He affected to believe that Pike was a traitor and, when he reappeared as brigade commander, to consider that he had unlawfully reassumed his old functions.  Accordingly, he issued an order to Roane,[538] to whom he had entrusted the Indians, for Pike’s arrest; but he had already called Pike to account for holding back the munition trains and had ordered him, if the charge were really true, to report in person at Little Rock.[539]

The order for General Pike’s arrest bore date of November 3.  Roane, the man to whom the ungracious task was assigned, was well suited to it.  He had been adjudged by Holmes himself as absolutely worthless as a commander and, being so, had been sent to take care of the Indians,[540] a severe commentary upon Holmes’s own fitness for the supreme control of anything that had to do with them or their concerns.  Others had an equally poor opinion of Roane’s generalship and character.  John S. Phelps, indeed, was writing at this very time, the autumn of 1862, to Secretary

[Footnote 537:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 924.]

[Footnote 538:—­Ibid., 923, 980, 981.]

[Footnote 539:—­Ibid., 904.]

[Footnote 540:—­Ibid., 899.]

Stanton in testimony of Roane’s unsavory reputation.[541]

The arrest of Pike took place November 14 at Tishomingo in the Chickasaw country and a detachment of Shelby’s brigade was detailed to convey him to Little Rock.[542] Then, as once before, his reported resignation saved him from long confinement and from extreme ignominy.  On the fifth of November, President Davis instructed the adjutant-general to accept Pike’s resignation forthwith and five days thereafter,[543] before the arrest had actually taken place, Holmes advised Hindman that he had better let Pike go free so soon as he should leave the Indian country; inasmuch as his resignation was now an assured thing.[544] Holmes evidently feared to let the release take place within the limits of Pike’s old command; for some of the Indians were still devotedly attached to him and were still pinning their faith upon his plighted word.  John Jumper and his Seminole braves were among those most loyal to Pike; and Holmes was afraid that wholesale desertions from their ranks would follow inevitably Pike’s degradation.  Many desertions had already occurred, ostensibly because of lack of food and raiment.  Commissioner Scott had complained to Holmes of the Indian privations[545] and Holmes had been forced to concede, although only at the eleventh hour, the Indian claim to some consideration.  He had arbitrarily shared tribal quota of supplies, bought with tribal money, with white troops and had lamely excused himself by saying that he had done it to prevent

[Footnote 541:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 752.]

[Footnote 542:—­Ibid., 921.]

[Footnote 543:—­Ibid., vol. liii, supplement, 821.]

[Footnote 544:—­Ibid., vol. xiii, 913.]