Now Great Father you have promised to help us in clearing out our country so that we could bring back our families to their homes and moreover we have enlisted as home guards to defend our country and it will be twelve months in a few weeks ... but there is nothing done as yet in our country.  We have spent our time in the states of Mo. and Arks. and in the Cherokee Nation.  We are here in Ft.  Gibson over a month.  Our enemies are just across the river and our pickets and theirs are fighting most every day ...

There is only three regts. of Indians and a few whites are here.  Our enemy are gathering fast from all sides ...

A soldier’s rights we know but little but it seems to us that our rations are getting shorter all the time but that may be on account of the teams for it have to be hauled a great ways.—­CREEKS to the President of the United States, May 16, 1863, Office of Indian Affairs, General Files, Creek, 1860-1869, O 6 of 1863.]

[Footnote 783:  Britton’s account of the return of the Cherokee exiles is recommended for perusal.  It could scarcely be excelled.  See, Civil War on the Border, vol. ii, 34-37.]

[Footnote 784:  Certain proceedings of Carruth and Martin would seem to suggest that they were endeavoring to reap the reward of Phillips’s labors, by negotiating, somewhat prematurely, for an inter-tribal council.  Coffin may have endorsed it, but Dole had not [Dole to Coffin, July 8, 1863, Indian Office Letter Book, no. 71, p. 116].  The pretext for calling such a council lay in fairly recent doings of the wild tribes.  The subjoined letters and extracts of letters will elucidate the subject:  February 7, Coffin reported to Dole [General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1863-1864] that the wild Indians had been raiding on the Verdigris and Fall Rivers into the Creek and Cherokee countries, “jayhawking property,” and bringing it into Kansas and selling it to the settlers.  Some of the cattle obtained in this way had been (cont.)]

wonder, whether in joining the Confederacy, they had not made a terrible mistake, a miscalculation beyond all remedying.

To the Confederates, tragically enough, the Indian’s tale of woe and of regret had a different meaning.  The

[Footnote 784:  (cont.) sold by a settler to the contractor and fed to the Indians.  Jim Ned’s band of wild Delawares, returning from such a jayhawking expedition, had stolen some Osage ponies and had become involved in a fight in which two Delawares had been killed [Coffin to Dole, February 12, 1863, ibid., Neosho, C 73 of 1863].  Coffin prevailed upon Jim Ned to stop the jayhawking excursions; inasmuch as “Considerable bad feeling exists on the part of the Cherokees in consequence of the bringing up ... a great many cattle, ponies, and mules, which they allege belong to the Cherokee refugees ...” [Coffin to Dole, February 24, 1863, Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1863-1864].