[Footnote 790:  Steele here presents certain phases of the embarrassment,

“...  The matter of feeding destitute Indians has been all through a vexatious one, the greatest trouble being to find in each neighborhood a reliable person to receive the quota for that neighborhood.  These people seem more indifferent to the wants of others than any I have seen; they are not willing to do the least thing to assist in helping their own people who are destitute.  I have, in many instances, been unable to get wagons to haul the flour given them.  I have incurred a great responsibility in using army rations in this way and to the extent that I have.  I have endeavored to give to all destitute and to sell at cost to those who are able to purchase.  In this matter the Nation has been more favored than the adjacent States.  I am told by Mr. Boudinot that a bill was passed by the Cherokee Council, taking the matter into their own hands.  I hope it is so.  In which case I shall cease issuing to others who have not, like them, been driven from their homes.  Dr. Walker was appointed to superintend this matter, some system being necessary to prevent the same persons from drawing from different commissaries ...”—­STEELE to D.H.  Cooper, June 15, 1863, Confederate Records, chap. 2, no. 268, pp. 80-81.]

be in the matter of attention to Indian necessities, his efforts were unappreciated largely because of evil influences at work to undermine him and to advance Douglas H. Cooper.  Steele had his points of vulnerability, his inability to check the Federal advance and his remoteness from the scene of action, his headquarters being at Fort Smith.  Connected with the second point and charged against him were all the bad practices of those men who, in their political or military control of Indian Territory, had allowed Arkansas to be their chief concern.  Such practices became the foundation stone of a general Indian dissatisfaction and, concomitantry, Douglas H. Cooper, of insatiable ambition, posed as the exponent of the idea that the safety of Indian Territory was an end in itself.

The kind of separate military organization that constituted Steele’s command was not enough for the Indians.  Seemingly, they desired the restoration of the old Pike department, but not such as it had been in the days of the controversy with Hindman but such as it always was in Pike’s imagination.  The Creeks were among the first to declare that this was their desire.  They addressed[791] themselves to President Davis[792] and

[Footnote 791:  Mory Kanard and Echo Harjo to President Davis, May 18, 1863, Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 1118-1119.]

[Footnote 792:  Davis, in his message of January 12, 1863 [Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, vol. i, 295] had revealed an acquaintance with some Indian dissatisfaction but intimated that it had been dispelled, it having arisen “from a misapprehension of the intentions of the Government ...”  It was undoubtedly to allay apprehension on the part of the Indians that Miles, in the house of Representatives, offered the following resolution, February 17, 1863: