The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War. Annie Heloise Abel

President and settle it today."—SMITH to Dole, February 6, 1862.

      "President cant attend to business now. Sickness in the family. No arrangements can be made now. Make necessary arrangements for relief of Indians. I will send communication to Congress today."—Same to Same, February 11, 1862.

      "Go on and supply the destitute Indians. Congress will supply the means. War Department will not organize them."—Same to Same, February 14, 1862.

Footnote 161: (return)

      Smith to Dole, January 3, 1862 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Central Superintendency, I 531 of 1862; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 150].

Footnote 162: (return)

      On the second of January, Agent Cutler wired from Leavenworth to Dole, "Heopothleyohola with four thousand warriors is in the field and needs help badly. Secession Creeks are deserting him. Hurry up Lane."—Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, C 1443 of 1862.

      

necessities and to enable them to return betimes to their own country.¹⁶³ Moreover, Indians of northern antecedents and sympathies were exhibiting unwonted enthusiasm for the cause¹⁶⁴ and it seemed hard to have to repel them. Dole was, nevertheless, compelled to do it. On the eleventh of February, he countermanded the orders he had issued to Superintendent Coffin and thus a temporary quietus was put upon the whole affair of the Indian Expedition.

Footnote 163: (return)

      Their plea was expressed most strongly in the course of an interview which Dole had with representatives of the Loyal Creeks and Seminoles, Iowas and Delawares, February 1, 1862. Robert Burbank, the Iowa agent, was there. White Cloud acted as interpreter [Daily Conservative, February 2, 1862].

Footnote 164: (return)

      Some of these had been provoked to a desire for war by the inroads of Missourians. Weas, Piankeshaws, Peorias, and Miamies, awaiting the return of Dole from the interior of Kansas, said, "they were for peace but the Missourians had not left them alone" [ibid., February 9, 1862].

III. THE INDIAN REFUGEES IN SOUTHERN KANSAS

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      The thing that would most have justified the military employment of Indians by the United States government, in the winter of 1862, was the fact that hundreds and thousands of their southern brethren were then refugees because of their courageous and unswerving devotion to the American Union. The tale of those refugees, of their wanderings, their deprivations, their sufferings, and their wrongs, comparable only to that of the Belgians in the Great European War of 1914, is one of the saddest to relate, and one of the most disgraceful, in the history of the War of Secession, in its border phase.

      The first in the long procession of refugees were those of the army of Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la who, after their final defeat by Colonel James McIntosh in the Battle of Chustenahlah, December 26, 1861, had fled up the valley of the Verdigris River and had entered Kansas near Walnut Creek. In scattered lines, with hosts of stragglers, the enfeebled, the aged, the weary, and the sick, they had crossed the Cherokee Strip and the Osage Reservation and, heading steadily towards the northeast, had finally encamped on the outermost edge of the New York Indian Lands, on Fall River, some sixty odd miles west of Humboldt. Those lands, never having been accepted as an equivalent for their Wisconsin holdings by the Iroquois, were not occupied throughout their entire extent by Indians and only here and there

      

      encroached upon by white intruders, consequently the impoverished and greatly fatigued travellers encountered no obstacles in settling themselves down to rest and to wait for a much needed replenishment of their resources.

Their coming was expected. On their way northward, they had fallen in, at some stage of the journey, with some buffalo hunters, Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi, returning to their reservation, which lay some distance north of Burlington and chiefly in present Osage County, Kansas. To them the refugees reported their recent tragic experience. The Sacs and Foxes were most sympathetic and, after relieving the necessities of the refugees as best they could, hurried on ahead, imparting the news, in their turn, to various white people whom they met. In due course it reached General Denver, still supervising affairs in Kansas, and William G. Coffin, the southern superintendent.¹⁶⁵ It was the first time, since his appointment the spring before, that Coffin had had any prospect of getting in touch with any considerable number of his charges and he must have welcomed the chance of now really earning his salary. He ordered all of the agents under him—and some¹⁶⁶ of them had not previously entered officially upon their duties—to assemble at Fort Roe, on the Verdigris, and be prepared to take charge of their

Footnote 165: (return)

      These facts were obtained chiefly from a letter, not strictly accurate as to some of its details, written by Superintendent Coffin to Dole, January 15, 1862 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, C 1474 of 1862].

Footnote 166: (return)

      For instance, William P. Davis, who had been appointed Seminole Agent, despairing of ever reaching his post, had gone into the army [Dole to John S. Davis of New Albany, Indiana, April 5, 1862, Indian Office Letter Book, no. 68, p. 39]. George C. Snow of Parke County, Indiana, was appointed in his stead [Dole to Snow, January 13, 1862, ibid., no. 67, p. 243].

      

      several contingents; for the refugees, although chiefly Creeks, were representative of nearly every one of the non-indigenous tribes of Indian Territory.

It is not an easy matter to say, with any show of approach to exact figures, how many the refugees numbered.¹⁶⁷ For weeks and weeks, they were almost continually coming in and even the very first reports bear suspicious signs of the exaggeration that became really notorious as graft and peculation entered more and more into the reckoning. Apparently, all those who, in ever so slight a degree, handled the relief funds, except, perhaps, the army men, were interested in making the numbers appear as large as possible. The larger the need represented, the larger the sum that might, with propriety, be demanded and the larger the opportunity for graft. Settlers, traders, and some government agents were, in this respect, all culpable together.

There was no possibility of mistake, however, intentional or otherwise, about the destitution of the refugees. It was inconceivably horrible. The winter weather of late December and early January had been most inclement and the Indians had trudged through it, over snow-covered, rocky, trailless places and desolate prairie, nigh three hundred miles. When they started out, they were not any too well provided with clothing; for they had departed in a hurry, and, before they got to Fall River, not a few of them were absolutely naked. They had practically no tents, no bed-coverings, and no provisions. Dr. A.B. Campbell, a surgeon sent out by General Hunter,¹⁶⁸