which he negotiated he pledged distinctly and explicitly the opposite course of action, unless, indeed, the Indian consent were first obtained.[41] The Indian troops, however and wherever raised under the provisions of those treaties, were expected by Pike to constitute, primarily, a home guard and nothing more.  If by chance it should happen that, in performing their function as a home guard, they should have to cross their own boundary in order to expel or to punish an intruder, well and good; but their intrinsic character as something resembling a police patrol could not be deemed thereby affected.  Moreover, Pike did not believe that acting alone they could even be a thoroughly adequate home force.  He, therefore, urged again and again that their contingent should be supplemented by a white force and by one sufficiently large to give dignity and poise and self-restraint to the whole, when both forces were combined, as they always ought to be.[42]

At the time of Pike’s assumption of his ill-defined command, or within a short period thereafter, the Indian force in the pay of the Confederacy and subject to his orders may be roughly placed at four full regiments and some miscellaneous troops.[43] The dispersion[44] of Colonel John Drew’s Cherokees, when about to attack Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la, forced a slight reoerganization and that, taken in connection with the accretions to the command that came in the interval before the Pea Ridge campaign brought the force approximately to four full

[Footnote 41:  In illustration of this, take the statement of the Creek Treaty, article xxxvi.]

[Footnote 42:  Aside from the early requests for white troops, which were antecedent to his own appointment as brigadier-general, Pike’s insistence upon the need for the same can be vouched for by reference to his letter to R.W.  Johnson, January 5, 1862 [Official Records, vol. liii, supplement, 795-796].]

[Footnote 43:  Pike to Benjamin, November 27, 1861, Ibid, vol. viii, 697.]

[Footnote 44:  Official Records, vol. viii, 8, 17-18.]

regiments, two battalions, and some detached companies.  The four regiments were, the First Regiment Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles under Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, the First Creek Regiment under Colonel D.N.  McIntosh, the First Regiment Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Colonel John Drew, and the Second Regiment Cherokee Mounted Rifles under Colonel Stand Watie.  The battalions were, the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Creek and Seminole, the latter under Lieutenant-colonel Chilly McIntosh and Major John Jumper.