[Footnote 532:  Weer to Moonlight, September 12, 1862, ibid., 627; Weer to Blunt, September 24, 1862, ibid., 665-666; Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 352.]

[Footnote 533:  Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 366; Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties, 54.]

[Footnote 534:  Anderson, Life of General Stand Watie, 20; Crawford, Kansas in the (cont.)]

disastrous to the Confederates, who, by the by, were greatly outnumbered, that they fled, a demoralized host, by way of Fort Gibson across the Arkansas River to Cantonment Davis,[535] Stand Watie and his doughty Cherokees covering their retreat.  The Federals had then once again an undisputed possession of Indian Territory north of the Arkansas.[536]

Such was the condition of affairs when Pike emerged from his self-imposed retreat in Texas.  The case for the Confederate cause among the Indians was becoming desperate.  So many things that called for apprehension were occurring.  Cooper and Rains were both in disgrace, the failure of the recent campaign having been attributed largely to their physical unfitness for duty.  Both were now facing an investigation of charges for drunkenness.  Moreover, the brutal attack upon and consequent murder of Agent Leeper had just shocked the community.  Hearing of that murder and considering that he was still the most responsible party in Indian Territory, General Pike made preparations to proceed forthwith to the Leased District.  His plans were frustrated by his own arrest at the command of General Holmes.

His unfriendliness to Pike was in part due to Holmes’s own necessities.  It was to his interest to assert authority over the man who could procure supplies for Indian Territory and when occasion offered, if that man should dare to prove obdurate, to ignore his position altogether.  Nevertheless, Holmes had not seen fit in early October to deny Pike his title of

[Footnote 534:  (cont.) Sixties, 56-62; Edwards, Shelby and his Men, 90; Official Records, vol. xiii, 43, 324. 325, 325-328, 329-331, 331-332, 332-336, 336-337, 759; Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 364-375.]

[Footnote 535:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 765.]

[Footnote 536:  Blunt was ordered “to clean out the Indian country” [Ibid., 762].]

commander and had personally addressed him by it.[537] Yet all the time he was encroaching upon that commander’s prerogatives, was withholding his supplies, just as Hindman had done, and was exploiting Indian Territory, in various ways, for his own purposes.  Rumors came that Pike was holding back munition trains in Texas and then that he was conspiring with Texan Unionists against the Confederacy.  To further his own designs, Holmes chose to credit the rumors and made them subserve the one and the same end; for he needed Pike’s ammunition and he wanted Pike himself out of the way.