General Schofield, anticipating the renewed endeavor of the Confederates to push their line forward, had called upon Blunt for assistance and Blunt had responded with such alacrity as was possible, considering that many of the troops he summoned for Schofield’s use were those that had been doing hard service within and on the border of the Indian country for full two months.  During all that time their horses had been deprived entirely of grain feed and had been compelled to subsist upon prairie grass.  They were in a bad way.[530] Once outside the Indian Territory, the Indian regiments, begrudging the service demanded of them, were kept more fully occupied than were the white; for there was

[Footnote 529:  “Orders have been given by General Blunt for the Indian Expedition to go South soon; he says the families of the Indians may go”—­CARRUTH to Coffin, August 29, 1862, enclosed in Coffin to Mix, August 30, 1862, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendence, 1859-1862.

“Enclosed you will find an order from General James G. Blunt in regard to the removal of the Indian families to their homes.  I start to-morrow for Fort Scott, Kansas, to overtake the second Indian expedition, commanded by General Blunt in person.”—­Carruth to Coffin, September 19, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 166.]

[Footnote 530:  Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 337.]

always scouting[531] for them to do and frequently skirmishing.  On Cowskin River, Phillips’s Third Indian and, near Shirley’s Ford on Spring River, Ritchie’s Second had each engaged the Confederates with success, although not entirely with credit.  Ritchie had allowed his men to run amuck even to the extent of attacking their comrades in Colonel Weer’s brigade, which was the second in Blunt’s reorganized army.  On account of his lack of control over his troops, Ritchie was reported upon for dismissal from the service.[532]

The Battle of Newtonia was inconclusive.  Subsequent to it, the Federals were greatly reenforced and, in the first days of October, Schofield and Blunt, who had both arrived recently upon the scene, coming to the aid of Salomon, who had been the vanquished one at Newtonia, were able, in combination with Totten, to deprive Cooper of all the substantial fruits of victory.  He was obliged to fall back into Arkansas, whither a part of Blunt’s division pursued him and encamped themselves on the old battle-field of Pea Ridge.[533]

Cooper was far from being defeated, however, and, under orders from Rains, soon made plans for attempting an invasion of Kansas; but Blunt, ably seconded by Crawford of the Second Kansas, was too quick for him.  He followed him to Maysville and then a little beyond the Cherokee border to old Fort Wayne in the present Delaware District of the Nation.  There, on the open prairie, a battle was fought,[534] on October 22, so

[Footnote 531:  Phillips to Blunt, September 5, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 614-615.]