Negotiations with the Osages had been going on intermittently all this time.  No opportunity to press the point of a land cession had ever been neglected and much had been made, in connection with the project for territorial organization, of the fact that the Osages had memorialized Congress for a civil government, they thinking by means of it to prevent further frauds and impositions being practiced upon them.[648] Coffin and Elder, suspicious of each other, jealously watched every avenue of approach to Osage confidence.  On the ninth of March, Elder inquired if Coffin had been regularly commissioned to open up negotiations anew and asked to be associated with him if he had.[649] A treaty was started but not finished for Elder received a private letter from Dole that seemed to confine the negotiations to a mere ascertaining of views.[650] Then the Indians grown weary of uncertainty took matters into their own hands and appointed several prominent tribesmen for the express purpose of negotiating a treaty that would end the “suspense as to their future destiny."[651] From the treaty of cession that Coffin drafted, he having taken a miserably unfair advantage of Osage isolation and destitution, the Osages turned away in disgust.[652] In November, some of their leading men journeyed up to Leroy to invite the dissatisfied Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la to winter with them.[653] Coffin seized the occasion to reopen the subject of a cession and the Indians manifested

[Footnote 648:  Indian Office Consolidated Files, Neosho, A 476 of 1862.  See also Indian Office report to the Secretary of the Interior, May 6, 1862.  The Commissioner’s letter and the memorial were sent to Aldrich, May 9, 1862.]

[Footnote 649:  Indian Office Consolidated Files, Neosho, E 94. of 1862.]

[Footnote 650:  Coffin to Dole, April 5, 1862, Ibid., C 1583.]

[Footnote 651:  Communication of April 10, 1862, transmitted by Chapman to Dole, Ibid., C 1640.]

[Footnote 652:  Elder to Coffin, July 9, 1862, Ibid., E 114.]

[Footnote 653:  Coffin to Dole, November 16, 1862, Ibid., C 1904.]

a willingness to sell a part of their Reserve; but again Coffin was too grasping and another season of waiting intervened.

With slightly better success the Kickapoos were approached.  Their lands were coveted by the Atchison and Pike’s Peak Railway Company and Agent O.B.  Keith used his good offices in the interest of that corporation.[654] Good offices they were, from the standpoint of benefit to the grantees, but most disreputable from that of the grantors.  He bribed the chiefs outrageously and the lesser men among the Kickapoos indignantly protested.[655] Rival political and capitalistic concerns, emanating from St. Joseph, Missouri, and from the northern tier of counties in Kansas,[656] took up the quarrel and never rested until they had forced a hearing from the government.  The treaty was arrested after it had reached the presidential proclamation stage and was in serious danger of complete invalidation.[657] It passed muster only when a Senate amendment had rendered it reasonably acceptable to the Kickapoos.