October 3 the advance of the enemy on the Jollification road was reported, and an order received from General Rains that night to fall back. Colonel Shelby was ordered on the night of the 3rd to attack the advance of the enemy on the Jollification road. Lieutenant-Colonel Buster, with his battalion and Major Bryan's (First) Cherokee Battalion, was directed to take position at Granby, and resist any movement from Sarcoxie by that road. During the night, as was anticipated, the enemy advanced in three columns. A detachment from Colonel Shelby's command attacked and captured the Federal pickets at Jollification, but the rapid advance of the Federals compelled them to retreat, leaving the prisoners in a blacksmith-shop. Colonel Buster's command had a brisk skirmish with the advance guard near Shoal Creek, on the Sarcoxie and Granby road. These night attacks delayed the advance of the enemy's right and left wings and disconcerted the whole, and at the same time placed my command on the alert. Being satisfied that a greatly superior force was rapidly advancing, and that my position could not be maintained, Colonel Shelby (then commanding in front of Newtonia) was early on the morning of the 4th directed to send back the train. The main body of the Federal Army made its appearance before Newtonia soon after sunrise and commenced a furious bombardment of the little village. Leaving Colonel S. Folsom with his Choctaw regiment at Camp Coffee (Big Spring) to cover the removal of the train from that point and to observe the movements of the enemy on the Jollification and Cassville roads, I marched for Newtonia with the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment and Stevens' Texas regiment to reopen the communication which had been reported cut off by the enemy. This proved untrue, but I found the advance guard of the enemy on the Pineville road between Newtonia and the timber south of it, and could plainly see large masses of infantry descending the high ridge north of the town. Colonel Shelby had affected that withdrawal of the troops and trains in good order, losing nothing except an ambulance containing a rocket battery, which was left behind and fell into the hands of the enemy through the stupidity of the river. Filing to the left from Dr. Harman's, we succeeded in reaching the Pineville road, by which Colonel Shelby had retired. [Lieutenant] Colonel Simpson N. Folsom, accompanied by Assistant Adjutant-General Wells, of my staff, with a portion of the Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment, charged upon the Federal advance, killed several and drove the party back, while the remainder of my command was withdrawn into the timber on the Pineville road and placed in ambush between the prairie and the forks of the Pineville road and the road leading from Camp Coffee down the creek, where we remained, expecting the enemy to advance, until the last ox-wagon from Camp Coffee had passed and Captain Sampson Loering, of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw regiment - whom I had sent with his company up to our old camp to bring off stragglers and see what had become of Colonel Sampson Folsom and his Choctaw regiment - returned. Captain Loering brought off the lagging wagons, stragglers, and women, but could give no account of Colonel Sampson Folsom and his command, who, it seems, had quit his post, and, passing around the south side of Oliver's Prairie, reached the Pineville road in advance of the train. The enemy, after the attack upon his advance guard, arrayed his whole force on the prairie between Newtonia and the timber and continued for hours to shell to brush, evidently afraid of an ambuscade. Our march was continued without interruption to Dog Hollow, 4 miles north of Pineville, where we encamped for the night.

October 5 continued the march to White Rock Prairie, Colonel