[Footnote 311:  Weer was disgusted with conditions surrounding his white force.  This is his complaint, on the eve of his departure: 

“Commissions to officers from the Governor are pouring in daily.  I am told that the Tenth is rapidly becoming a regiment of officers.  To add to these difficulties there are continual intrigues, from colonels down, for promotions and positions of command.  Officers are leaving their posts for Fort Leavenworth and elsewhere to engage in these intrigues for more prominent places.  The camps are filled with rumors of the success of this or that man.  Factions are forming, and a general state of demoralization being produced...”—­WEER to Moonlight, June 21, 1862, Ibid., 441-442.]

V. THE MARCH TO TAHLEQUAH AND THE RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF THE “WHITE AUXILIARY”

Towards the end of June, the various elements designed to comprise the First Indian Expedition had encamped at Baxter Springs[312] and two brigades formed.  As finally organized, the First Brigade was put under the command of Colonel Salomon and the Second, of Colonel William R. Judson.  To the former, was attached the Second Indian Regiment, incomplete, and, to the latter, the First.  Brigaded with the Indian regiments was the white auxiliary that had been promised and that the Indians had almost pathetically counted upon to assist them in their straits.  Colonel Weer’s intention was not to have the white and red people responsible for the same duties nor immediately march together.  The red were believed to be excellent for scouting and, as it would be necessary to scout far and wide all the way down into the Indian Territory, the country being full of bushwhackers, also, most likely, of the miscellaneous forces of General Rains, Colonel Coffee, and Colonel Stand Watie, they were to be reserved for that work.

The forward movement of the Indian Expedition began at daybreak on the twenty-eighth of June.  It was then that the First Brigade started, its white contingent, “two sections Indiana Battery, one battalion of

[Footnote 312:  Baxter Springs was a government post, established on Spring River in the southwest corner of the Cherokee Neutral Lands, subsequent to the Battle of Pea Ridge [Kansas Historical Society, Collections, vol. vi, 150].]

Second Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, and six companies of Ninth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry,"[313] taking the military road across the Quapaw Strip and entering the Indian Territory, unmolested.  A day’s journey in the rear and travelling by the same route came the white contingent of the Second Brigade and so much of the First Indian as was unmounted.[314] Beyond the border, the cavalcade proceeded to Hudson’s Crossing of the Neosho River, where it halted to await the coming of supply trains from Fort Scott.  In the meantime, the Second Indian Regiment, under Colonel John Ritchie, followed, a day apart, by the mounted men of the First under Major William A. Phillips,[315] had also set out, its orders[316] being to leave the military road and to cross to the east bank of Spring River, from thence to march southward and scour the country thoroughly between Grand River and the Missouri state line.