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

(return)

      (cont.) the Indians and they are feeding them a little. … " See also Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. iv, 30.

Footnote 175: (return)

      Dole was from Illinois also, from Edgar County; Coffin was from Indiana [Indian Office Miscellaneous Records, no. 8, p. 432].

Footnote 176: (return)

      Daily Conservative, February 8, 1862.

Footnote 177: (return)

      Indian Office Consolidated Files, Southern Superintendency, D 576 of 1862; Letter Book, no. 67, pp. 450–452.

      

Kile's¹⁷⁸ visit was no longer on Fall River. Gradually, since first discovered, the main body of the refugees had moved forward within the New York Indian Lands to the Verdigris River and had halted in the neighborhood of Fort Roe, where the government agents had received them; but smaller or larger groups, chiefly of the sick and their friends, were scattered all along the way from Walnut Creek.¹⁷⁹ Some of the very belated exiles were as far westward as the Arkansas, over a hundred miles distant. Obviously, the thing to do first was to get them all together in one place. There were reasons why the Verdigris Valley was a most desirable location for the refugees. Only a very few white people were settled there and, as they were intruders and had not a shadow of legal claim to the land upon which they had squatted, any objections that they might make to the presence of the Indians could be ignored.¹⁸⁰

      For a few days, therefore, all efforts were directed, at large expense, towards converting the Verdigris Valley, in the vicinity of Fort Roe, into a concentration camp; but no precautions were taken against allowing unhygienic conditions to arise. The Indians themselves were much diseased. They had few opportunities for personal cleanliness and less ambition. Some of the food doled out to them was stuff that the army had condemned and rejected as unfit for use. They were emaciated, sick, discouraged. Finally, with

Footnote 178: (return)

      Indian Office Land Files, 1855–1870, Southern Superintendency, K 107 of 1862.

Footnote 179: (return)

      Some had wandered to the Cottonwood and were camped there in great destitution. Their chief food was hominy [Daily Conservative, February 14, 1862].

Footnote 180: (return)

      For an account of the controversy over the settlement of the New York Indian Lands, see Abel, Indian Reservations in Kansas and the Extinguishment of their Title, 13–14.

      

the February thaw, came a situation that soon proved intolerable. The "stench arising from dead ponies, about two hundred of which were in the stream and throughout the camp,"¹⁸¹ unburied, made removal imperatively necessary.

The Neosho Valley around about Leroy presented itself as a likely place, very convenient for the distributing agents, and was next selected. Its advantages and disadvantages seemed about equal and had all been anticipated and commented upon by Captain Turner.¹⁸² It was near the source of supplies—and that was an item very much to be considered, since transportation charges, extraordinarily high in normal times were just now exorbitant, and the relief funds very, very limited. No appropriation by Congress had yet been made although one had been applied for.¹⁸³ The great disadvantage of the location was the presence of white settlers and they objected, as well they might, to the near proximity of the inevitable disease and filth and, strangely enough, more than anything else, to the destruction of the timber, which they had so carefully husbanded. The concentration on the Neosho had not been fully accomplished when the pressure from the citizens became so great that Superintendent Coffin felt obliged to plan for yet another removal. Again the sympathy of the Sacs and Foxes of Mississippi manifested itself and most opportunely. Their reservation

Footnote 181: (return)

      Annual Report of Superintendent Coffin, October 15, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 136. Compare with Coffin's account given in a letter to Dole, February 13, 1862.

Footnote 182: (return)

      February 11, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 153; Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, D 576 of 1862.

Footnote 183: (return)

      Congressional Globe, 37th congress, second session, part I, pp. 815, 849. Dole's letter to Smith, January 31, 1862, describing the destitution of the refugees, was read in the Senate, February 14, 1862, in support of joint resolution S. no. 49, for their relief.

      

lay about twenty-five miles to the northward and they generously offered it as an asylum.¹⁸⁴ But the Indians balked. They were homesick, disgusted with official mismanagement¹⁸⁵ and indecision, and determined to go no farther. They complained bitterly of the treatment that they had received at the hands of Superintendent Coffin and of Agent Cutler and, in a stirring appeal¹⁸⁶ to President Lincoln, set forth their injuries, their grievances, and their incontestable claim upon a presumably just and merciful government.¹⁸⁷

The Indians were not alone in their rebellious attitude. There was mutiny seething, or something very like it, within the ranks of the agents.¹⁸⁸ E.H. Carruth

Footnote 184: (return)

      Coffin to Dole, March 28, 1862 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, C 1565 of 1862].

Footnote 185: (return)

      Mismanagement there most certainly had been. In no other way can the fact that there was absolutely no amelioration in their condition be accounted for. Many documents that will be cited in other connections prove this point and Collamore's letter is of itself conclusive. George W. Collamore, known best by his courtesy title of "General," went to Kansas in the critical years before the war under circumstances, well and interestingly narrated in Stearns' Life