Foraging or an occasional scouting when the weather permitted was the only order of the winter days for Federals and Confederates.  With the advent of spring, however, Phillips became impatient for more aggressive action.  He had been given a large programme, no insignificant part of which was, the restoration of refugees to their impoverished homes; but his first business would necessarily have to be, the occupancy of the country.  Not far was he allowed to venture within

it during the winter; because his superior officers wished him to protect, before anything else, western Arkansas.  Schofield and, after Schofield’s withdrawal from the command of southwestern Missouri, Curtis had insisted upon that, while Blunt, to whom Phillips, after a time, was made immediately accountable, was guardedly of another way of thinking and, although not very explicit, seemed to encourage Phillips in planning an advance.

Phillips’s inability to progress far in the matter of occupancy of Indian Territory did not preclude his keeping a close tab on Indian affairs therein, such a tab, in fact, as amounted to fomenting an intrigue.  It will be recalled that on the occasion of his making the excursion into the Cherokee Nation, which had resulted in his incendiary destruction of Fort Davis, he had gained intimations of a rather wide-spread Indian willingness to desert the Confederate service.  He had sounded Creeks and Choctaws and had found them surprisingly responsive to his machinations.  They were nothing loath to confess that they were thoroughly disgusted with the southern alliance.  It had netted them nothing but unutterable woe.  Among those that Phillips approached, although not personally, was Colonel McIntosh, who communicated with Phillips through two intimate friends.  McIntosh was persuaded to attempt no immediate demonstration in favor of the North; for that would be premature, foolhardy; but to bide the time, which could not be far distant, when the Federal troops would be in a position to support him.[721] The psychological moment was not yet.  Blunt called Phillips back for operations outside of Indian

[Footnote 721:  Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 61-62.]

Territory; but the seed of treason had been sown and sown in fertile soil, in the heart of a McIntosh.[722]

In January, 1863, Phillips took up again the self-imposed task of emissary.[723] The unionist Cherokees, inclusive of those in the Indian Brigade, were contemplating holding a national council on Cowskin Prairie, which was virtually within the Federal lines.  Secessionist Cherokees, headed by Stand Watie, were determined that such a council should not meet if they could possibly prevent it and prevent it they would if they could only get a footing north of the Arkansas River.  Their suspicion was, that the council, if assembled, would declare the treaty with the Confederate States abrogated.  To circumvent Stand Watie, to conciliate