[Footnote 971:  The evidence for this is chiefly in Cooper’s own letter book.  One published letter is especially valuable in this connection.  It is from Cooper (cont.)]

Phillips was again in charge of their northern compatriots[972] and, at Fort Gibson, he, too, was handling Indians carefully.  It was in a final desperate sort of a way that a league with the Indians of the Plains was again considered advisable and held for debate at the coming meeting of the general council.  To effect it, when decided upon, the services of Albert Pike were solicited.[973] No other could be trusted as he.  Apparently he never served or agreed to serve[974] and no alliance was needed; for the war was at an end.  On the twenty-sixth of May, General E. Kirby Smith entered into a convention with Major-general E.R.S.  Canby, commanding the Military Division of West Mississippi, by which he agreed to surrender the Trans-Mississippi Department and everything appertaining to it.[975] The Indians had made an alliance with the Southern Confederacy in vain.  The promises of Pike, of Cooper, and of many another government agent had all come to naught.

[Footnote 971:  (cont.) confidentially to Anderson, May 15, 1865. Official Records, vol. xlviii, part ii, 1306.]

[Footnote 972:  For Phillips’s own account of his reinstallment, see his letter to Herron, January 16, 1865, Ibid., part i, 542-543.]

[Footnote 973:  Smith to Pike, April 8, 1864, Ibid., part ii, 1266-1269.  It was necessary to have someone else beside Throckmorton, who was a Texan, serve; because the Indians of the Plains had a deep distrust of Texas and of all Texans [Smith to Cooper, April 8, 1864, Ibid., 1270-1271; and Smith to Throckmorton, April 8, 1864, Ibid., 1271-1272].]

[Footnote 974:  Smith issued him a commission however.  See Ibid., 1266.]

[Footnote 975:—­Ibid., 604-606.]

APPENDIX

  LITTLE ROCK,[976]
  December 30, 1862.

SIR:  My letters, in respectful terms, addressed to your Adjutant General, when I re-assumed command of the Indian Country, late in October, have not been fortunate enough to be honored with a reply.  This will reach you through another medium, and so that others besides yourself shall know its contents.  I am no longer an officer under you, but a private citizen, and free, so far as any citizen of Arkansas can call himself free while he lives in this State; and I will see whether you are as impervious to all other considerations, as you are to all sense of courtesy and justice.