[Footnote 178:  Indian Office Land Files, 1855-1870, Southern Superintendency, K 107 of 1862.]

[Footnote 179:  Some had wandered to the Cottonwood and were camped there in great destitution.  Their chief food was hominy [Daily Conservative, February 14, 1862].]

[Footnote 180:  For an account of the controversy over the settlement of the New York Indian Lands, see Abel, Indian Reservations in Kansas and the Extinguishment of their Title, 13-14.]

the February thaw, came a situation that soon proved intolerable.  The “stench arising from dead ponies, about two hundred of which were in the stream and throughout the camp,"[181] unburied, made removal imperatively necessary.

The Neosho Valley around about Leroy presented itself as a likely place, very convenient for the distributing agents, and was next selected.  Its advantages and disadvantages seemed about equal and had all been anticipated and commented upon by Captain Turner.[182] It was near the source of supplies—­and that was an item very much to be considered, since transportation charges, extraordinarily high in normal times were just now exorbitant, and the relief funds very, very limited.  No appropriation by Congress had yet been made although one had been applied for.[183] The great disadvantage of the location was the presence of white settlers and they objected, as well they might, to the near proximity of the inevitable disease and filth and, strangely enough, more than anything else, to the destruction of the timber, which they had so carefully husbanded.  The concentration on the Neosho had not been fully accomplished when the pressure from the citizens became so great that Superintendent Coffin felt obliged to plan for yet another removal.  Again the sympathy of the Sacs and Foxes of Mississippi manifested itself and most opportunely.  Their reservation

[Footnote 181:  Annual Report of Superintendent Coffin, October 15, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 136.  Compare with Coffin’s account given in a letter to Dole, February 13, 1862.]

[Footnote 182:  February 11, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 153; Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, D 576 of 1862.]

[Footnote 183:  Congressional Globe, 37th congress, second session, part I, pp. 815, 849.  Dole’s letter to Smith, January 31, 1862, describing the destitution of the refugees, was read in the Senate, February 14, 1862, in support of joint resolution S. no. 49, for their relief.]

lay about twenty-five miles to the northward and they generously offered it as an asylum.[184] But the Indians balked.  They were homesick, disgusted with official mismanagement[185] and indecision, and determined to go no farther.  They complained bitterly of the treatment that they had received at the hands of Superintendent Coffin and of Agent Cutler and, in a stirring appeal[186] to President Lincoln, set forth their injuries, their grievances, and their incontestable claim upon a presumably just and merciful government.[187]