February 18, 1862, saw the beginning of the first session of the first congress that met under the Confederate constitution.  Six days thereafter, Johnson, now senator from Arkansas, again took the initiative in proposing the regular establishment of an Indian superintendency.[476] As Senate Bill No. 3, his measure was referred to the Committee[477] on Indian Affairs and, on March 11, reported back with amendments.[478] Meanwhile, the House was considering a bill of similar import, introduced on the third by Thomas B. Hanly, likewise from Arkansas.[479] On the eighteenth, it received Senate Bill No. 3 and substituted it for its own, passing the same on April Fool’s day.  The bill was signed by the president on April 8.[480]

The information conveyed by the journal entries is unusually meagre; nevertheless, from the little that is given, the course of debate on the measure can be inferred to a certain extent.  The proposition as a whole carried, of course, its own recommendation, since the Confederacy was most anxious to retain the Indian friendship and it certainly could not be retained were not some system introduced into the service.  In matters of detail, local interests, as always in American legislation, had full play.  They asserted themselves most prominently, for example, in the endeavor made

[Footnote 475:  Journal, vol. i, 640, 672, 743.]

[Footnote 476:—­Ibid., vol. ii, 19.]

[Footnote 477:  The Committee on Indian Affairs, at the time, consisted of Johnson, chairman, Clement C. Clay of Alabama, Williamson S. Oldham of Texas, R.L.Y.  Payton of Missouri, and W.E.  Simms of Kentucky.]

[Footnote 478:  Journal, vol. ii, 51-52.]

[Footnote 479:  Journal, vol. v, 47.]

[Footnote 480:—­Ibid., 210.]

to make Fort Smith, although quite a distance from all parts of the Indian Territory except the Cherokee and Choctaw countries, the permanent headquarters, also in that to compel disbursing agents to make payments in no other funds than specie or treasury notes.  The amendment of greatest importance among those that passed muster was the one attaching the superintendency temporarily to the western district of Arkansas for judicial purposes.  It was a measure that could not fail to be exceedingly obnoxious to the Indians; for they had had a long and disagreeable experience, judicially, with Arkansas.  They had their own opinion of the white man’s justice, particularly as that justice was doled out to the red man on the white man’s ground.[481] Taken in connection with regulations[482] made by the War Department for the conduct of Indian affairs, the Act of April 8 most certainly exhibited an honest intention on the part of the Confederate government to carry out the provisions of the Pike treaties.  The following constituted its principal features:  With headquarters at either Fort Smith or Van Buren, as the president might see fit to direct, the superintendency was to embrace “all the Indian country annexed to the Confederate States, that lies west of Arkansas and Missouri, north of Texas, and east of Texas and New Mexico.”  A superintendent and six agents were immediately provided for, individually bonded and obligated to continue resident during the term of office, to engage in no mercantile pursuit or gainful occupation