divined, the Indian nations were after all aristocracies.  The minority really ruled.  At Armstrong Academy, in spite of tendencies toward an isolation that, in effect, would have been neutrality and, on the part of a few, toward a definite retracing of steps, the southern Indians renewed their pledges of loyalty to the Confederacy.  Phillips’s olive branch was in their hands and they threw it aside.  Months before they might have been secured for the North but not now.  For them the hour of wavering was past.  Maxey’s vigor was stimulating.

[Footnote 930:  To Governor Colbert of the Chickasaw Nation [Official Records, vol. xxxiv, part i, 109-110], to the Council of the Choctaw Nation [Ibid., 110], to John Jumper of the Seminole Nation [Ibid., 111], to McIntosh, possibly D.N. [Ibid., part ii, 997].  For Maxey’s comments upon Phillips and his letters, see Maxey to Smith, February 26, 1864, Ibid., 994-997.]

[Footnote 931:  Phillips to Curtis, February 24, 1864, Ibid., part i, 108-109.]

[Footnote 932:  For the itinerary of the course, see Ibid., 111-112.]

The explanation of Phillips’s whole proceeding during the month of February is to be found in his genuine friendship for the Indian, which eventually profited him much, it is true, but, from this time henceforth, was lifelong.  He stood in somewhat of a contrast to Blunt, whom General Steele thought unprincipled[933] and who in Southern parlance was “an old land speculator,"[934] and to Curtis, who was soon to show himself, as far as the Indians were concerned, in his true colors.  While Phillips was absent from Fort Gibson, Curtis arrived there.  He was making a reconnoissance of his command and, as he passed over one reservation after another, he doubtless coveted the Indian land for white settlement and justified to himself a scheme of forfeiture as a way of penalizing the red men for their defection.[935] Phillips was not encouraged to repeat his peace mission.

Blunt’s journey to Washington had results, complimentary and gratifying to his vanity because publicly vindicatory.  On the twenty-seventh of February he was restored to his old command or, to be exact, ordered “to resume command of so much of the District of the Frontier as is included within the boundaries of the Department of Kansas."[936] His headquarters were at Fort Smith and immediately began the controversy between him and Thayer, although scornfully unacknowledged by Thayer, as to the status of Fort Smith.  Thayer refused to admit that there could be any issue[937] between them for the law in the case was clear.  What Blunt and Curtis really wanted was to get hold of the

[Footnote 933:  F. Steele to S. Breck, March 27, 1864, Official Records, vol. xxxiv, part ii, 751.]

[Footnote 934:  T.M.  Scott to Maxey, April 12, 1864, Ibid., part iii, 762.]

[Footnote 935:  This matter is very much generalized here for the reason that it properly belongs in the volume on reconstruction that is yet to come.]