[Footnote 784:  (cont.) to be invited, to hold a grand peace Council near the mouth of the Little Arkansas River within six weeks.  Meanwhile they are to send runners to notify these tribes to gather on the Arkansas, sixty miles above, that they may be within reach of our call when we get to the Council ground.  Subsistence will have to be provided for at least 10000 Indians at that time.  They will expect something from the Government to convince them of its power to carry through its promises.  Some of the Cadoes and Comanches connected with this Agency, after coming to the Arkansas, returned to Fort Cobb.  These will all come back to this Council.  Their desire is to be subsisted on the Little Arkansas, some 70 miles from Emporia until the war closes.

“They argue like this, ’The Government once sent us our provisions to Fort Cobb over 300 miles from Fort Smith.  We do not want to live near the whites, because of troubles between them and us in regard to ponies, timber, fields, green corn, etc.  Our subsistence can be hauled to the mouth of the Little Arkansas, easier by far, than it was formerly from Fort Smith, and by being at this point we shall be removed from the abodes of the whites, so they cannot steal our ponies, nor can our people trouble them.’

“I believe they are right.  I have had more trouble the past winter in settling difficulties between the Indians and whites on account of trades, stolen horses, broken fences, etc. than from all other causes combined.

“I cannot get all the Indians of this Agency together this side of the Little Arkansas.  That point will be near enough the Texan frontier for the Indians to go home easily when the war closes.  It is on the direct route to Fort Cobb.  They are opposed to going via Fort Gibson ...”]

[Footnote 785:  Without legislating on the subject, and without intending it, the Confederacy had virtually put into effect, a recommendation of Hindman’s that “The superintendencies, agencies, etc., should be abolished, and a purely military establishment substituted ...” [Official Records, vol. xiii, p. 51.].]

ordinarily not strictly within the range of military cognizance.

General Steele, like many another, was inclined to think that the red men greatly over-estimated their own importance; for they failed to “see and understand how small a portion of the field"[786] they really occupied.  To Steele, it was not Indian Territory that was valuable but Texas.  For him the Indian country, barren by reason of the drouth, denuded of its live stock, a prey to jayhawker, famine, and pestilence, did nothing more than measure the distance between the Federals and the rich Texan grain-fields, from whence he fondly hoped an inexhaustible supply of flour[787] for the Confederates was to come.  In short, the great and wonderful expanse that had been given to the Indian for a perpetual home was a mere buffer.