shelter or covering, and in some cases the new-born infants died for want of clothing, and those who survived reached their present location with broken constitutions and utterly dispirited.

Thus I found them encamped upon the Neosho River bottom in the timber, extending a distance of some seven miles. Not a comfortable tent was to be been. Such coverings as I saw were made in the rudest manner, being composed of pieces of cloth, old quilts, handkerchiefs, aprons, &c., stretched upon sticks, and so limited were many of them in size that they were scarcely sufficient to cover the emaciated and dying forms beneath them. Under such shelter I found in the last stages of consumption the daughter of Hopoeitheyohola, one of the oldest, most influential and wealthy chiefs of the Creek Nation.

In company with Doctor Coffin I visited nearly fifty patients in one afternoon; not a few he pronounced incurable, their diseases being consumption and pneumonia brought on from exposure and privations of the common necessaries of life. Dr. George A. Curter, agent of the Creeks, informed me that in two months 240 refugees of that nation had died. Those of other tribes suffered in like degree. Doctor Coffin informed me that upward of 100 amputations of frosted limbs had taken place. Among them I saw a little Creek boy, about eight years old, with both feet taken off near the ankle, others lying upon the ground whose frosted limbs rendered them unable to move about. Five persons in a similar situation the physical pronounced past recovery. Sickness among them on account of their exposure and lack of proper food was on the increase.

The following day I visited almost every lodge of several of the largest tribes and found the same destitution and suffering among them. A cold, drenching rain fell on the last day of the visit, and for eight hours I went from lodge to lodge and tribe to tribe, and the suffering of the well to say nothing of the sick is beyond description. Their numbers as ascertained are as follows: Creeks, 5,000; Seminoles, 1,096; Chickasaws, 140; Uchees, 544; Keechies, 83; Delawares, 197; Ionies, 17; Caddoes, 3; Wichitas, 5; Cherokees, 240-making an aggregate of 7,600 persons.

Thus this large number of people have been deprived of shelter for some four months and they have been supplied with clothing wholly inadequate to their actual wants. Some whom I saw had not a single garment of their bodies; nor has their food been sufficient in quantity or proper quality. Neither coffee, sugar, vinegar nor pepper has been allowed them only upon the requisition of the physician for the sick. Only about one pound of flour is given them per week each and a scanty supply of salt.

To all these necessaries of life they have been accustomed. They had been told by the rebel emissaries-as the chiefs informed me-that they would fail to obtain these articles from their Union friends, which having turned out to be the fact has affected them with suspicion and discontent.

Great complaint was made by the chiefs and others as to the quality of the bacon furnished, it being as they expressed it"not fit for a dog to eat: " many of them were made sick by eating it. The unfitness of the food I brought to the attention of their agents who informed me that this bacon had been condemned at Fort Leaven worth; and Major Snow, the agent of the Seminoles, employed the same expression in regard to it as the Indians that it was "not fit for a dog to eat; " and a reliable person who saw the bacon before it was sent to them who is a judge of the article pronounced it suitable only for soap grease.