The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War Part 24

programme of what ought to be done for Indian Territory and for the Indians, in order that their friendly alliance might be maintained. He urged many things and one thing very particularly. It was the crux of them all and it was that Indian Territory should be absolutely separated from Arkansas, in a military way, and that no troops from either Arkansas or Texas should be stationed within it. Other suggestions of Pike's were equally sound. Indeed, the entire letter of the first of August was sound and in no part of it more sound than in that which recommended the immediate appointment of a superintendent of Indian affairs for the Arkansas and Red River Superintendency, also the appointment of Indian agents for all places that had none.[484] It was high time that positions in connection with the conduct of Indian affairs should be something more than sinecures.

Aspirants for the office of superintendent had already made their wants known. Foremost among them was Douglas H. Cooper. It was not in his mind, however, to separate the military command from the civil and he therefore asked that he be made brigadier-general and _ex officio_ superintendent of Indian affairs in the place of Pike removed.[485] His own representations of Pike's grievous offence had fully prepared him for the circ.u.mstance of Pike's removal and he antic.i.p.ated it in making his own application for office. Subsequent knowledge of Pike's activities and of his standing at Richmond must have come to Cooper as a rude awakening.

Nevertheless, Cooper did get his appointment. It

[Footnote 484: In his message of August 18, 1862 [Richardson, vol. i, 238], President Davis remarked upon the vacancies in these offices and said that, in consequence of them, delays had occurred in the payment of annuities and allowances to which the Indians were ent.i.tled.]

[Footnote 485: _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 821.]

came the twenty-ninth of September in the form of special orders from the adjutant-general's office.[486] Pike was still on the ground, as will be presently shown, and Cooper's moral unfitness for a position of so much responsibility was yet to be revealed. The moment was one when the Confederacy was taking active steps to keep its most significant promise to the Indian nations, give them a representation in Congress. The Cherokees had lost no time in availing themselves of the privilege of electing a delegate, neither had the Choctaws and Chickasaws. Elias C. Boudinot had proved to be the successful candidate of the former and Robert M. Jones[487] of the latter. Over the credentials of Boudinot, the House of Representatives made some demur; but, as there was no denying his const.i.tutional right, under treaty guarantee, to be present, they were accepted and he was given his seat.[488] Provisions had, however, yet to be determined for regulating Indian elections and fixing the pay and mileage, likewise also, the duties and privileges of Indian delegates.[489] Perhaps it is unfair to intimate that the provisions would have been determined earlier, had congress not preferred to go upon the a.s.sumption that they would never be needed, since it was scarcely likely that the Indians would realize the importance of their rights and act upon them.[490]

[Footnote 486: War Department, _Confederate Records, Special Orders of the Adjutant and Inspector General's Office_, C.S.A., 1862, p.

438; _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 885.]

[Footnote 487: See doc.u.ment of date, October 7, 1861, signed by Douglas H. Cooper, certifying that Robert M. Jones had received the "greatest number of votes cast" as delegate in Congress for the Choctaws and Chickasaws [Pickett _Papers_, Package 118].]

[Footnote 488: _Journal_, vol. v, 513, 514.]

[Footnote 489:--Ibid., vol. ii, 452, 457, 480; vol. v, 514, 523, 561.]

[Footnote 490: Davis had thrown the responsibility of the whole matter upon Congress, when he insisted that the "delegate" clauses in the treaties should (cont.)]

While Congress was debating the question of Indian delegate credentials and their acceptance, a tragedy took place in Indian Territory that more than confirmed General Pike's worst prognostications and proved his main contention that Indian affairs should be considered primarily upon their own merits, as an end in themselves, and dealt with accordingly. Had the Arkansas and Red River Superintendency been regularly established, the tragedy referred to might never have occurred; but it was not yet established and for many reasons, one of them being that, although Douglas H. Cooper's appointment had been resolved upon, he had not yet been invested with the office of superintendent.[491] His commission was being withheld because charges of incapacity and drunkenness had been preferred against him.[492]

General Pike's disclosures had aroused suspicion and grave apprehension in Richmond, so much so, indeed, that the War Department, convinced that conditions in Indian Territory were very far from being what they should be, decided to undertake an investigation of its own through its Indian bureau. Promptly, therefore, S.S. Scott, acting commissioner, departed for the West. General Pike was in Texas.

Now one of the contingencies that Pike had most constantly dreaded was tribal disorder on the Leased

[Footnote 490: (cont.) be so modified as to make the admission of the Indians dependent, not upon the treaty-making power, but upon the legislative. See his message of December 12, 1861, Richardson, vol. i, 149-151.]

[Footnote 491: Elias Rector, who had been retained as superintendent under the Confederate government, seems never to have exercised the functions of the office subsequent to the a.s.sumption by Pike of his duties as commander of the Department of Indian Territory. He was probably envious of Pike and resigned rather than serve in a subordinate capacity. He seems to have made some troube for Pike [_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 964, 976].]

[Footnote 492:--Ibid., 906, 908, 910-911, 927-928.]

District,[493] a disorder that might at any moment extend itself to Texas and to other parts of the Indian Territory, imperiling the whole Confederate alliance. So long as there was a strong force at Fort McCulloch and at the frontier posts of longer establishment, particularly at Fort Cobb, the Reserve Indians could be held in check with comparative ease. Hindman, ignorant of or indifferent to the situation, no matter how serious it might be for others, had ordered the force to be scattered and most of it withdrawn from the Red River Valley.

The so-called Wichita, or Reserve, Indians, to call them by a collective term only very recently bestowed, had ever const.i.tuted a serious problem for the neighboring states as well as for the central government. It was with the Confederacy as with the old Union. The Reserve Indians were a motley horde, fragments of many tribes that had seen better days. They were all more or less related, either geographically or linguistically. Some of them, it is difficult to venture upon what proportion, had been induced to enter into negotiations with Pike and through him had formed an alliance with the Confederacy. Apparently, those who had done this were chiefly Tonkawas. Other Reserve Indians continued true to the North. As time went on hostile feelings, engendered by living in opposite camps, gained in intensity, the more especially because white men, both north and south, encouraged them to go upon the war-path, either against their own a.s.sociates or others. Reprisals, frequently b.l.o.o.d.y, were regularly inst.i.tuted. With Pike's departure from Fort McCulloch an opportunity for greater vindictiveness offered, notwithstanding the fact that the Choctaw and Chickasaw

[Footnote 493: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 868.]

troops had been left behind and were guarding the near-by country, their own.

Sometime in the latter part of August or the early part of September, Matthew Leeper, the Wichita agent under the Confederate government, a left-over from Buchanan's days, went from the Leased District,[494]

frightened away, some people thought, perhaps afraid of the inevitable results of the mischief his own hands had so largely wrought, and sojourned in Texas, his old home. The sutler left also and a man named Jones was then in sole charge of the agency. The northern sympathizers among the Indians thereupon aroused themselves. They had gained greatly of late in strength and influence and their numbers had been augmented by renegade Seminoles from Jumper's battalion and by outlawed Cherokees. They warned Jones that Leeper would be wise not to return. If he should return, it would be the worse for him; for they were determined to wreak revenge upon him for all the misery his machinations in favor of the Confederacy and for his own gain had cost them. Presumably, Jones scorned to transmit the warning and, in course of time, Leeper returned.

The twenty-third of October witnessed one of the bloodiest scenes ever enacted on the western plains. The northern Indians of the Reserve together with a lot of wandering Shawnees, Delawares, and Kickapoos, many of them good-for-nothing or vicious, some Seminoles and Cherokees attacked Leeper unawares, killed him,[495] as also three white male employees of the agency.

[Footnote 494: _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 828.]

[Footnote 495: On the murder of Agent Leeper, see Scott to Holmes, November 2, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 919-921; Holmes to Secretary of War, November 15, 1862, Ibid., 919: F. Johnson to Dole, January 20, 1863, Abel, _American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist_, 329-330, _footnote_; (cont.)]

They then put "the bodies into the agency building and fired it." The next morning they made an equally brutal attack upon the Tonkawas and with most telling effect. More than half of them were butchered. The survivors, about one hundred fifty, fled to Fort Arbuckle.[496] Their condition was pitiable. The murderers, for they were nothing less than that, fled northward, they and their families, to swell the number of Indian refugees already living upon government bounty in Kansas.

Commissioner Scott then at Fort Was.h.i.ta hurried to the Leased District to examine into the affair. He had made many observations since leaving Richmond, had talked with Pike, now returned from Texas, and had come around pretty much to his way of thinking. His recommendations to the department commander that were intended to reach the Secretary of War as well were in every sense a corroboration of Pike's complaints in so far as the woeful neglect of the Indians was concerned. Better proof that Hindman's conduct had been highly reprehensible could scarcely be asked for.

[Footnote 495: (cont.) Moore, _Rebellion Record_, vol. vi, 6; W.F. Cady to c.o.x, February 16, 1870, Indian Office _Report Book_, no. 19, 186-188; Coffin to Dole, September 24, 1863, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, _Report_, 1863, 177.]

[Footnote 496: S.S. Scott asked permission of Governor Winchester Colbert, November 10, 1862, to place the fugitive Tonkawas "temporarily on Rocky or Clear Creek, near the road leading from Fort Was.h.i.ta to Arbuckle." Colbert granted the permission, "provided they are subject to the laws of the Chickasaw Nation, and will furnish guides to the Home Guards and the Chickasaw Battalion, when called upon to do so."]

VIII. THE RETIREMENT OF GENERAL PIKE

The tragedy at the Wichita agency brought General Pike again to the fore. His resignation had not been accepted at Richmond as Hindman supposed was the case at the time he released him from custody. In fact, as events turned out, it looked as though Hindman were decidedly more in disrepute there than was Pike. His arbitrary procedure in the Trans-Mississippi District had been complained of by many persons besides the one person whom he had so unmercifully badgered.

Furthermore, the circ.u.mstances of his a.s.signment to command were being inquired into and everything divulged was telling tremendously against him.

The irregularity of Hindman's a.s.signment to command has been already commented upon in this narrative. Additional details may now be given.

Van Dorn had hopes, on the occasion of his own summons to work farther east, that Sterling Price would be the one chosen eventually to succeed him or, at all events, the one to take the chief command of the Confederate forces in the West. He greatly wished that upon him and upon him alone his mantle should fall.[497] The filling of the position by Hindman was to be but tentative, to last only until Price,[498] perhaps also Van Dorn,

[Footnote 497: Van Dorn to President Davis, June 9, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 831-832.]

[Footnote 498: Price was preferred to H.M. Rector; because Van Dorn felt that Rector's influence with the people of Arkansas had greatly declined. The truth was, Governor Rector had become incensed at the disregard shown for Arkansas by Confederate commanders. In a recent proclamation, he had announced that the state would henceforth look out for herself.]

could discuss matters personally with the president and remove the prejudice believed to be existing in his mind against Price; but the War Department had quite other plans developed, a rumor of which soon reached the ears of Van Dorn. It was then he telegraphed, begging Davis to make no appointment for the present to the command of the Trans-Mississippi District and informing him that Hindman had been sent there temporarily.[499] The request came to Richmond too late. An appointment had already been resolved upon and made. The man chosen was John Bankhead Magruder, a major-general in the Army of Northern Virginia. However, as he was not yet ready to take up his new duties, Hindman was suffered to a.s.sume the command in the West; but Magruder's rights held over. They were held in abeyance, so to speak, temporarily waived.[500]

The controversy between Pike and Hindman would seem to have impelled Secretary Randolph to wish to terminate early Magruder's delay; but Magruder was loath to depart. His lack of enthusiasm ought to have been enough to convince those sending him that he

[Footnote 499: The orders for Hindman to repair west, issuing from Beauregard's headquarters, were explicit, not upon the point of the temporary character of his appointment, but upon that of its having been made "at the earnest solicitation of the people of Arkansas."

[_Official Records_, vol. x, part ii, 547].]

[Footnote 500: Price, nothing daunted, continued to seek the position and submitted plans for operations in the West. His importunities finally forced the inquiry from Davis as to whether Magruder's appointment had ever been rescinded and whether, since he seemed in no hurry to avail himself of it, he really wanted the place. Randolph reported that Magruder had no objection to the service to which he had been ordered but desired to remain near Richmond until the expected battle in the neighborhood should have occurred. Randolph then suggested that Price be tendered the position of second in command [Randolph to Davis, June 23, 1862, _Official Records_, vol.

xiii, 837], an arrangement that met with Magruder's hearty approval [Magruder to R.E. Lee, June 26, 1862, Ibid., 845].]

was hardly the man for the place. His acquaintance with Trans-Mississippi conditions was very superficial, yet even he found out that they were of a nature to admonish those concerned of their urgency, especially in the matter of lack of arms.[501] By the fourteenth of July his indecision was apparently overcome. At any rate, on that day Randolph wrote Pike that Magruder, the real commander of the Trans-Mississippi District, would soon arrive at Little Rock and that the offences of which Pike had had reason to complain would not be repeated.

Letters travelled slowly in those days and Randolph's comforting intelligence did not reach Pike in time to avert the catastrophe of his proclamation and consequent arrest. And it was just as well, all things considered, for Magruder never reached Little Rock. He was a man of intemperate habits and, while _en route_, was ordered back to Richmond to answer "charges of drunkenness and disobedience of orders."[502] His appointment was thereupon rescinded. The man selected in his place, to the total ignoring of Price's prior claims, was Theophilus H. Holmes, a native of North Carolina.[503] President Davis was still possessed of the notion that frontier affairs could be best conducted by men who had no local attachments there. Late events had all too surely lent weight to his theory. Nevertheless, in holding it, Davis was strictly inconsistent and illogical; for loyalty to the particular home state const.i.tuted the strongest a.s.set that the Confederacy had. It was the lode-star that had drawn Lee and

[Footnote 501: Magruder to Randolph, July 5, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 851-852.]

[Footnote 502: Clark to Price, July 17, 1862, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 816-817.]

[Footnote 503: Wright, _General Officers of C.S.A_., 15-16.]

many another, who cared not a whit for political principles in and for themselves, from their allegiance to the Union. It was the great bulwark of the South.

Holmes was ordered west July 16;[504] but, as he had the necessary preparations to make and various private matters to attend to, August had almost begun before it proved possible for him to reach Little Rock.[505] The interval had given Hindman a new lease of official life and a further extension of opportunity for oppression, which he had used to good advantage. The new department commander, while yet in Richmond, had discussed the Pike-Hindman controversy with his superior officers and had arrived at a conclusion distinctly favorable to Pike.

He frankly confessed as much weeks afterwards. Once in Little Rock, however, he learned from the Hindman coterie of Pike's Indian proclamation and immediately veered to Hindman's side.[506] Pike talked with him, recounted his grievances in a fashion that none could surpa.s.s, but made absolutely no impression upon him. So small a thing and so short a time had it taken to develop a hostile prejudice in Holmes's mind, previously unbiased, so deep-seated that it never, in all the months that followed, knew the slightest diminution.