Besides getting permission from Secretary Smith to go ahead and supply the more pressing needs of the refugees, Dole accomplished another thing greatly to their interest.  He secured from the staff of General Lane a special agent, Dr. William Kile of Illinois,[175] who had formerly been a business partner of his own[176] and, like Superintendent Coffin, his more or less intimate friend.  Kile’s particular duty as special agent was to be the purchasing of supplies for the refugees[177] and he at once visited their encampment in order the better to determine their requirements.  His investigations more than corroborated the earlier accounts of their sufferings and privations and his appointment under the circumstances seemed fully justified, notwithstanding that on the surface of things it appeared very suggestive of a near approach to nepotism, and of nepotism Dole, Coffin, and many others were unquestionably guilty.  They worked into the service just as many of their own relatives and friends as they conveniently and safely could.  The official pickings were considered by them as their proper perquisites. “’Twas ever thus” in American politics, city, county, state, and national.

The Indian encampment upon the occasion of

[Footnote 174:  (cont.) the Indians and they are feeding them a little....”  See also Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. iv, 30.]

[Footnote 175:  Dole was from Illinois also, from Edgar County; Coffin was from Indiana [Indian Office Miscellaneous Records, no. 8, p. 432].]

[Footnote 176:  Daily Conservative, February 8, 1862.]

[Footnote 177:  Indian Office Consolidated Files, Southern Superintendency, D 576 of 1862; Letter Book, no. 67, pp. 450-452.]

Kile’s[178] visit was no longer on Fall River.  Gradually, since first discovered, the main body of the refugees had moved forward within the New York Indian Lands to the Verdigris River and had halted in the neighborhood of Fort Roe, where the government agents had received them; but smaller or larger groups, chiefly of the sick and their friends, were scattered all along the way from Walnut Creek.[179] Some of the very belated exiles were as far westward as the Arkansas, over a hundred miles distant.  Obviously, the thing to do first was to get them all together in one place.  There were reasons why the Verdigris Valley was a most desirable location for the refugees.  Only a very few white people were settled there and, as they were intruders and had not a shadow of legal claim to the land upon which they had squatted, any objections that they might make to the presence of the Indians could be ignored.[180]

For a few days, therefore, all efforts were directed, at large expense, towards converting the Verdigris Valley, in the vicinity of Fort Roe, into a concentration camp; but no precautions were taken against allowing unhygienic conditions to arise.  The Indians themselves were much diseased.  They had few opportunities for personal cleanliness and less ambition.  Some of the food doled out to them was stuff that the army had condemned and rejected as unfit for use.  They were emaciated, sick, discouraged.  Finally, with