[Footnote 606:  H.W.  Martin to Coffin, December 20, 1862, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, C 1950.]

Dwight’s Mission.  His view of the country through which he passed must have been discouraging.[607] There was little to subsist upon and the few Indians lingering there were in a deplorable state of deprivation, little food, little clothing[608] and it was winter-time.

So desolate and abandoned did the Cherokee country appear that General Blunt considered it would be easily possible to hold it with his Indian force alone, three regiments, yet he said no more about the immediate return of the refugees,[609] but issued an order for their removal to Neosho.  The wisdom of his action might well be questioned since the expense of supporting them there would be immeasurably greater than in Kansas[610] unless, indeed, the military authorities intended to assume the entire charge of them.[611] Special Agent Martin regarded some talk that was rife of letting them forage upon the impoverished people of Missouri as

[Footnote 607:  It was not discouraging to Blunt, however.  His letter referring to it was even sanguine [Official Records, vol. xiii, 785-786].]

[Footnote 608:  Martin to Coffin, December 20, 1862.]

[Footnote 609:  The Interior Department considered it, however, and consulted with the War Department as late as the twenty-sixth.  See Register of Letters Received, vol.  D., p. 155.]

[Footnote 610:  Coffin to Henning, December 28, 1862, Indian Office Consolidated Files, Cherokee, C 17 of 1863.]

[Footnote 611:  Coffin’s letter to Dole of December 20 [Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, C 1950] would imply that the superintendent expected that to be the case.  He said, having reference to Martin’s report, “...  The statement of facts which he makes, from all the information I have from other sources, I have no doubt are strictly true and will no doubt meet your serious consideration.

“If the Programme as fixed up by the Military Officers, and which I learn Dr. Gillpatrick is the bearer to your city and the solicitor general to procure its adoption is carried out, the Indian Department, superintendent, and agents may all be dispensed with.  The proposition reminds me of the Fable of the Wolves and the Shepherds, the wolves represented to the shepherds that it was very expensive keeping dogs to guard the sheep, which was wholly unnecessary; that if they would kill off the dogs, they, the wolves, would protect the sheep without any compensation whatever.”]

sheer humbug.  The army was not doing that and why should the defenceless Indians be expected to do it.  As it was, they seem to have been reduced to plundering in Kansas.[612] On the whole, it is difficult to explain Blunt’s plan for the concentration of the Cherokee refugees at Neosho, since there were, at the time, many indications that Hindman was considering another advance and an invasion of southwest Missouri.