The Confederates were worsted and lost their train and many prisoners.  Among the prisoners was Clarkson himself.  His battalion was put to flight and in that circumstance lay the worst aspect of the whole engagement; for the routed men fled towards Tahlequah and spread consternation among the Indians gathered there, also among those who saw them by the way or heard of them.  Thoroughly frightened the red men sought refuge within the Federal lines.  Such conduct was to be expected of primitive people, who invariably incline towards the side of the victor; but, in this case, it was most disastrous to the Confederate Indian alliance.  For the second time since the war began, Colonel John Drew’s enlisted men defected from their own ranks[337] and, with the exception of a small body under Captain Pickens Benge,[338] went boldly over to the enemy.  The result was, that the Second Indian Home Guard, Ritchie’s regiment, which had not previously been filled up, had soon the requisite number of men[339] and there were more to spare.  Indeed, during the days that followed, so many recruits came in, nearly all of them Cherokees, that lists were opened for starting a third regiment of Indian Home Guards.[340] It was not long before it was organized, accepted by Blunt, and W.A.  Phillips commissioned as its colonel.[341] The regular mustering in of the new recruits had to be done at Fort Scott and thither Ritchie sent the men, intended for his regiment, immediately.

The Indian Expedition had started out with a very definite preliminary programme respecting the

[Footnote 337:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 138.]

[Footnote 338:  Hindman’s Report, Ibid., 40.]

[Footnote 339:  Ritchie to Blunt, July 5, 1862, Ibid., 463-464.]

[Footnote 340:  Weer to Moonlight, July 12, 1862, Ibid., 488.]

[Footnote 341:  Blunt to Salomon, August 3, 1862, Ibid., 532; Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. i, 304.]

management of Indian affairs, particularly as those affairs might be concerned with the future attitude of the Cherokee Nation.  The programme comprised instructions that emanated from both civil and military sources.  The special Indian agents, Carruth and Martin, had been given suitable tasks to perform and the instructions handed them have already been commented upon.  Personally, these two men were very much disposed to magnify the importance of their own position and to resent anything that looked like interference on the part of the military.  As a matter of fact, the military men treated them with scant courtesy and made little or no provision for their comfort and convenience.[342] Colonel Weer seems to have ignored, at times, their very existence.  On more than one occasion, for instance, he deplored the absence of some official, accredited by the Indian Office, to take charge of what he contemptuously called “this Indian business,"[343] which business, he felt, greatly complicated all military undertakings[344] and was decidedly beyond the bounds of his peculiar province.[345]