him to approach his difficult and delicate task with an open mind and with no preconceived notions derived from Holmes’s prejudices.

Scott entered the Indian Territory in July and was at once beset with complaints and solicitations, individual and tribal.  On his own account, he made not a few discoveries.  On the eighth of August he reported[854] to Holmes upon things that have already been considered here, defective powder, deficient artillery, and the like; but not a word did he say about the Cooper[855] and Boudinot intrigues.  It was too early to commit himself on matters so personal and yet so fundamental.  The Indians were not so reticent.  The evil influence that Cooper had over them, due largely to the fact that he professed himself to be interested in Indian Territory to the exclusion of all other parts of the country, was beginning to find expression in various communications to President Davis and others in authority.  Just how far Stand Watie was privy to Cooper’s schemes and in sympathy with them, it is impossible to say.  Boudinot was Cooper’s able coadjutor, fellow conspirator, while Boudinot and Watie were relatives and friends.

Watie’s energies, especially his intellectual, were apparently being exerted in directions far removed from the realm of selfish and petty intrigue.  He was a man of vision, of deep penetration likewise, and he was a patriot.  Personal ambition was not his besetting sin.  If he had only had real military ability and the qualities that make for discipline and for genuine leadership

[Footnote 854:  Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 1097.]

[Footnote 855:  On August 14, Cooper complained to Smith that Steele had been given the place that rightfully should have been his [Ibid., 987].  Smith looked into the matter and made his reply, strictly non-partisan, September 1st [Ibid., 1037].  The authorities at Richmond declared against Cooper’s claims and pretensions, yet, in no wise, did he abandon them.]

among men, he might have accomplished great things for Indian Territory and for the Confederacy.  Almost simultaneously with the forwarding of Scott’s first report to Holmes, he personally made reports[856] and issued appeals,[857] some of which, because of their grasp, because of their earnestness, and because of their spirit of noble self-reliance, call for very special mention.  Watie’s purpose in making and in issuing them was evidently nothing more and nothing less than to dispel despondency and to arouse to action.

Watie’s appeal may have had the effect designed but it was an effect doomed to be counteracted almost at once.  Blunt’s offensive had more of menace to the Creeks and their southern neighbors than had Steele’s defensive of hope.  The amnesty to deserters,[858] that issued under authority from Richmond on the twenty-sixth of August, even though conditional upon a return to duty, was a confession of weakness and it availed little when the Choctaws protested against the failure to supply them with arms and ammunition, proper in quality and quantity, for Smith to tell them that such things, intended to meet treaty requirements but diverted, had been lost in the fall of Vicksburg.[859] Had not white men been always singularly adept at making excuses for breaking their promises to red?