The Indians were not alone in their rebellious attitude.  There was mutiny seething, or something very like it, within the ranks of the agents.[188] E.H.  Carruth

[Footnote 184:  Coffin to Dole, March 28, 1862 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, Southern Superintendency, C 1565 of 1862].]

[Footnote 185:  Mismanagement there most certainly had been.  In no other way can the fact that there was absolutely no amelioration in their condition be accounted for.  Many documents that will be cited in other connections prove this point and Collamore’s letter is of itself conclusive.  George W. Collamore, known best by his courtesy title of “General,” went to Kansas in the critical years before the war under circumstances, well and interestingly narrated in Stearns’ Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, 106-108.  He had been agent for the New England Relief Society in the year of the great drouth, 1860-1861 [Daily Conservative, October 26, 1861] and had had much to do with Lane, in whose interests he labored, and who had planned to make him a brigadier under himself as major-general [Stearns, 246, 251].  He became quartermaster-general of Kansas [Daily Conservative, March 27, 1862] and in that capacity made, in the company of the Reverend Evan Jones, a visit of inspection to the refugee encampment.  His discoveries were depressing [Ibid., April 10, 1862].  His report to the government [Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendency, C 1602 of 1862] is printed almost verbatim in Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, 155-158.]

[Footnote 186:  Coffin’s letter to Dole of April 21, 1862 [Indian Office General Files, Wichita, 1862-1871, C 1601 of 1862] seems to cast doubt upon the genuineness of some of the signatures attached to this appeal and charges Agent Carruth with having been concerned in making the Indians discontented.]

[Footnote 187:  Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la and other prominent refugees addressed their complaints to Dole, March 29, 1862 [Indian Office Land Files, Southern Superintendency, 1855-1870, O 43 of 1862] and two days later to President Lincoln, some strong partisan, supposed by Coffin to be Carruth, acting as scribe.]

[Footnote 188:  On the way to the Catholic Mission, whither he was going in order (cont.)]

who had been so closely associated with Lane in the concoction of the first plan for the recovery of Indian Territory, was now figuring as the promoter of a rising sentiment against Coffin and his minions, who were getting to be pretty numerous.  The removal to the Sac and Fox reservation would mean the getting into closer and closer touch with Perry Fuller,[189] the contractor, whose dealings in connection with the Indian refugees were to become matter, later on, of a notoriety truly disgraceful.  Mistrust of Coffin was yet, however, very vague in expression and the chief difficulty in effecting the removal from the Neosho lay, therefore, in the disgruntled state of the refugees, which was due, in part, to their unalleviated misery and, in part, to domestic