They were now almost two distinct political entities, in each of which there were a principal and a second chief. In 1833, provision had been made for the accommodation of the Seminoles within a certain definite part of the Creek country65—just such an arrangement, forsooth, as worked so ill when applied to the Choctaws and Chickasaws; but it took several years for the Seminoles to be suited. At length, when their numbers had been considerably augmented by the coming of the new immigrants from Florida, they took up their position, for good and all, in the southwestern corner of the Creek Reserve, a politically distinct community. By that time, the Creeks seem to have repented of their generosity,66 so, perhaps, it was well that the United States government had not yielded to their importunity and consented to a like settlement of the southern Comanches.67 It had taken the Chickasaws a long time to reconstruct their government after the political separation from the Choctaws; but now they had a constitution,68 all their own, a legislature, and a governor. The Choctaws had attempted a constitution, likewise, first the Scullyville, then the Doaksville, set up by a minority party; but they had retained some semblance of the old order of things in the persons of their chiefs.69

There were other Indians within the southern division of the Indian country that were to have their part in the Civil War and in events leading up to it or resulting from it. In the extreme northeastern corner, were the Quapaws, the Senecas, and the confederated Senecas and Shawnees, all members, with the Osages and the New York Indians of Kansas, of the Neosho River Agency which was under the care of Andrew J. Dorn. In the far western part, at the base of the Wichita Mountains, were the Indians of the Leased District, Wichitas, Tonkawas,70 Euchees, and others, collectively called the “Reserve Indians.” Most of them had been brought from Texas,71 because of Texan intolerance of their presence, and placed within the Leased District, a tract of land west of the ninety-eighth meridian, which, under the treaty of 1855, the United States had rented from the Choctaws and Chickasaws. It was a part of the old Chickasaw District of the Choctaw Nation. Outside of the Wichita Reserve and still wandering at large over the plains were the hostile Kiowas and Comanches, against whom and the inoffensive Reserve Indians, the Texans nourished a bitter, undying hatred. They charged them with crimes that were never committed and with some crimes that white men, disguised as Indians, had committed. They were also suspected of manufacturing evidence that would incriminate the red men and of plotting, in regularly-organized meetings, their overthrow.72

Although the plan for colonizing some of the Texas Indians had been completed in 1855, the Indian Office found it impossible to execute it until the summer of 1859. This was principally because the War Department could not be induced to make the necessary military arrangements.73 In point of fact, the southern Indian country was, at the time, practically without a force of United States troops, quite regardless of the promise that had been made to all the tribes upon the occasion of their removal that they should always be protected in their new quarters and, inferentially, by the regular army. Even Fort Gibson had been virtually abandoned as a military post on the plea that its site was unhealthful; and all of Superintendent Rector’s recommendations that Frozen Rock, on the south side of the Arkansas a few miles away, be substituted74 had been ignored, not so much by the Interior Department, as by the War. Secretary Thompson thought that enough troops should be at his disposal to enable him to carry out the United States Indian policy, but Secretary Floyd demurred. He was rather disposed to dismantle such forts as there were and to withdraw all troops from the Indian frontier,75 a course of action that would leave it exposed, so the dissenting Thompson prognosticated, to “the most unhappy results.”76

It happened thus that, when the United States surveyors started in 1858 to establish the line of the ninety-eighth meridian west longitude and to run other boundary lines under the treaty of 1855,77 they found the country entirely unpatrolled. Troops had been ordered from Texas to protect the surveyors; but, pending their arrival, Agent Cooper, who had gone out to witness the determination of the initial point on the line between his agency and the Leased District, himself took post at Fort Arbuckle and called upon the Indians for patrol and garrison duty.78 It would seem that Secretary Thompson had verbally authorized79 Cooper to make this use of the Indians; but they proved in the sequel very inefficient as garrison troops. On the thirtieth of June, Lieutenant Powell, commanding Company E, First United States Infantry, arrived at Fort Arbuckle from Texas and relieved Cooper of his self-imposed task. The day following, Cooper set out upon a sixteen day scout of the Washita country, taking with him his Indian volunteers, Chickasaws80 and a few Cherokees;81 and for this act of using Indian after the arrival of white troops, he was severely criticized by the department. One thing he accomplished: he selected a site for the prospective Wichita Agency with the recommendation that it be also made the site82 of the much-needed military post on the Leased District. The site had originally been occupied by a Kechie village and was admirably well adapted for the double purpose Cooper intended. It lay near the center of the Leased District and near the sources of Cache and Beaver Creeks. It was also, so reported Cooper, “not very distant from the Washita, & Canadian” (and commanded) “the Mountain passes through the Wichita Mountains to the Antelope Hills—to the North branch of Red River and also the road on the South side of the Wichita Mountains up Red River.”

The colonization of the Wichitas and other Indians took place in the summer of 1859 under the excitement of new disputes with Texas, largely growing out of an unwarranted and brutal attack83 by white men upon Indians of the Brazos Agency. That event following so closely upon the heels of Van Dorn’s84 equally brutal attack upon a defenceless Comanche camp brought matters to a crisis and the government was forced to be expeditious where it had previously been dilatory. The Comanches had come in, under a flag of truce, to confer in a friendly way with the Wichitas. Van Dorn, ignorant of their purpose but supposing it hostile, made a forced march, surprised them, and mercilessly took summary vengeance for all the Comanches had been charged with, whether justly or unjustly, for some time past. After it was all over, the Comanches, with about sixty of their number slain, accused the Wichitas of having betrayed them. Frightened, yet innocent, the Wichitas begged that there be no further delay in their removal, so the order was given and arrangements made. Unfortunately, by the time everything was ready, the season was pretty far advanced and the Indians reached their new home to find it too late to put in crops for that year’s harvest. Subsistence rations had, therefore, to be doled out to them, the occasion affording, as always, a rare opportunity for graft. Instead of calling for bids, as was customary, Superintendent Rector entered into a private contract85 with a friend and relative of his own, the consequence being that the government was charged an exorbitant price for the rations. Soon other troubles86 came. The Leased District proved to be already occupied by some northern Indian refugees87 and became, as time went on, a handy rendezvous for free negroes; but, as soon as Matthew Leeper88 of Texas became agent, the stay of such was extremely short.89

Such were the conditions obtaining among the Indians west of Missouri and Arkansas in the years immediately antedating the American Civil War; and, from such conditions, it may readily be inferred that the Indians were anything but satisfied with the treatment that had been and was being accorded them. They owed no great debt of gratitude to anybody. They were restless and unhappy among themselves. Their old way of living had been completely disorganized. They had nothing to go upon, so far as their relations with the white men were concerned, to make them hopeful of anything better in the future, rather the reverse. Indeed at the very opening of the year 1860, a year so full of distress to them because of the great drouth90 that ravaged Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the worst that had been known in thirty years, there came occasion for a new distrust. Proposals were made to the Creeks,91 to the Choctaws,92 and to the Chickasaws to allot their lands in severalty, notwithstanding the fact that one of the inducements offered by President Jackson to get them originally to remove had been, that they should be permitted to hold their land, as they had always held it, in common, forever. The Creeks now replied to the proposals of the Indian Office that they had had experience with individual reservations in their old eastern homes and had good reason to be prejudiced against them. The Indians, one and all, met the proposals with a downright refusal but they did not forget that they had been made, particularly when there came additional cause for apprehension.

The cause for apprehension came with the presidential campaign of 1860 and from a passage in Seward’s Chicago speech,93 “The National Idea; Its Perils and Triumphs,” expressive of opinions, false to the national trust but favorable to expansion in the direction of the Indian territory, most inopportune, to say the least, and foolish. Seward probably spoke in the enthusiasm of a heated moment; for the obnoxious sentiment, “The Indian territory, also, south of Kansas, must be vacated by the Indians,” was very different in its tenor from equally strong expressions in his great Senate speech94 on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, February 17, 1854. It soon proved, however, easy of quotation by the secessionists in their arguments with the Indians, it being offered by them as incontestable proof that the designs of the incoming administration were, in the highest degree, inimical to Indian treaty rights. At the time of its utterance, the Indians were intensely excited. The poor things had had so many and such bitter experiences with the bad faith of the white people that it took very little to arouse their suspicion. They had been told to contract their domain or to move on so often that they had become quite super-sensitive on the subject of land cessions and removals. Seward’s speech was but another instance of idle words proving exceedingly fateful.

Two facts thus far omitted from the general survey and reserved for special emphasis may now be remarked upon. They will show conclusively that there were personal and economic reasons why the Indians, some of them at least, were drawn irresistibly towards the South. The patronage of the Indian Office has always been more or less of a local thing. Communities adjoining Indian reservations usually consider, and with just cause because of long-established practice, that all positions in the field service, as for example, agencies and traderships, are the perquisites, so to speak, of the locality. It was certainly true before the war that Texas and Arkansas had some such understanding as to Indian Territory, for only southerners held office there and, from among the southerners, Texans and Arkansans received the preference always. It happened too that the higher officials in Washington were almost invariably southern men.

The granting of licenses to traders rested with the superintendent and everything goes to show that, in the fifties and sixties, applications for license were scrutinized very closely by the southern superintendents with a view to letting no objectionable person, from the standpoint of southern rights, get into the territory. The Holy See itself could never have been more vigilant in protecting colonial domains against the introduction of heresy. The same vigilance was exercised in the hiring of agency employees, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and the like. Having full discretionary power in the premises, the superintendents could easily interpret the law to suit themselves. They could also evade it in their own interests and frequently did so. One notorious case95 of this sort came up in connection with Superintendent Drew, who gave permits to his friends to “peddle” in the Indian country without requiring of them the necessary preliminary of a bond. Traders once in the country had tremendous influence with the Indians, especially with those of a certain class whom ordinarily the missionaries could not reach. Then, as before and since, Indian traders were not men of the highest moral character by any means. Too often, on the contrary, they were of degraded character, thoroughly unscrupulous, proverbial for their defiance of the law, general illiteracy, and corrupt business practices. It stands to reason that such men, if they had themselves been selected with an eye single to the cause of a particular section and knew that solicitude in its interests would mean great latitude to themselves and favorable reports of themselves to the department at Washington, would spare no efforts and hesitate at no means to make it their first concern, provided, of course, that it did not interfere with their own monetary schemes.

To cap the climax, the last and greatest circumstance to be noted, if only because of the great weight it carried with the Indians when it was brought into the argument by the secessionists, is that practically all of the Indian money held in trust for the individual tribes by the United States government was invested in southern stocks;96 in Florida 7’s, in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee 6’s, in North Carolina and Tennessee 5’s, and the like. To tell the truth, only the merest minimum of it was secured by northern bonds. The southerners asserted for the Indians’ benefit, that all these securities would be forfeited97 by the war. Sufficient is the fact, that the position of the Indians98 was unquestionably difficult. With so much to draw them southward, our only wonder is, that so many of them stayed with the North.

Colonel Downing, Cherokee

The Quapaws, the Senecas, and the confederated Senecas and Shawnees, the most insignificant of the lesser, occupied the extreme northeastern corner of Indian Territory and, therefore, bordered upon the southwestern corner of Missouri. The Creeks lived between the Arkansas River, inclusive of its Red Fork, and the Canadian River, having the Cherokees to the east and north of them, the Choctaws and Chickasaws to the south, and the Seminoles to the southwest, between the Canadian and its North Fork. The Indians of the Leased District have already been located.

In the years preceding the Civil War, the interest of Texas and of Arkansas in Indian Territory manifested itself, not in a covetous desire to dispossess the Indians of their lands, as was, unfortunately for national honor, the case in Kansas, but in an effort to keep the actual country true to the South, settled by slaveholders, Indian or white, as occasion required or opportunity offered. When sectional affairs became really tense after the formation of the Republican Party, they redoubled their energies in that direction, working always through the rich, influential, and intelligent half-breeds, some of whom had property interests and family connections in the states operating upon them.102 The half-breeds were essentially a planter class, institutionally more truly so than were the inhabitants of the border slave states. It is therefore not surprising that, during the excitement following Abraham Lincoln’s nomination and election, identically the same political agencies worked among them as among their white neighbors and events in Indian Territory kept perfect pace with events in adjoining states.

The first of these that showed strong sectional tendencies came in January, 1861, when the Chickasaws, quite on their own initiative apparently, met in a called session of their legislature to consider how best the great tribes might conduct themselves with reference to the serious political situation then shaping itself in the United States. There is some evidence that the Knights of the Golden Circle had been active among the Indians as they had been in Arkansas103 during the course of the late presidential campaign. At all events, the red men knew full well of passing occurrences among their neighbors and they certainly knew how matters were progressing in Texas. There the State Rights Party was asserting itself in no doubtful terms. For the time being, however, the Chickasaws contented themselves with simply passing an act,104 January 5, suggesting an inter-tribal conference and arranging for the executive appointment of a Chickasaw delegation to it. The authorities of the other tribes were duly notified105 and to the Creek was given the privilege of naming time and place.

The Inter-tribal Council assembled at the Creek Agency,106 February 17, but comparatively few delegates were in attendance. William P. Ross, a graduate107 of Princeton and a nephew of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokees, went as the head of the Cherokee delegation. It was he who reported the scanty attendance,108 saying that there were no Chickasaws present, no Choctaws, but only Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees. Why it happened so can not now be exactly determined but to it may undoubtedly be ascribed the outcome; for the council did nothing that was not perfectly compatible with existing friendly relations between the great tribes and the United States government. John Ross, in instructing his delegates, had strictly enjoined caution and discretion109. William P. Ross and his associates seem to have managed to secure the observance of both. Perchance it was Chief Ross’s110 known aversion to an interference in matters that did not concern the Indians, except very indirectly, and the consciousness that his influence in the council would be immense, probably all-powerful, that caused the Chickasaws to draw back from a thing they had themselves so ill-advisedly planned. It is, however, just possible that, between the time of issuing the call and of assembling the council, they crossed on their own responsibility the boundary of indecision and resolved, as most certainly had the Choctaws, that their sympathies and their interests were with the South. It might well be supposed that in this perilous hour their thoughts would have travelled back some thirty years and they would have remembered what havoc the same state-rights doctrine, now presented so earnestly for their acceptance, although it scarcely fitted their case, had then wrought in their concerns. Strangely enough none of the tribes seems to have charged the gross injustice of the thirties exclusively to the account of the South. On the contrary, they one and all charged it against the federal government, against the states as a whole, and so, rightly or wrongly, the nation had to pay for the inconsistency of Jackson’s procedure, a procedure that could so illogically recognize the supremacy of federal law in one matter and the supremacy of state law in another matter that was precisely its parallel.

The decision of the Choctaws had found expression in a series of resolutions under date of February 7. They are worthy of being quoted entire.

February 7, 1861.

Resolutions expressing the feelings and sentiments of the General Council of the Choctaw Nation in reference to the political disagreement existing between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union.

Resolved by the General Council of the Choctaw Nation assembled, That we view with deep regret and great solicitude the present unhappy political disagreement between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union, tending to a permanent dissolution of the Union and the disturbance of the various important relations existing with that Government by treaty stipulations and international laws, and portending much injury to the Choctaw government and people.

Resolved further, That we must express the earnest desire and ready hope entertained by the entire Choctaw people, that any and all political disturbances agitating and dividing the people of the various States may be honorably and speedily adjusted; and the example and blessing, and fostering care of their General Government, and the many and friendly social ties existing with their people, continue for the enlightenment in moral and good government and prosperity in the material concerns of life to our whole population.

Resolved further, That in the event a permanent dissolution of the American Union takes place, our many relations with the General Government must cease, and we shall be left to follow the natural affections, education, institutions, and interests of our people, which indissolubly bind us in every way to the destiny of our neighbors and brethren of the Southern States upon whom we are confident we can rely for the preservation of our rights of life, liberty, and property, and the continuance of many acts of friendship, general counsel, and material support.

Resolved further, That we desire to assure our immediate neighbors, the people of Arkansas and Texas, of our determination to observe the amicable relations in every way so long existing between us, and the firm reliance we have, amid any disturbance with other States, the rights and feelings so sacred to us will remain respected by them and be protected from the encroachments of others.

Resolved further, That his excellency the principal chief be requested to inclose, with an appropriate communication from himself, a copy of these resolutions to the governors of the Southern States, with the request that they be laid before the State convention of each State, as many as have assembled at the date of their reception, and that in such as have not they be published in the newspapers of the State.

Resolved, That these resolutions take effect and be in force from and after their passage.

Approved February 7, 1861.111

These resolutions of the Choctaw Council are in the highest degree interesting in the matter both of their substance and of their time of issue. The information is not forthcoming as to how the Choctaws received the invitation of the Chickasaw legislature to attend an inter-tribal council; but, later on, in April, 1861, the Choctaw delegation in Washington, made up of P. P. Pitchlynn, Samuel Garland, Israel Folsom, and Peter Folsom, assured the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that the Choctaw Nation intended to remain neutral,112 which assurance was interpreted to mean simply that the Choctaws would be inactive spectators of events, expressing no opinion, in word or deed, one way or the other. The Chickasaw delegation gave the same assurance and at about the same time and place. Now what is to be concluded? Is it to be supposed that the Act of January 5, 1861 in no wise reflected the sentiments of a tribe as a whole and similarly the Resolutions of February 7, 1861, or that the tribal delegations were, in April, utterly ignorant of the real attitude of their respective constituents? The answer is to be found in the following most interesting and instructive letter, written by S. Orlando Lee to Commissioner Dole from Huntingdon, Long Island, March 15, 1862:113

Thinking you and the government would like to hear something about the state of affairs among the Choctaws last summer and the influences which induced them to take their present position I will write you what I know. I was a missionary teacher at Spencer Academy for two years and refer you to Hon. Walter Lowrie Gen. Sec. of the Pres. Board of Foreign Missions for information as to my character &c. I left Spencer June 13th & the nation June 24th but have heard directly from there twice since, the last time as late as Sept 6th. So that I can speak of occurrences as late as that.

After South Carolina passed her secession ordinance in Dec. 1860 there was a public attempt to excite the Choctaws and Chickasaws as a beginning hoping to bring in the other tribes afterwards. Many of the larger slaveholders (who are nearly all half breeds) had been gained before and Capt. R. M. Jones was the leader of the secessionists. The country was full of lies about the intentions of the new administration. The border papers in Arkansas & Texas republished from the New York & St. Louis papers a part of a sentence from Hon. W. H. Seward’s speech at Chicago during the election campaign of 1860 to this effect “And Indian Territory south of Kansas must be vacated by the Indian” (These words do occur in the report of Mr. Seward’s Chicago speech as published in New York Evening Post Weekly for I read it myself). This produced intense excitement of course and to add to the effect the Secessionist Journals charged that another prominent republican had proposed to drive the indians out of Indian Ter. in a speech in congress. “This” they were told “is the policy of the new administration. The abolitionists want your lands—we will protect you. Your only safety is to join the South.” Again they were told “that the South must succeed in gaining their independence and the money of the indians being invested in the stocks of Southern states the stocks would be cancelled & the indians would lose their money unless they joined the south, if they did that the stocks would be reissued to the Confederate States for them.” Their special commissioners Peter Folsom &c., who came to Washington to get the half million of dollars for claims, reported that they got along very well until they were asked if they had slaves after that they said they could do nothing. Sampson Folsom said however that he thought they would have succeeded had it not been for the attack on Sumpter—He said President Lincoln then told them “He would not give them a dollar until the close of the war.” An interesting fact in relation to these commissioners is that they came to Washington by way of Montgomery & were when they reached Washington probably all, except Judge Garland, secessionists. Thus all influences were in favor of the rebels—Where could the indians go for light—The former indian agent Cooper was a Col. in the rebel service. The oldest missionary who has undoubtedly more influence with the Choctaws than any other white man is an ardent secessionist believing firmly both in the right & in the final success of the rebel cause—He (Dr. Kingsbury) prays as earnestly & fervently for the success of the rebels as any one among us does for the success of the Union cause. The son of another, Mr. Hodgkin, is a captain in the rebel service—another Mr. Stark actively assisted in organizing a company acted as sec. of secessionist meetings &c. Even Mr. Reid superintendant of Spencer was confident the rebels could never be subdued and thought when the treaty should be made they ought in justice to have Ind. Territory. Again when Fort Smith was evacuated the rebel forces were on the way up the Ark. river to attack it & the garrison evacuated it in the night which looked to the Indians (if not to the white men) as if the northerners were afraid. The same was true of Fort Washitaw where our forces left in the night and were actually pursued for several days by the Texans. Thus matters stood when Col. Pitchlynn the resident Com. of the Choctaws at Washington returned home. He gave all his influence to have the Choctaws take a neutral position. The chief had called the council to meet June 1st. & Col. P. so far succeeded as to induce him to prepare a message recommending neutrality. Col. P. was promptly reported as an abolitionist and visited & threatened by a Texas Vigilance committee.

The Council met at Doaksville seven miles from Red River & of course from Texas. It was largely attended by white men from Texas our Choctaw neighbors who attended said the place was full of white men.

The Council did not organize until June 4th or 5th (I forget which). In the meanwhile the white men & half bloods had a secession meeting when it leaked out through Col. Cooper that the Chief Hudson had prepared a message recommending neutrality at which Robert M. Jones was so indignant that he made a furious speech in which he declared that “any one who opposed secession ought to be hung” “and any suspicious persons ought to be hung.” Hudson was frightened and when the Council was organized sent in a message recommending that commissioners be appointed to negotiate a treaty with the Confederates and that in the meantime a regiment be organized under Col. Cooper for the Confed. army.

This was finally done but not for a week for the Choctaws were reluctant. They feared that their action would result in the destruction of the nation. Said Joseph P. Folsom, a member of the council & a graduate of Dartmouth College New Hampshire, “We are choosing in what way we shall die.” Judge Wade said to me, “We expect that the Choctaws will be buried. That is what we think will be the end of this.” Judge W. is a member of the Senate (for the Choctaw Council is composed of a Senate & lower house chosen by the people in districts & the constitution is modeled very much after those of the states.) & he has been a chief. Others said to me “If the north was here so we could be protected we would stand up for the north but now if we do not go in for the south the Texans will come over here and kill us.” Mr. Reid told me a day or two before we left that he had become convinced during a trip for two or three days through the country that the full bloods were strongly for the north. I am sure it was so then & it was the opinion of the missionaries that if we had all taken the position, that we would not leave, some of us had been warned to do so by Texan vigilance committees, we could have raised a thousand men who would have armed in our defence—Our older brethren told us that this would hasten the destruction of the indians as they would be crushed before any help could come.—We thought this would probably be the case and the missionaries who were most strongly union in sentiment left.

One of the number Rev. John Edwards had been hiding for his life from Texan & half blood ruffians for two weeks & we at Spencer had had the honor to be visited by a Texas committee searching for arms.

I continue my narrative from a letter from one of our teachers who was detained when we left by the illness of his wife & who left Spencer Sept. 5th & the Nation Sept. 9th. He says Col. Coopers regiment was filled up with Texans “The half breeds after involving the full bloods in the war have rather drawn back themselves and but few of them have enlisted & gone to the war.” This indicates that the full bloods have at last yielded to the pressure and joined the rebels. The missionaries who remained would generally advise them to do this.

The Choctaw commissioners met Albert Pike rebel commissioner & made a treaty with him, with reference to this he says “The Choctaws rec’d quite a bundle of promises from the rebel government. Their treaty gives their representative a seat in the rebel congress, acknowledges the right of the Choctaws to give testimony in all courts in the C. S., exempts them from the expences of the war, their soldiers are to be paid 20$ a month by the C. S. during the war, the C. S. assume the debts due the Choctaws by the U. S., they have the privilege of coming in as a state into the Confederacy with equal rights if they wish it, or remain as they are, the C. S. to sustain their schools after the war, they guarantee them against all intrusion on their lands by white men, allow them to garrison the forts in their territory with their own troops if they wish it said troops to be paid by the C. S.”—Here is a list of promises and when I think of these, of the belief of their oldest missionaries in the final success of the rebels, of the fact that all the old Officers of the U. S. government were in the service of the rebels, of the occupation of the forts there by rebels, of the activity of a knot of bitter disunionists led by Capt. Jones, who has long been a very influential man, of the Texas mob law which considered it a crime for a young man to refuse to volunteer, of the fact that there was no way for them to hear the truth as to the designs of the U. S. government concerning them, except through Col. Pitchlyn who was soon silenced & of the falsehoods told them as to the designs of the Government, I do not wonder that they have joined the rebels.

I saw strong men completely unmanned even to floods of tears by the leaving of Dr. Hobbs and the thoughts of what was before them. I heard men say they did not want to fight but expected to be forced to do it.

I trust the government will consider the circumstances of the case & deal gently, considerately with the indians. I do not like to write such things of my brother missionaries but they are I believe facts & though I love some of them very much I still must say that, except Rev. Mr. Byington who was doubtful & Rev. Mr. Balantine a missionary to the Chickasaws who was union, all the ordained missionaries belonging to the Choctaw & Chickasaw Mission of the Presbyterian Board who remain there were victims of the madness which swept over the South, were secessionists—One or two of the three Laymen who remained were union men—Cyrus Kingsbury son of Rev. Dr. K. being one....

The failure of the United States government to give the Indians, in season, the necessary assurance that they would be protected, no matter what might happen, can not be too severely criticized. It indicated a very short-sighted policy and was due either to a tendency to ignore the Indians as people of no importance or to a lack of harmony and coöperation among the departments at Washington. Such an assurance of continued protection was not even framed until the second week in May and then the Indian country was already threatened by the secessionists. Moreover, it was framed and intended to be given by one department, the Interior, and its fulfilment left to another, the War. It went out from the Indian Office in the form of a circular letter,114 addressed by Commissioner William P. Dole to the chief executive115 in each of the five great tribes. It assured the Indians that President Lincoln had no intention of interfering with their domestic institutions or of allowing government agents or employees to interfere and that the War Department had been appealed to to furnish all needed defense according to treaty guaranties. The new southern superintendent, William G. Coffin of Indiana, was made the bearer of the missive; but, unfortunately, quite a little time elapsed116 before the military situation117 in the West would allow him to assume his full duties or to reach his official headquarters,118 and, in the interval, he was detailed for other work. The Indians, meanwhile, were left to their own devices and were obliged to look out for their own defense as best they could.

To all appearances neither the legislative action of the Chickasaws and of the Choctaws nor the work of the inter-tribal council was, at the time of occurrence, reported officially to the United States government or, if reported officially, then not pointedly so as to reveal its real bearings upon the case in hand. All the agents within Indian Territory were as usual southern men;119 but may not have been directly responsible or even cognizant of this particular action of their charges. The records show that practically all of them, Cooper, Garrett, Cowart, Leeper, and Dorn, were absent120 from their posts, with or without leave, the first part of the new year and that every one of them became or was already an active secessionist.121

It has been authenticated and is well understood today that, as the Southern States, one by one, declared themselves out of the Union or were getting themselves into line for so doing, they prepared to further the cause of secession among their neighbors and, for the purpose, sent agents or commissioners to them, who organized the movement very much as the Committees of Correspondence did a similar movement prior to the American Revolution. In short, in the spring of 1861, the seceding states entered upon active proselytism and at least two of them extended their labors to and among the Indians. Those two were Texas and Arkansas. Missouri also worked with the same end in view, so did Colorado, but apparently not so much with the great tribes of Oklahoma as with the politically less important of Kansas. Colorado, it is true, did operate to some extent upon the Cherokees of the Outlet and upon the Wichitas, but mostly upon the Indians of the western plains. No one can deny that, in the interests of the Confederate cause, the project of sending emissaries even to the Indians was a wise measure or refuse to admit that the contrasting inactivity and positive indifference of the North was foolhardy in the extreme. It indicated a self-complacency for which there was no justification. More than that can with truth be said; for, from the standpoint of political wisdom and foresight, the inactivity where the Indians were concerned was conduct most reprehensible.

While Chickasaws and Choctaws, unsolicited,122 were expressing themselves, the secessionist sentiment was developing rapidly in Texas. By the middle of February, conditions were such that steps might be taken to order the evacuation of the state by Federal troops. This was finally done under authority of the Committee of Public Safety123 and the general in command, D. E. Twiggs of Georgia, compliantly yielded. His small show of resistance seemed, under the circumstances, a mere pretense, although he had his reasons, and good ones too, perfectly satisfactory to himself, for doing what he did. Two main conditions were attached to the agreement of surrender;124 one, exacted by General Twiggs, to the effect that his men be allowed to retain their arms, commissary stores, camp and garrison equipage, and the means of transportation; the other, exacted by the Texan commissioners, that the troops depart by way of the coast and not overland, as the United States War Department had designed when, a short time before, it had ordered a similar removal.125 The precaution of forcing a coastwise journey126 was taken by the Texan commissioners to consume time and to prevent the troops being retained in states or territories through which transit lay for possible future use against Texas. The easy compliance of General Twiggs127 undoubtedly merits some censure and yet was perfectly well justified to his own conscience by the exigencies of the situation and by the fact that he had repeatedly asked for orders as to what he should do in the event of an emergency and had received none. The circumstance of his surrender and the resulting triumph of the secessionist element could not fail to have its effect upon the watchful Indians to whom the exhibition of present power was everything.

That the Texan secessionists fully appreciated the strategic position of the Indian nations and the absolute necessity of making some sort of terms with them was brought out by the action of the convention at its first session. An ordinance was passed “to secure the friendship and co-operation of the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations of Indians;” and three men, James E. Harrison, James Bourland, and Charles A. Hamilton, were appointed as commissioners128 “to proceed to said nations and invite their prompt co-operation in the formation of a Southern Confederacy.”129

Now before following these men in the execution of their mission, it may be advisable, for breadth of view, to illustrate how Texas still further made Indian relations an issue most prominent in all the earlier stages of her secession movement; but at the very outset it must be admitted that, in so doing, she differentiated carefully between the civilized and the uncivilized tribes. With the one group she was ready to seek an alliance, offensive and defensive, but with the other to wage a relentless, exterminating war. The failure of the United States central government to protect her against the aggressions and the atrocities so-called of the wild tribes was cited by her as one principal justification for withdrawal from the Union,130 her obvious purpose being to gain thereby the adherence of the northern counties, non-slaveholding but frontier. Almost conversely, on the other hand, Governor Houston gave as one good and sufficient reason for not withdrawing from the Union, the fear that should the Union be dissolved the wild tribes, who were now, in a measure, restrained from committing depredations and enormities by the very nature of their treaty guaranties, would be literally let loose upon Texas.131 As far as the civilized tribes were concerned, however, all were of one mind and that took the form of the conviction that so great was the necessity of gaining and holding the confidence of the Indians, that Texas must not procrastinate in joining her fortunes with those of her sister states in the Confederacy.132

James E. Harrison and his colleagues started out upon the performance of the duties assigned them, February 27, 1861. Their report133 of operations and of observations being somewhat difficult of access and its contents not easily summarized, is herewith appended. Its fullness of detail is especially to be commended.

We ... crossed Red River and entered the Chickasaw Nation about thirty miles southwest of Fort Washita; visited and held a private conference with His Excellency Governor C. Harris and other distinguished men of that nation, who fully appreciated our views and the object of our mission. They informed us that a convention of the Chickasaws and Choctaws was in a few days to convene at Boggy Depot, in the Choctaw Nation, to attend to some municipal arrangements. We, in company with Governor Harris and others, made our way to Boggy Depot, conferring privately with the principal men on our route. We arrived at Boggy Depot on the 10th day of March. Their convention or council convened on the 11th. Elected a president of the convention (Ex-Governor Walker, of the Choctaw Nation); adopted rules of decorum. On the 12th we were waited on by a committee of the convention. Introduced as commissioners from Texas, we presented our credentials and were invited to seats. The convention then asked to hear us, when Mr. James E. Harrison addressed them and a crowded auditory upon the subject of our mission, setting forth the grounds of our complaint against the Government of the United States, the wrongs we had suffered until our patience had become exhausted, endurance had ceased to be a virtue, our duty to ourselves and children demanded of us a disruption of the Government that had ceased to protect us or to regard our rights; announced the severance of the old and the organization of a new Government of Confederate Sovereign States of the South, with a common kindred, common hopes, common interest, and a common destiny; discussed the power of the new Government, its influence, and wealth; the interest the civilized red man had in this new organization; tendering them our warmest sympathy and regard, all of which met the cordial approbation of the convention.

The Choctaws and Chickasaws are entirely Southern and are determined to adhere to the fortunes of the South. They were embarrassed in their action by the absence of their agents and commissioners at Washington, the seat of Government of the Northern Confederacy, seeking a final settlement with that Government. They have passed resolutions authorizing the raising of a minute company in each county in the two nations, to be drilled for actual service when necessary. Their convention was highly respectable in numbers and intelligence, and the business of the convention was dispatched with such admirable decorum and promptness as is rarely met with in similar deliberative bodies within the States.

On the morning of the 13th, hearing that the Creeks (or Maskokys) and Cherokees were in council at the Creek agency, on the Arkansas River, 140 miles distant, we immediately set out for that point, hoping to reach them before their adjournment. In this we were disappointed. They had adjourned two days before our arrival. We reached that point on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning, hearing that there was a religious meeting five miles north of the Arkansas River, in the Creek Nation, Mr. James E. Harrison attended, which proved to be of the utmost importance to our mission. The Reverend Mr. H. S. Buckner was present, with Chilly McIntosh, D. N. McIntosh, Judge Marshall, and others, examining a translation of a portion of the Scriptures, hymn book, and Greek grammar by Mr. Buckner into the Creek language. Mr. Buckner showed us great kindness, and did us eminent service, as did also Elder Vandiven, at whose house we spent the night and portion of the next day with these gentlemen of the Creek Nation, and through them succeeded in having a convention of the five nations called by Governor Motey Kinnaird, of the Creeks, to meet at North Fork (Creek Nation) on the 8th of April.

In the intermediate time we visited the Cherokee Nation, calling on their principal men and citizens, conversing with them freely until we reached Tahlequah, the seat of government. Near this place Mr. John Ross resides, the Governor of the nation. We called on him officially. We were not unexpected, and were received with courtesy, but not with cordiality. A long conference was had with him, conducted by Mr. Harrison on the part of the commissioners, without, we fear, any good result. He was very diplomatic and cautious. His position is the same as that held by Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural; declares the Union not dissolved; ignores the Southern Government. The intelligence of the nation is not with him. Four-fifths, at least, are against his views, as we learned from observation and good authorities. He, as we learned, had been urged by his people to call a council of the nation (he having the only constitutional authority to do so), to take into consideration the embarrassed condition of political affairs in the States, and to give some expression of their sentiments and sympathies. This he has persistently refused to do. His position in this is that of Sam. Houston in Texas, and in all probability will share the same fate, if not a worse one. His people are already oppressed by a Northern population letting a portion of territory purchased by them from the United States, to the exclusion of natives, and we are creditably informed that the Governors of some two or more of the Western free-soil States have recommended their people emigrating to settle the Cherokee country. It is due Mr. John Ross, in this connection, to say that during our conference with him he frequently avowed his sympathy for the South, and that, if Virginia and the other Border States seceded from the Government of the United States, his people would declare for the Southern Government that might be formed. The fact is not to be denied or disguised that among the common Indians of the Cherokees there exists a considerable abolition influence, created and sustained by one Jones, a Northern missionary of education and ability, who has been among them for many years, and who is said to exert no small influence with John Ross himself.

From Tahlequah we returned to the Creek Nation, and had great satisfaction in visiting their principal men—the McIntoshes, Stidhams, Smiths, Vanns, Rosses, Marshalls, and others too numerous to mention. Heavy falls of rain occurred about the time the convention was to meet at North Fork, which prevented the Chickasaws and Choctaws from attending the council, the rivers and creeks being all full and impassable. The Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, Quapa, and Socks (the three latter dependencies of the Creeks) met on the 8th of April. After they had organized by calling Motey Kinnaird, the Governor of the Creeks, to the chair, a committee was appointed to wait on the commissioners present, James E. Harrison and Capt. C. A. Hamilton, and invite them to appear in the convention, when, by invitation, Mr. Harrison addressed the convention in a speech of two hours. Our views were cordially received by the convention. The Creeks are Southern and sound to a man, and when desired will show their devotion to our cause by acts. They meet in council on the 1st of May, when they will probably send delegates to Montgomery to arrange with the Southern Government.

These nations are in a rapid state of improvement. The chase is no longer resorted to as means of subsistence, only as an occasional recreation. They are pursuing with good success agriculture and stock raising. Their houses are well built and comfortable, some of them costly. Their farms are well planned and some of them extensive and all well cultivated. They are well supplied with schools of learning, extensively patronized. They have many churches and a large membership of moral, pious deportment. They feel themselves to be in an exposed, embarrassed condition. They are occupying a country well suited to them, well watered, and fertile, with extensive fields of the very best mineral coal, fine salt springs and wells, with plenty of good timber, water powers which they are using to an advantage. Pure slate, granite, sandstone, blue limestone, and marble are found in abundance. All this they regard as inviting Northern aggression, and they are without arms, to any extent, or munitions of war. They declare themselves Southerners by geographical position, by a common interest, by their social system, and by blood, for they are rapidly becoming a nation of whites. They have written constitutions, laws, etc., modeled after those of the Southern States. We recommend them to the fostering care of the South, and that treaty arrangements be entered into with them as soon as possible. They can raise 20,000 good fighting men, leaving enough at home to attend to domestic affairs, and under the direction of an officer from the Southern Government would deal destruction to an approaching army from that direction, and in the language of one of their principal men:

“Lincoln may haul his big guns about our prairies in the daytime, but we will swoop down upon him at night from our mountains and forests, dealing death and destruction to his army.”

No delay should be permitted in this direction. They cannot declare themselves until they are placed in a defensible position. The Administration of the North is concentrating his forces at Fort Washita, about twenty-four miles from the Texas line, and within the limits of the Chickasaw Nation. This fort could easily be taken by a force of 200 or 300 good men, and it is submitted as to whether in the present state of affairs a foreign government should be permitted to accumulate a large force on the borders of our country, especially a portion containing a large number of disaffected citizens who repudiate the action of the State.

In this connection it may not be improper to state that from North Fork to Red River we met over 120 wagons, movers from Texas to Kansas and other free States. These people are from Grayton, Collin, Johnson, and Denton, a country beautiful in appearance, rich in soil, genial in climate, and inferior to none in its capacity for the production of the cereals and stock. In disguise, we conversed with them freely. They had proposed by the ballot box to abolitionize at least that portion of the State. Failing in this, we suppose at least 500 voters have returned whence they came.

All of which is respectfully submitted this April 23, 1861....

Presumably, the suggestions, contained in the closing paragraphs of the commissioners’ report, in so far as they concerned Texas, were immediately acted upon by her. It was very true, as the commissioners had reported, that a change was taking place in the disposition of Federal troops within the Indian country. About the middle of February, a complaint134 had been filed at the Indian Office by the Wichita agent, Matthew Leeper, to the effect that men, claiming to be Choctaws and Chickasaws, were trespassing upon the Leased District. The Reserve Indians asked for relief and protection at the hands of their guardian, the United States government. Shortly afterwards, perhaps in a measure in response to the appeal or more likely, to a hint that everything was not quite as it should be on the Texan border, Colonel William H. Emory, First United States Cavalry, was ordered, March 13,135 to take post at Fort Cobb. He was then in Washington and, immediately upon his departure thence, was ordered, March 18,136 to form his regiment at Fort Washita instead, word having come from the commander at that post,137 in a report of the third instant, of a threatened attack by Texans. In explanation of a policy so vacillating, Emory was given to understand that the change of destination was really made at the solicitation of the agent and delegation of the Chickasaws. Those men were in Washington, out of reach of and apparently out of sympathy with, the events transpiring at home. Agent Cooper, secessionist though he was, probably did not altogether approve of the interference of the Texans. At any rate, he shared the representations of the Chickasaw delegation that Fort Washita stood in need of reënforcement,138 and the War Department acceded to their request on the ground that, “The interests of the United States are paramount to those of the friendly Indians on the reservation near Fort Cobb.”139

Emory’s orders further comprehended a concentration of all the troops at Fort Washita that were then at that place and at Forts Cobb and Arbuckle;140 but the orders were discretionary in their nature and permitted his leaving a small force at the more northern posts should circumstances warrant or demand it. On the nineteenth, General Scott had had a conference with Senator Charles B. Mitchell of Arkansas and, in deference to Mitchell’s opinion, still further modified his orders to Emory so that, while leaving him the bulk of his discretionary power, he recommended that, if advisable, Emory retain one company at Fort Cobb.141 In any event, one company of infantry was to move in advance from Fort Arbuckle to Fort Washita.142

Up to the twenty-fourth of March, at which time he left Memphis, Colonel Emory made pretty good time in his attempt to reach his destination; but from Memphis on his movements were unavoidably and considerably hampered. Low water in the Arkansas detained him for several days so that he deemed it prudent to send his orders on ahead to the commanding officer at Fort Arbuckle “to commence the movement upon Fort Washita, and, in the event of the latter place being threatened, to march to its support with his whole force.”143 On reaching Fort Smith, Emory found that matters had come to a crisis in Arkansas and, touching the disposition of his force and the objects of his mission, allowed himself to be unduly influenced in his judgment by men of local predilections.144 It was upon their advice and upon the urgent pleadings of Matthew Leeper,145 Indian agent on the Leased District, that he exercised his discretionary power as to the disposal of troops, without listening to his military subordinates146 or having viewed the locality for himself. In the interests of these local petitioners,147 he even enlarged upon Mitchell’s recommendation and concluded to leave two companies at Fort Cobb as one was deemed altogether inadequate to the protection of so isolated a post. It never seems to have occurred to him that the attack would have to come from the south, from the direction of Fort Washita, and that a force large enough to be efficient at either Fort Washita or Fort Arbuckle would necessarily protect Fort Cobb and the Indians of the Leased District.

The position of the Indians in the Leased District was serious in the extreme. They lived in mortal terror of the Texans and their agent, the man placed over them by the United States government, was now an avowed secessionist. He was a Texan and declared, as so many another southerner did from General Lee down, that honor and loyalty compelled him to go with his state. In February, he had been in Washington City, settling his accounts with the government and estimating for the next two quarters in accordance with the rulings and established usage of the Indian Office. On his way west and back to his agency, he was waylaid by a man of the name of “Burrow,” very probably Colonel N. B. Burrow, acting under authority from the state of Arkansas, who despoiled him of part of his travelling equipment and then suffered him to go on his way.148 Leeper reached his agency to find the Indians greatly excited. He endeavored to allay their fears, assuring them that the Texans would do them no harm. Soon, however, came his own defection and he thenceforward made use of every means, either to make the way easy for the Texans or to induce the Indians to side with them against the United States.

While Emory was dilly-dallying at Fort Smith, the Texans made their preparations149 for invading the Indian country and a regiment of volunteers under William C. Young, once a planter of Braganza County and now state regimental colonel, moved towards the Red River. There is something to show that they came at the veiled invitation150 of the Indians. At any rate they seem to have felt pretty sure of a welcome151 and were close at hand when Colonel Emory reached Fort Washita. He reached Fort Washita to find that the concentration of troops, even of such as his ill-advised orders would permit, had not yet fully taken place, that his supplies had been seized by the Texans, and that a general attack by them upon the poorly fortified posts was to be hourly expected. Emory, thereupon, resolved to withdraw from Fort Washita towards Arbuckle and Cobb. The day after he did so, April 16, Young’s troops entered in force. Emory hurried forward to strengthen Fort Cobb and, indeed, to relieve it, taking, in his progress, the open prairie road that his cavalry might be more available. On the way,152 he was joined by United States troops from Fort Arbuckle, the Texans in close pursuit. Fort Arbuckle was occupied by them in turn and then Fort Cobb, Emory never so much as attempting to enter the place; for he found its garrison in flight to the northeast. Fugitives all together, the Federal troops, piloted by a Delaware Indian, Black Beaver,153 hurried onwards towards Fort Leavenworth. They seem to have made no lengthy stop until they were safe across the Arkansas River154 and their flight may well be said to have been a precipitous one. Behind them, at Fort Arbuckle, Colonel Young took possession of abandoned property and placed it in the care of the Chickasaw Indians,155 who had materially aided him in his attack. His next move was to negotiate,156 unauthoritatively, a treaty with the Reserve Indians, gaining the promise of their alliance upon the understanding that the Confederacy, in return, would feed and protect them. Fort Cobb was rifled and the Indians made rich, in their own estimation, with booty.157 Colonel Young seems then to have drawn back towards the Red River; but for several months he continued to occupy with his forces,158 under the authority of Texas and with the consent of the Chickasaw Indians, the three frontier posts that Emory had been instructed to guard; viz., Forts Washita, Arbuckle, and Cobb.

If Texas took time by the forelock in her anxiety to secure the Indian country and its inhabitants, Arkansas most certainly did the same; and, in the undertaking, various things told to her advantage, among which, not the least important was the close family relationship existing between her secessionist governor, Henry M. Rector, and the southern superintendent. They were cousins and, to all appearances, the best of friends. It is doubtful if in any state the executive authority thereof worked more energetically for secession or with greater consistency and promptitude than in Arkansas. Governor Rector had been elected, in the autumn of 1860, by the Democrats and old-line Whigs. He belonged to a numerous and most influential family, land-surveyors most of them, seemingly by inheritance, and, although from northern or border states originally, strongly committed to the doctrine of state sovereignty. The family connections were also powerful socially and politically. The gubernatorial inauguration came in November, 1860, and from that moment Henry M. Rector and his host of relations and friends worked for secession.

At the outset, Governor Rector identified the Indian interests with those of Arkansas. Even in his message159 of December 11, 1860 he gave it as his opinion that the two communities must together take measures to prevent anti-slavery migration. It was rather late in the day, however, to intimate that men of abolitionist sentiments must not be allowed to cross the line, and a man of the political acumen of Henry M. Rector must have known it. Immediately after the general election there were evidences of great excitement in Arkansas and, when news160 came that the disused arsenal at Little Rock was to be occupied by artillery under Captain James Totten from Fort Leavenworth, it broke out into expressions of public dissent. Little Rock was scarcely less radical and secessionist in its views than was Fort Smith and Fort Smith was regarded as a regular hot-bed of sectionalism. The legislature, too, was filled with state-rights advocates and some of the actions taken there were almost revolutionary in their trend. With the new year came new alarms and false reports of what was to be. Harrell records161 that the first message over the newly completed telegraph line between Memphis and Little Rock was a repetition of the rumor, quite without foundation, that Major Emory had been ordered from Fort Gibson to reinforce Totten at Little Rock, and that the effect upon Helena was electrical. It is no wonder that the newspapers and personal communications162 of the time showed great intensity of feeling and a tendency to ring the changes on a single theme.

The public indignation following the receipt of the unsubstantiated rumor that Totten was to be reënforced seems to have compelled the action of Governor Rector in taking possession,163 on February eighth, in the name of the state of Arkansas, of the United States arsenal at Little Rock; but, as a matter of fact, Rector needed only an excuse, and a very slight one at that, for doing more than he had already done to prove his sectional bias. Nor had he forgotten or neglected the Indians. Indeed, never at any time did he leave a single stone unturned in his search for inside and outside support; and, notwithstanding the fact that the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was not passed until the sixth of May, Governor Rector conducted himself, for months before that, as though the state were a bona fide member of the Confederacy. In all his audacious venturings, proposals, and acts, he had the full and unquestioning support, not only of his cousin, Elias Rector,164 in whose honor Albert Pike had written the well-known parody165 on “The Old Scottish Gentlemen;”166 but of the leading citizens of Fort Smith and Little Rock, particularly of those whose previous occupations, residence, inclinations, or interests had made them conversant with Indian affairs and, therefore, unusually appreciative of the strategic value of the Indian country. Under such circumstances, it is not at all surprising that Governor Rector seized, as he did, the earliest167 opportunity to approach the Cherokees. Fort Smith at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers was only eighty miles from Fort Gibson.

Before taking up for special comment Governor Rector’s negotiations with the Cherokees through their principal chief, John Ross, it might be well to retrace our steps a little in order to show how, in yet other ways, Arkansas interested herself more than was natural in the concerns of the Indians and made some of her citizens, in the long run, more than ordinarily responsible for the development of secessionist sentiment among the southern tribes.

When David Hubbard, journeying westward as special secessionist commissioner168 from Alabama to Arkansas, reached Little Rock—and that was in the early winter of 1861—he soon discovered that many Arkansans were not willing for their state to go out of the Union unless she could take Indian Territory with her. Hubbard’s letter,169 descriptive of the situation, is very elucidating. It is addressed to Andrew B. Moore,170 governor of Alabama, and bears date Kinloch, Alabama, January third.

My Dear Sir: On receipt of your letter and appointment as commissioner from Alabama to Arkansas, I repaired to Little Rock and presented my credentials to the two houses, and also your letter to Governor Rector, by all of whom I was politely received. The Governor of Arkansas was every way disposed to further our views, and so were many leading and influential members of each house of the Legislature, but neither are yet ready for action, because they fear the people have not yet made up their minds to go out. The counties bordering on the Indian nations—Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—would hesitate greatly to vote for secession, and leave those tribes still under the influence of the Government at Washington, from which they receive such large stipends and annuities. These Indians are at a spot very important, in my opinion, in this great sectional controversy, and must be assured that the South will do as well as the North before they could be induced to change their alliances and dependence. I have much on this subject to say when I get to Montgomery, which cannot well be written. The two houses passed resolutions inviting me to meet them in representative hall and consult together as to what had best be done in this matter. When I appeared men were anxious to know what the seceding States intended to do in certain contingencies. My appointment gave me no authority to speak as to what any State would do, but I spoke freely of what, in my opinion, we ought to do. I took the ground that no State which had seceded would ever go back without full power being given to protect themselves by vote against anti-slavery projects and schemes of every kind. I took the position that the Northern people were honest and did fear the divine displeasure, both in this world and the world to come, by reason of what they considered the national sin of slavery, and that all who agreed with me in a belief of their sincerity must see that we could not remain quietly in the same Government with them. Secondly, if they were dishonest hypocrites, and only lied to impose on others and make them hate us, and used anti-slavery arguments as mere pretexts for the purpose of uniting Northern sentiment against us, with a view to obtain political power and sectional dominion, in that event we ought not to live with them. I desired any Unionist present to controvert either of these positions, which seemed to cover the whole ground. No one attempted either, and I said but little more. I am satisfied, from free conversations with members of all parties and with Governor Rector, that Arkansas, when compelled to choose, will side with the Southern States, but at present a majority would vote the Union ticket. Public sentiment is but being formed, but must take that direction....

What, in addition to that just cited, Hubbard had to say about the Indians or about the profit accruing from close contact with them, we have no way of knowing; but we have a right to be suspicious of the things that have to be communicated by word of mouth only, especially in this instance, when we remember that white men have always made the Indians subjects of exploitation and that Hubbard was the man whom the southern Confederacy chose for its first commissioner of Indian affairs, also that Hubbard’s first outline of work, as commissioner, in truth, his only outline, comprehended an extended visit to the Indians before whom he proposed to expatiate on the financial advantages of an adherence to the Confederacy and the inevitable financial ruin that must come from continued loyalty to the Union. All things considered, it would surely seem that in Hubbard’s mind the money question was always uppermost.

But there were others to whom the Indian income was a thing of interest. At the earlier meeting of the Arkansas convention, a resolution171 had been passed, March 9, 1861, authorizing an inquiry to be made into the annual cost to the United States government of the Indian service west of Arkansas. The state administration had already seized172 the Indian funds on hand, an opportunity to do so having offered itself upon the occasion of the death173 of the United States disbursing officer, Major P. T. Crutchfield. But, later, for fear that this might work prejudice with the Indians a resolution174 was passed providing that the money should not be diverted from its proper uses. Because of such actions and others of like direction, it is certainly safe to assume that pecuniary considerations made the frontiersmen of 1861 vitally interested in Indian affairs. The same influences that moved Hubbard to write his letter to Governor Moore with special mention of the Indians unquestionably moved the citizens of Boonsboro to try,175 without much further ado, the temper of the Cherokees.

Returning now to Governor Rector and to a recital of his endeavors with the same Indian people, it is seen that his approach to the Cherokees was made, as has been already intimated, through their principal chief, John Ross, and by means of the following most excellently worded letter:

The State of Arkansas, Executive Department,

Little Rock, January 29, 1861.

To His Excellency John Ross,

Principal Chief Cherokee Nation:

Sir: It may now be regarded as almost certain that the States having slave property within their borders will, in consequence of repeated Northern aggressions, separate themselves and withdraw from the Federal Government.

South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have already, by action of the people, assumed this attitude. Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland will probably pursue the same course by the 4th of March next. Your people, in their institutions, productions, latitude, and natural sympathies, are allied to the common brotherhood of the slaveholding States. Our people and yours are natural allies in war and friends in peace. Your country is salubrious and fertile, and possesses the highest capacity for future progress and development by the application of slave labor. Besides this, the contiguity of our territory with yours induces relations of so intimate a character as to preclude the idea of discordant or separate action.