[Sub-inclosure F.]

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 21, 1862.

Honorable WILLIAM P. DOLE, Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

DEAR SIR: Agreeably to your request I furnish herewith an account of my recent visit to the loyal Indians who were obliged to flee from their pursues (the rebel Indians and Texas) in the dead of winter and who are now encamped on the Neosho River, in the southern part of Kansas.

Having heard of their great destitution and suffering in company with the Rev. Evan Jones, who has been for the last forty years a missionary among the Cherokees and who was driven from his station by the rebels in August last, I visited their encampment the latter part of March last for the purpose of observation and giving information as to their actual condition and wants.

It is no doubt well known to you but not generally so what the position of these has been in the great struggle in which the whole country is involved and with what resolute firmness and endurance they have resident all the appears and temptations held out to them by the rebel leaders to abandon the Government which has always protected them. While apparently the attitude of the various tribes was for a season equivocal and the disposition seemed to incline to aid and comfort the enemy, or the best to "neutrality," yet the evidence is ample and clear that a large portion of the Cherokee Nation were determined to stand firm in their loyalty to the Union, as is sufficiently evinced in the correspondence herewith * between John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and General Benjamin McCulloh and David Hubbard, Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the rebel States. And the same may be observed of the other tribes. But the strongest testimony consists in the troops they have furnished and the battles they have fought, and it is the fortune of these battles that has brought them into their present miserable condition on the bare prairies of Kansas. Large numbers of these driven from their comfortable homes, leaving their herds, many of them it may be said having lived in affluence, joined the armies of the Union. Their houses were fired by the enemy and their horses and cattle derived off. The battles in which they participated and which eventuated in them eventuated in their expulsion from their own country and forced them to seek shelter in Kansas forms a part of the history of this war.

The battle of December last was particularly unfortunate to these people and the disasters of the defeat left them in the helpless condition I found them.

They are now located near Le Roy, in Coffey County, Kans., a distance of not less than 175 miles intervening between them and their former homes. Their march was undertaken with a scanty supply of clothing, subsistence and cooking utensils and entirely without tents, and during their progress they were reduced to such extremity as to be obliged to feed upon their ponies and their dogs, while their scanty clothing was reduced to threads and in some cases absolute nakedness was their condition. Let it be remembered that its retreat was in the midst of a winter of unusual severity for that country, with snow upon the prairie. Many of their ponies died from starvation. The women and children suffered severely form frozen limbs, as did also the men. Women gave birth to their offspring upon the naked snow without

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* Not found.

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