[Footnote 683:  The Kaw lands had been greatly depredated upon and encroached upon [Ibid., Land Files, Kansas, 1862].  Dole anticipated that troubles were likely to ensue at any moment.  He, therefore, desired to put the Kaws upon the Cherokee land just as soon as it was out of danger [Dole to H.W.  Farnsworth, October 24, 1863, ibid., Letter Book, no. 72, p. 57].  Jeremiah Hadley, the agent for a contemplated Mission School among the Kaws, was much exercised as to how a removal might affect his contract and work.  See his letter to Dole, November 17, 1863.

An abortive treaty was likewise made with the Wyandots, whom Dole (cont.)]

recently[684] so generously consented to receive the unwelcome

[Footnote 683:  (cont.) designed to place upon the Seneca-Shawnee lands.  Both the Wyandots and the Seneca-Shawnees objected to the ratification of the treaty [Coffin to Dole, January 28, 1864, Indian Office Consolidated Files, Neosho, C 639 of 1864].]

[Footnote 684:  They had recently done another thing that, at the time of occurrence, the Federals in Kansas deemed highly commendable.  They had murderously attacked a group of Confederate recruiting officers, whom they had overtaken or waylaid on the plains.  The following contemporary documents, when taken in connection with Britton’s account [Civil War on the Border, vol. ii, 228], W.L.  Bartles’s address [Kansas Historical Society, Collections, vol. viii, 62-66], and Elder’s letter to Blunt, May 17, 1863, Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 286, amply describe the affair: 

(a)

“I have just returned to this place from the Grand Council of the Great and Little Osage Indians.  I found them feeling decidedly fine over their recent success in destroying a band of nineteen rebels attempting to pass through their country.  A band of the Little Osages met them first and demanded their arms and that they should go with them to Humboldt (as we instructed them to do at the Council at Belmont).  The rebels refused and shot one of the Osages dead.  The Osages then fired on them.  They ran and a running fight was kept up for some 15 miles.  The rebel guide was killed early in the action.  After crossing Lightning Creek, the rebels turned up the creek toward the camp of the Big Hill Camp.  The Little Osages had sent a runner to aprise the Big Hills of the presence of the rebels and they were coming down the creek 400 strong, and met the rebels, drove them to the creek and surrounded them.  The rebels displayed a white flag but the Indians disregarded it.  They killed all of them as they supposed; but afterwards learned that two of them, badly wounded, got down a steep bank of the creek and made their escape down the creek.  They scalped them all and cut their heads off.  They killed 4 of their horses (which the Indians greatly regretted) and captured 13, about 50 revolvers, most of the rebels having 4 revolvers,