Albert Pike, having accepted the appointment of department commander in Indian Territory under somewhat the same kind of a protest—­professed consciousness of unfitness for the post—­as he had accepted the earlier one of commissioner, diplomatic, to the tribes, lost no time in getting into touch with his new duties.  There was much to be attended to before he could proceed west.  His appointment had come and had been accepted in November.  Christmas was now near at hand and he had yet to render an account of his mission of treaty-making.  In late December, he sent in his official report[32] to President Davis and, that done, held himself in readiness to respond to any interpellating call that the Provincial Congress might see fit to make.  The intervals of time, free from devotion to the completion of the older task, were spent by him in close attention to the preliminary details of the newer, in securing funds and in purchasing supplies and equipment

[Footnote 31:  Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, vol. i, 105.]

[Footnote 32:  The official report of Commissioner Pike, in manuscript, and bearing his signature, is to be found in the Adjutant-general’s office of the U.S.  War Department.]

generally, also in selecting a site for his headquarters.  By command of Secretary of War, Judah P. Benjamin, Major N.B.  Pearce[33] was made chief commissary of subsistence for Indian Territory and Western Arkansas and Major G.W.  Clarke,[34] depot quartermaster.  In the sequel of events, both appointments came to be of a significance rather unusual.

The site chosen for department headquarters was a place situated near the junction of the Verdigris and Arkansas Rivers and not far from Fort Gibson.[35] The fortifications erected there received the name of Cantonment Davis and upon them, in spite of Pike’s decidedly moderate estimate in the beginning, the Confederacy was said by a contemporary to have spent “upwards of a million dollars."[36] In view of the ostensible object of the very formation of the department and of Pike’s appointment to its command, the defence of Indian Territory, and, in view of the existing location of enemy troops, challenging that defence, the selection of the site was a reasonably wise one; but, as subsequent pages will reveal, the commander did not retain it long as his headquarters.  Troubles came thick and fast upon him and he had barely reached Cantonment Davis before they began.  His delay in reaching that place, which he did do, February 25,[37] was caused by various occurrences that made it difficult for him to get his materials together, his funds and the like.  The very difficulties presaged disaster.

Pike’s great purpose—­and, perhaps, it would be no exaggeration to say, his only purpose—­throughout the

[Footnote 33:  Official Records, vol. liii, supplement, 764.]

[Footnote 34:—­Ibid, 770.]

[Footnote 35:—­Ibid, 764.]