[Footnote 328:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 845-846.]

[Footnote 329:  Rains had made Tahlequah the headquarters of the Eighth Division Missouri State Guards.—­PIKE to Hindman, July 15, 1862, Ibid., 858.]

[Footnote 330:—­Ibid., vol. xiii, 458, 460.]

[Footnote 331:—­Ibid., 460.]

[Footnote 332:  Anderson, Life of General Stand Watie, 18.  This incident is most (cont.)]

Locust Grove and Weer, ascertaining that fact, prepared for an engagement.  His supplies and camp equipage, also an unutilized part of his artillery he sent for safety to Cabin Creek, across Grand River and Lieutenant-colonel Lewis R. Jewell of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry he sent eastward, in the direction of Maysville, Arkansas, his expectation being—­and it was realized—­that Jewell would strike the trail of Watie and engage him while Weer himself sought out Clarkson.[333]

The looked-for engagement between the main part of the Indian Expedition and Clarkson’s force, a battalion of Missourians that had been raised by Hindman’s orders and sent to the Indian Territory “at the urgent request of Watie and Drew,"[334] occurred at Locust Grove on the third of July.  It was nothing but a skirmish, yet had very significant results.  Only two detachments of Weer’s men were actively engaged in it.[335] One of them was from the First Indian Home Guard and upon it the brunt of the fighting fell.[336]

[Footnote 332:  (cont.) likely the one that is referred to in Carruth and Martin’s letter to Coffin, August 2, 1862, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 162.]

[Footnote 333:  Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 300-301.]

[Footnote 334:  Report of General Hindman, Official Records, vol. xiii, 40.]

[Footnote 335:  Weer to Moonlight, July 6, 1862, Ibid., 137.]

[Footnote 336:  Carruth and Martin reported to Coffin, August 2, 1862, that the Indians did practically all the fighting on the Federal side.  In minor details, their account differed considerably from Weer’s.

“When near Grand Saline, Colonel Weer detached parts of the 6th, 9th, and 10th Kansas regiments, and sent the 1st Indian regiment in advance.  By a forced night march they came up to the camp of Colonel Clarkson, completely surprising him, capturing all his supplies, and taking one hundred prisoners; among them the colonel himself.

“The Creek Indians were first in the fight, led by Lieutenant Colonel Wattles and Major Ellithorpe.  We do not hear that any white man fired a gun unless it was to kill the surgeon of the 1st Indian regiment.  We were since informed that one white man was killed by the name of McClintock, of the 9th Kansas regiment.  In reality, it was a victory gained by the 1st Indian regiment; and while the other forces would, no doubt, have acted well, it is the height of injustice to claim this victory for the whites....”—­Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1862, p. 162.]