With effective military protection as a prerequisite, he accordingly recommended their return. That was in September, when he made his annual report. His prerequisite was a large order; for it was most unlikely that the War Department would arrange its affairs with reference to Indian comfort and safety as matters for primary concern. It had never thus far been overzealous to co-operate with the Indian Office. As compared with the great needs of the nation, in times so critical, the welfare of aborigines was a mere bagatelle. It might be thrown to the winds; they, in fact, annihilated and no thought taken.
The reasons for expediting refugee restoration were many and more than balanced, in importance at all events, the elements of previous failure. They were chiefly of two kinds, financial and personal. The cost of maintenance had been a heavy charge upon tribal funds, both regular and diverted. The expenditure of relief money had given satisfaction to nobody unless, possibly, to contractors. The estimates had mounted every quarter. To Coffin, Dole had conceded a large discretion. He probably knew his man and his own conduct may not have been impeccable. At any rate, from the official point of view, Coffin greatly abused the trust reposed in him and, even if not guilty of positive dishonesty as charged by his enemies, was not always wise in his decisions. To Dole's disgust, he spent refugee relief money for resident Kansas tribes, temporarily embarrassed, although they had large tribal funds of their own and, in individual cases, were really well to do. At the same time, he grumbled because he was forced to stint the true refugees, his allowance not being nearly enough, and he begrudged any portion of it to the Cherokees in Indian Territory, who, though ostensibly restored, were in a most distressful state, wretchedly poor.
The Indians in all localities were dissatisfied. They were tired of privation, tired of changed habits of life, and they were homesick. "The strange attachment of these Indians," wrote P.P. Elder, "to their country and homes from which they were driven, and their great desire to return thither, continue unabated." Elder wrote thus of the insignificant Neosho Agency tribes; but what he said might have applied to any. The Seminoles, who at Neosho Falls were more comfortable than most of the refugees, suffering less, put up a pitiful plea. Their old chief, Billy Bowlegs, wellknown to the government because of his exploits in Florida, was away with the army at Camp Bentonville; but he wrote sadly of his own hope of return to the country that he had not set foot in since the war began. That country was endeared to him, not because it held the bones of his ancestors but simply because it was home. Home recovered would mean re-union with his family. He envied the Cherokee soldiers, who were now in close touch with their women and children. He admitted there was great confusion in the Indian Territory; but he had noticed empty houses there, deserted, in which he was childishly confident his people might find shelter. His communications fired the enthusiasm of those same people and they begged their Great Father to send them back. They would go, no matter what impediments athwart their way and they would go that very fall. Agent Snow doubted their being able to maintain themselves in their devastated country during the winter; but the thought did not deter them. They had known a scarcity of food in Kansas the preceding year and might fare better farther south. Anyhow, they could burn green wood as they pleased, which they had not been allowed to do on the white man's land. They had taken everything into consideration and where the Great Father's energy ended theirs would begin.
The homesickness of the refugees was due to a variety of causes and not of least consequence was the enforced change in their habits of living. Let it be remembered that they had come from homes of comfort and plenty. In Indian Territory, they had lived in up-to-date houses and had fed upon fruit and vegetables and abundantly upon meat. In Kansas, cast-off army tents were their portion and frequently damaged grain their diet. The tents had not been enough to protect them from the inclemency of the weather, their clothes were threadbare, their bodies under-nourished. The mortality among them had been appalling and only very recently on the decline. Moreover, they were apprehensive of what was being charged against their account; for they, from long experience, had no illusions as to the white man's generosity. The whisperings of graft and peculation were not unheeded by them and their mutterings echoed political recriminations. They were conscious that they had outstayed their welcome in Kansas, that citizens, who were not profiting from the expenditure of the relief money, were clamoring for them to be gone. On the Ottawa Reservation, and to some extent on the Sac and Fox, their red hosts had ceased to be sympathetic.
Practically, all of the agents in the southern superintendency with the exception of Harlan advised the return of the refugees to Indian Territory and they advised that it be undertaken early. Coleman apparently seconded the urgent appeal of his charges that they be sent home "the earliest practicable moment."
A return in the autumn or the winter would permit them to "gather cattle and hogs sufficient to furnish meat, and at the same time prepare their fields for a spring crop, thereby obviating the obligation of the government to subsist and clothe them." The Creeks were, however, afraid to venture before assurance was forthcoming that their enemies had certainly been cleaned out. Were that assurance to come, it would bring conviction of another thing, that secessionist Indians, now despondent, had returned to their allegiance to the United States government. There were many indications that they were wavering in their adherence to the Confederacy. For their return, as for refugee restoration, military protection would have to be a preliminary provision and it would have to extend beyond the confines of Fort Gibson and southward as well as northward of the Arkansas River. That river ought to be opened to navigation. Were transit once rendered safe, the Indians would haul their own supplies; but they wanted more than the Cherokee country cleared and protected. The Chickasaws, for instance, could not go back until such time as Forts Washita and Arbuckle had been seized and garrisoned. A small incompetent force in Indian Territory was worse than none at all. It simply invited attack and, if not augmented, should be withdrawn.
The wheels of governmental action turn slowly and the winter months of 1863 came and went with no forward movement for refugee restoration. In January of the next year, the agitation for it reached Congress and, on the twenty-seventh, the Senate Indian committee, through its chairman, called upon Usher for his opinion as to whether "the state of affairs" would not allow a return to Indian Territory in time for the raising of a crop. On the fifth of February, Dole consulted with General Blunt, who was then in Washington and who might be presumed to possess some expert knowledge of the subject. Blunt replied to the effect that the refugees ought most assuredly to be reinstated in their own country to prevent demoralization among them; but that the serious obstacle to the carrying out of so desirable a policy was the lack of military protection. "Since the creation of the Department of Kansas all the troops heretofore serving in the District of the Frontier, except three Regiments of Indian Home Guards at Fort Gibson (very much decimated) are reporting to General Steele in the Department of Missouri." The Indian country was somewhat removed from all convenient sources of supply, the Arkansas was closed to navigation, and stores had to be transported long distances over interior lines. It "required a large portion of the small military force there to protect the trains." The difficulties in the way of obtaining supplies were the main reasons why the Federals were occupying so small a section of the Indian country. Blunt's recommendation was, a reorganization of the western departments so as to give to General Curtis, in command of the Department of Kansas, the control of the "two western tiers of the counties of Arkansas" and most certainly of Fort Smith, the supply depot of Indian Territory. Sufficient troops must be furnished to permit of "successful operations both defensive and offensive."
Possessed of this additional information, the Senate carried its inquiries to the War Department and ascertained from its secretary that no reason was known there why the refugees should not return. Accordingly, on the third of March, James H. Lane introduced a joint resolution calling for their removal from Kansas. He gave their number as ninety-two hundred and the monthly cost of their maintenance as sixty thousand dollars. The resolution was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. On the twenty-second, he sent to Dole a paper, signed by members of the Indian committee of each house, earnestly recommending an immediate