Today in History:

873 Series I Volume XIII- Serial 19 - Missouri - Arkansas Campaign

Page 873 Chapter XXV. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-CONFEDERATE.

remaining batteries be made fit for use by replacing the caissons, the raising of companies to man the guns, and the purchase of horses; and arms for the Indians should be supplied.

4. Supplies of whatever kind, and especially clothing when procured for the Indians, should no longer be allowed to seized on the way and used for other troops, and any officer guilty of doing this should be cashiered. Moneys for the service here should be sent direct to the officers who are to disburse them within the department; and any other officer to whom they are sent for transmission and who applies them to the uses of other commands or delays them should be cashiered. It will not answer to delude the Indians by promises and expectations unfulfilled, and excuses for non-performance only convince them of our poverty, feebleness, or bad faith.

5. Even after a peace, if the Indian country remains to us, the Indians will always be tampered with and their country be a prize to be coveted. Fortified posts will be indispensable. There should be one at or near the Grand Saline, on Grand River; one at Frozen Rock, on the Arkansas; one on the south side of the Canadian, and one on the river Blue, 30 miles from Red River. Other frontier posts will be needed at the Washita Mountains, the Antelope Hills, and at Tallassee Town, on the Arkansas; but the four should be made strong by field works, and supplied with artillery. These should be erected and occupied at once, for it may safely be assumed that if the war lasts long an invasion of the country by a column of 10,000 or 15,000 men is an absolute certainty; and such a force would not only aim to secure the Cherokee and Creek countries, but also to punish the Choctaws and Chickasaws. No handful of mounted men with the Indians will arrest the march of such a column.

6. A supply of clothing, including coats, pantaloons, shirts, shoes, and hats, should be procured and furnished the Indian troops in the place of that obtained for them by me. The recommendation made as to the appointment of brigadier among them should be carried out. Medicines should be supplied, of which there are now little or none. The troops should be paid off in full, and all claims for supplies furnished in the country satisfied.

7. No bands of white men should be allowed to carry on from the Indian country a predatory warfare in Missouri or Kansas, and, above all, none of the Indians should ever again be asked or allowed to go beyond the limits of their own country to make war.

8. A regular force should as soon as possible be enlisted for the frontier posts as garrisons, and Indian troops be combined with them as auxiliaries; and great care should be exercised not to place among or near the Reserve Indians any volunteers imbued with hostile feelings or prejudices against Indians, and especially of that class of men who would as soon shoot an Indian as they would a turkey or a wolf.

9. A brigadier-general of the Regular Army should be placed in command of the Indian Territory, and authorized to enlist a regular force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery sufficient for its defense. It must sooner or later be held by regular troops, and it had better be begun now. Mounted volunteers are a nuisance everywhere, besides being the most expensive of all troops. The works at Fort McCulloch being completed, as they ought to be, the principal depot of supplies could be kept there and at Fort Washita, and such a fortified place within reach of Texas would do more to deter Northern troops from an invasion of the country in earnest than the presence of 3,000 troops that could be counted on the Arkansas.


Page 873 Chapter XXV. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-CONFEDERATE.