[Ibid., Southern Superintendency, B567 of 1861]]

them their most natural inclination was to pay back old scores and to make an alliance where such alliance could be most profitable to themselves.  The “remnants” of tribes, Senecas, Shawnees, and Quapaws, associated with them in the agency, Neosho, that is, although not of evil disposition, were similarly agitated and with good reason.  Rumors of dissensions among the Cherokees, not so very far away, were naturally having a disquieting effect upon the neighboring but less highly organized tribes as was also the unrest in Missouri, in the southwestern counties of which, however, Union sentiment thus far dominated.[92] Its continuance would undoubtedly turn upon military success or failure and that, men like Lyon and Lane knew only too well.

As the days passed, the Cherokee troubles gained in intensity, so much so that the agent, John Crawford, even then a secessionist sympathiser, reported that internecine strife might at any hour be provoked.[93] So confused was everything that in July the people of southeastern Kansas were generally apprehensive of an attack from the direction of either Indian Territory or Arkansas.[94] Kansas troops had been called to Missouri; but, at the same time, Lyon was complaining that men from the West, where they were greatly needed, were being called by Scott to Virginia.[95] On August 6 two emergency calls went forth, one from Fremont for a brigade from California that could be stationed at El Paso and moved as occasion might require, either upon San Antonio or into the Indian Territory,[96]

[Footnote 92:  Branch to Mix, June 22, 1861, enclosing letter from Agent Elder, June 15, 1861 [Indian Office Files, Neosho, B 547 of 1861].]

[Footnote 93:—­Ibid., Cherokee, C 1200 of 1861].

[Footnote 94:  Official Records, vol. iii, 405.]

[Footnote 95:—­Ibid., 397, 408.]

[Footnote 96:—­Ibid., 428.]

the other from Congressmen John S. Phelps and Francis P. Blair junior, who addressed Lincoln upon the subject of enlisting Missouri troops for an invasion of Arkansas in order to ward off any contemplated attack upon southwestern Missouri and to keep the Indians west of Arkansas in subjection.[97] On August 10 came the disastrous Federal defeat at Wilson’s Creek.  It was immediately subsequent to that event and in anticipation of a Kansas invasion by Price and McCulloch that Lane resolved to take position at Fort Scott.[98]

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, lost to the Federals largely because of Fremont’s failure to support Lyon, was an unmitigated disaster in more than one sense.  The death of Lyon, which the battle caused, was of itself a severe blow to the Union side as represented in Missouri; but the moral effect of the Federal defeat upon the Indians was equally worthy of note.  It was instantaneous and striking.  It rallied the wavering Cherokees for the Confederacy[99] and their defection was something that could not be easily counterbalanced and was certainly not counterbalanced by the almost coincident, cheap, disreputable, and very general Osage offer, made towards the end of August, of services to the United States in exchange for flour and whiskey.[100]