How Secretary Stanton, with all the facts before him, the facts alleged by General Blunt and true, could have conscientiously conveyed the impression that he did convey to the Senate Indian committee is a mystery. The restored Cherokees had not been sent back to Kansas as at one time proposed. Their own feelings would have been against such a move had it ever been seriously contemplated; but for reasons, military and economic, not to say political, they had been retained in Indian Territory. More and more their numbers were in one way added to and in another taken from. Malnutrition, overcrowding and bad hygienic conditions generally offered fertile soil for diseases. Small-pox alone carried the refugees off by hundreds. Medical aid, reported by Agent Cox as "indispensably necessary," was not to be had and military protection was even less of a factor in the alleviation of misery than it had been. Guerrillas raided and robbed at will. It was only directly under the guns of Fort Gibson that life and property were at all secure.
Late in the autumn, the Cherokee authorities, taking cognizance of all such facts and fearing lest longer delay might result in unmitigated woe to the nation, resolved to make one last desperate appeal for effective military aid. The National Council, therefore, authorized the appointment of a deputation that should call upon General McNeil and acquaint him with all the circumstances of the case. The special boon asked of him should be, either such a disposition of the Indian Brigade as would be a defence in actuality or permission to raise a real Home Guard. In course of time, news of the mission reached Washington and its object was brought through the instrumentality of General Canby to the attention of the War Department. The official comment to the effect that the commander of the Department of Kansas would no doubt afford protection to the restored refugees was almost ironical in view of the fact that, by general orders of April seventeenth, Indian Territory was detached from that department and given to General Steele, commanding the rival one of Arkansas. Of so little account had been General Blunt's intimation that a part of Arkansas should be added to Curtis' command if anything really remedial were in contemplation for the refugees, restored or to be restored.
The expeditious removal of a horde of human beings, more or less helpless by reason of sex, age or condition, was not the easy undertaking some people thought it. Anticipatory of congressional action, Superintendent Coffin prepared, in February, to transfer his office to Fort Smith by April first; but at that point his activity halted. Kansas food contractors were interested in the further detention of the refugees and they had one unanswerable argument, the same that Thomas Carney advanced in a letter of April twelfth to Dole, that it was already too late in the season to remove prospective agriculturists. In Indian Territory, the spring opens in March. The law, appropriating the necessary funds, was not enacted until May. Nevertheless, the senatorial advocates of removal persisted in prodding the Indian Office and, on April fourteenth, a resolution was passed requesting the president "to communicate to the Senate the reasons, if any exist, why the refugee Indians in the State of Kansas are not returned to their homes." The response, which Dole communicated to Usher, May 11, 1864, ought to have been disconcerting to more than one department of the government since it was a plain statement of discreditable facts that funds had not been forthcoming and that the same causes that made the southern Indians refugees still operated, their country being exposed perpetually "to incursions of roving bands of rebels or hostile Indians."
The shortcomings of the military arrangement that had separated Indian Territory from Kansas became startlingly obvious when Coffin applied for an armed escort and found that Curtis could furnish him with one to the border only. General Steele was far away "at or near Shreveport" and therefore Coffin telegraphed to Dole, hoping that he might be able to get an order for troops direct from the War Department. The Red River expedition was in progress and it was not to be wondered at that Steele, absorbed in affairs of great import, affairs that were to terminate so disastrously, was inattentive to Coffin's call. The superintendent's preparations went on notwithstanding, the obstacles in his way multiplying daily; for the refugees, informed as to the military situation, were averse to courting new and untried dangers, small-pox raged among the Seminoles, and he had little latitude in the expenditure of funds, Congress having so hedged its appropriation about with restrictions. He still pleaded for an additional armed force and his prayer was eventually answered. On May twenty-sixth, Stanton notified Usher that General Steele had been directed to furnish an escort from the Kansas border onward.
The getting of the refugees ready for removal was, to Coffin's mind, the most difficult job he had ever undertaken. The Leased District Indians refused pointblank to go. Fort Gibson was not in the direction of home for them and they preferred to hazard subsisting themselves on the Walnut, where antelope and buffalo ranged, to journeying thither. For a time it seemed impossible to procure enough teams. The Indians were "very fearful." Some of the Creeks had to be left behind sick at the Sac and Fox Agency and quite a lot of the Seminoles at Neosho Falls No attempt was made, on this occasion, to lure the Quapaws and their neighbors from the Ottawa Reservation. Their home not being even passably safe, they were to remain north, for a period, with Agent Elder, their differences with their hosts being no longer cause for uneasiness. The procession, when it finally started, included nearly five thousand refugees and, by the end of May, it had reached, without molestation, the Osage Catholic Mission. There it awaited the coming of the supplementary escort.
Meanwhile, affairs were in bad shape at Fort Gibson. There was discord everywhere, between white and red people and between civilians and soldiery, and the food contractors were responsible for most of it. Those were the days when cattle-stealing became a public scandal but more of it anon. The discord between white and red people existed both inside and outside the army. Inside the army, it was a matter as between officers and men and was most apparent when Colonel Phillips took the Indian Brigade on an expedition towards the Red River early in the year. The bickerings that arose between the white officers and the Indian rank and file soon grew notorious and were chiefly caused by the disputed ownership of ponies. Litigation succeeded altercation and there was no end to the bad feeling engendered. Fortunately, the Indian plaintiff had friends at court in the person of government agents and the brigade commander, Colonel Phillips standing well the test of "earnest and substantial friend."
The troubles caused by the contractors were more widespread and of more lasting effect. They grew out of peculations and the delivery of inferior goods. Flour furnished for the refugees, when inspected, was found to be worthless as far as its food properties and appetizing qualities were concerned. "Some of it was nothing but 'shorts,' the rest, the poorest flour manufactured." Agent Harlan accepted it only because "the Indians had been over 30 days without bread," and he knew, if he rejected it, that "they would get none until spring." T. C. Stevens and Company were contractors in this affair and the only circumstance that Coffin could offer in extenuation of their conduct was the great difficulty always "experienced in obtaining a good article of flour in southern Kansas . . . in consequence of the inferior character of the mills in that new and sparsely settled country . ., " Similar complaints were made of the firm of Mac-Donald and Fuller. Was it any wonder that the refugees felt themselves neglected, abused, and outraged?
The advance guard of Coffin's refugee train reached Fort Gibson June 15. Its progress had been hampered by minor vicissitudes, cattle thieves and thunderstorms, all natural to the region. The condition of affairs north of the Arkansas was at the time most unsatisfactory; for the Federals had military control of Forts Smith and Gibson only and "everything," so complained the superintendent, "done out of range of the guns of the forts has to be done under an escort or guard." The Creeks, who comprised the major portion of the refugees, could not be taken to their own country unless General Thayer should consent to erect a military post within its limits. For the time being they were, therefore, to remain with the Cherokees, a bad arrangement. The Chickasaws were to go eastward to Fort Smith where they would be a trifle nearer home than would be the case were they to remain at Gibson. Their own country, though, was considerably far to the westward, beyond the Choctaw. It was now too late to put in regular crops and consequently subsistence would have to be furnished as before and at a far greater cost. Coffin estimated the number of refugees at close upon sixteen thousand and the expense, he feared, would "be truly enormous."