The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War. Annie Heloise Abel
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The provision in the treaties to the effect that the alliance consummated between the Indians and the Confederate government was to be both offensive and defensive must not be taken too literally or be construed so broadly as to militate against this fact: for to its truth Pike, when in distress later on and accused of leading a horde of tomahawking villains, repeatedly bore witness. The keeping back of a foe, bent upon regaining Indian Territory or of marauding, might well be said to partake of the character of offensive warfare and yet not be that in intent or in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Everything would have to depend upon the point of view.
Footnote 39: (return)
A restricted use of the Indians in offensive guerrilla action Pike would doubtless have permitted and justified. Indeed, he seems even to have recommended it in the first days of his interest in the subject of securing Indian Territory. No other interpretation can possibly be given to his suggestion that a battalion be raised from Indians that more strictly belonged to Kansas [Official Records, vol. iii, 581]. It is also conceivable that the force he had reference to in his letter to Benjamin, November 27, 1861 [ibid., vol. viii, 698] was to be, in part, Indian.
Footnote 40: (return)
Harrell, Confederate Military History, vol. x, 121–122.
which he negotiated he pledged distinctly and explicitly the opposite course of action, unless, indeed, the Indian consent were first obtained.41 The Indian troops, however and wherever raised under the provisions of those treaties, were expected by Pike to constitute, primarily, a home guard and nothing more. If by chance it should happen that, in performing their function as a home guard, they should have to cross their own boundary in order to expel or to punish an intruder, well and good; but their intrinsic character as something resembling a police patrol could not be deemed thereby affected. Moreover, Pike did not believe that acting alone they could even be a thoroughly adequate home force. He, therefore, urged again and again that their contingent should be supplemented by a white force and by one sufficiently large to give dignity and poise and self-restraint to the whole, when both forces were combined, as they always ought to be.42
At the time of Pike's assumption of his ill-defined command, or within a short period thereafter, the Indian force in the pay of the Confederacy and subject to his orders may be roughly placed at four full regiments and some miscellaneous troops.43 The dispersion44 of Colonel John Drew's Cherokees, when about to attack Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, forced a slight reörganization and that, taken in connection with the accretions to the command that came in the interval before the Pea Ridge campaign brought the force approximately to four full
Footnote 41: (return)
In illustration of this, take the statement of the Creek Treaty, article xxxvi.
Footnote 42: (return)
Aside from the early requests for white troops, which were antecedent to his own appointment as brigadier-general, Pike's insistence upon the need for the same can be vouched for by reference to his letter to R.W. Johnson, January 5, 1862 [Official Records, vol. liii, supplement, 795–796].
Footnote 43: (return)
Pike to Benjamin, November 27, 1861, ibid, vol. viii, 697.
Footnote 44: (return)
Official Records, vol. viii, 8, 17–18.
regiments, two battalions, and some detached companies. The four regiments were, the First Regiment Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles under Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, the First Creek Regiment under Colonel D.N. McIntosh, the First Regiment Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Colonel John Drew, and the Second Regiment Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Colonel Stand Watie. The battalions were, the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Creek and Seminole, the latter under Lieutenant-colonel Chilly McIntosh and Major John Jumper.
Major-general Earl Van Dorn formally assumed command of the newly created Trans-Mississippi District of Department No. 2, January 29, 1862.45 He was then at Little Rock, Arkansas. By February 6, he had moved up to Jacksonport and, a week or so later, to Pocahontas, where his slowly-assembling army was to rendezvous. His call for troops had already gone forth and was being promptly answered,46 requisition having been made upon all the state units within the district, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, also Texas. Indian Territory, through Pike47 and his subordinates,48 was yet to be communicated with; but Van Dorn had, at the moment, no other plan in view for Indian troops than to use them to advantage as a means of defence and as a corps of observation.49 His immediate object, according to his own showing and according to the circumstances that had brought about the formation of the district, was to protect Arkansas50 against
Footnote 45: (return)
Official Records, vol. viii, 745–746.
Footnote 46: (return)
—Ibid., vol. liii, supplement, 776–779, 783–785, 790, 793–794.
Footnote 47: (return)
—Ibid., vol. viii, 749, 763–764.
Footnote 48: (return)
—Ibid., 764–765.
Footnote 49: (return)
Van Dorn to Price, February 14, 1862, ibid., 750.
Footnote 50: (return)
Arkansas seemed, at the time, to be but feebly protected. R.W. Johnson deprecated the calling of Arkansas troops eastward. They were (cont.)
invasion and to relieve Missouri; his plan of operations was to conduct a spring campaign in the latter state, "to attempt St. Louis," as he himself put it, and to drive the Federals out; his ulterior motive may have been and, in the light of subsequent events, probably was, to effect a diversion for General A.S. Johnston; but, if that were really so, it was not, at the time, divulged or so much as hinted at.
Ostensibly,