[Footnote 816:  Ibid., 200.]

[Footnote 817:  Cabell might well be dismayed.  Steele had done his best to hurry him up.  A letter of July 15 was particularly urgent [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 933].]

In the fortunes of the Southern Indians, the Battle of Honey Springs was a decisive event.  Fought and lost in the country of the Creeks, it was bound to have upon them a psychological effect disastrous to the steady maintenance of their alliance with the Confederacy, so also with the other great tribes; but more of that anon.  In a military way, it was no less significant than in a political; for it was the beginning of a vigorously offensive campaign, conducted by General Blunt, that never ended until the Federals were in occupation of Fort Smith and Fort Smith was at the very door of the Choctaw country.  No Indian tribe, at the outset of the war, had more completely gone over to the South than had the Choctaw.  It had influenced the others but had already come to rue the day that had seen its own first defection.  Furthermore, the date of the Confederate rout at Honey Springs marked the beginning of a period during which dissatisfaction with General Steele steadily crystallized.

Within six weeks after the Battle of Honey Springs, the Federals were in possession of Fort Smith, which was not surprising considering the happenings of the intervening days.  The miscalculations that had eventuated in the routing of Cooper had brought Steele to the decision of taking the field in person; for there was just a chance that he might succeed where his subordinates, with less at stake than he, had failed.  Especially might he take his chances on winning if he could count upon help from Bankhead to whom he had again made application, nothing deterred by his previous ill-fortune.

It was not, by any means, Steele’s intention to attempt the reduction of Fort Gibson;[818] for, with such artillery

[Footnote 818:  Steele to Blair, July 22, 1863 [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 940-941].]

as he had, the mere idea of such an undertaking would be preposterous.  The defensive would have to be, for some time to come, his leading role; but he did hope to be able to harry his enemy, somewhat, to entice him away from his fortifications and to make those fortifications of little worth by cutting off his supplies.  Another commissary train would be coming down from Fort Scott via Baxter Springs about the first of August.[819] For it, then, Steele would lie in wait.

When all was in readiness, Fort Smith was vacated, not abandoned; inasmuch as a regiment under Morgan of Cabell’s brigade was left in charge, but it was relinquished as department headquarters.  Steele then took up his march for Cooper’s old battle-ground on Elk Creek.  There he planned to mass his forces and to challenge an attack.  He went by way of Prairie Springs[820] and lingered there a little while, then moved on to Honey Springs, where was better grazing.[821] He felt obliged thus to make his stand in the Creek country; for the Creeks were getting fractious and it was essential for his purposes that they be mollified and held in check.  Furthermore, it was incumbent upon him not to expose his “depots in the direction of Texas."[822]