You pretend to believe that the Indians were in a “ferment” and discontented; and you took this very opportune occasion to stop all the moneys due their troops and for debts in their country and take and appropriate to the use of other troops the clothing promised to and procured for them.  The clothing and the money were theirs; and you were in possession of an order from the War Department, forbidding you to divert any supplies from their legitimate destination; an order which was issued, as you knew, in consequence of my complaints, and to prevent moneys and supplies for the Indians being stopped:  and yet you stopped all.

You borrow part of the money, and then seize the rest, like a genteel highwayman, who first borrows all he can of a traveler, on promise of punctual re-payment; and then claps a pistol to his head, and orders him to “stand and deliver” the rest.  And you did even more than this.

For you promised the Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, when he was at Little Rock, about the 1st of October, on his way to the Indian Country, to give the Indians assurances of the good faith of the Government—­you promised him, I say, that the clothing in question should go to the Indians.  He told the Chickasaws and Seminoles, at least, of this promise.  You broke it.  You did not send them the clothing.  You placed the Commissioner and the Government in an admirable attitude before the Indians; and the consequence has been, I understand, the disbanding of the Chickasaws, and the failure of the Seminole troops to re-organize.  The consequence will be far more serious yet.  Indians cannot be deceived, and promises made them shamelessly broken, with impunity.

While you were thus stopping their clothing, and robbing the half-naked Indians to clothe other troops, the Federals were sending home the Choctaws whom they had taken prisoners, after clothing them comfortably and putting money in their pockets.  No one need be astonished, when all the Indians shall have turned their arms against us.

Why did you and Gen. Hindman not procure by your own exertions what you need for your troops?  He reached Little Rock on the 31st of May.  You came here in August.  I sent my agents to Richmond, for money and clothing, in June and July.  I never asked either of you for any thing.  I could procure for my command all I wanted.  You and he were Major Generals; I, only a Brigadier; and Brigadiers are plenty as blackberries in season.  It is to be supposed that if I could procure money, clothing and supplies for Indians, you and he could do so for white troops.  Both of you come blundering out to Arkansas with nothing, and supply yourselves with what I procure.  Some officers would be ashamed so to supply deficiencies caused by their own want of foresight, energy or sense.

You do not even know you need an Engineer, until one of mine comes by, with $20,000 in his hands for Engineer Service in the