[Footnote 408:  Pike had just received assurances of the friendly disposition of the Kiowas [Bickel to Pike, June 1, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 936].]

[Footnote 409:  The enemy in mind was the Indian Expedition.  Pike had heard that Sturgis had been removed “on account of his tardiness in not invading the Indian country....” [Ibid., 944].]

men was impaired, their duties, especially the “fort duties, throwing up intrenchments, etc.,"[410] had been very fatiguing.  Pike had no wagons to spare them for the trip eastward.  So many of his men had obtained furloughs for the harvest season and every company, in departing, had taken with it a wagon,[411] no one having any thought that there would come a call decreasing Pike’s command.

So slowly and laboriously did Dawson’s regiment progress that Hindman, not hearing either of it or of Woodruff’s battery, which was slightly in advance, began to have misgivings as to the fate of his orders of May 31.  He, therefore, repeated them in substance, on June 17, with the additional specific direction that Pike should “move at once to Fort Gibson.”  That order Pike received June 24, the day following his issuance of instructions to his next in command, Colonel D.H.  Cooper, that he should hasten to the country north of the Canadian and there take command of all forces except Chief Jumper’s.

The receipt of Hindman’s order of June 17 was the signal for Pike to pen another lengthy letter[412] of description and protest.  Interspersed through it were his grievances, the same that were recited in the letter of June 8, but now more elaborately dwelt upon.  Pike was getting irritable.  He declared that he had done all he could to expedite the movement of his troops.  The odds were unquestionably against him.  His Indians were doing duty in different places.  Most of the men of his white cavalry force were off on furlough.  Their furloughs would not expire until the

[Footnote 410:  Dawson to Hindman, June 20, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 945-946.]

[Footnote 411:  Dawson had allowed his wagons to go “of his own motion” [Pike to Hindman, June 24, 1862, Ibid., 947].]

[Footnote 412:—­Ibid., 947-950.]

twenty-fifth and not until the twenty-seventh could they be proceeded against as deserters.  Not until that date, too, would the reorganization, preliminary to marching, be possible.  He was short of transportation and half of what he had was unserviceable.

Of his available Indian force, he had made what disposition to him seemed best.  He had ordered the newly-organized First Choctaw Regiment, under Colonel Sampson Folsom, to Fort Gibson and had assigned Cooper to the command north of the Canadian, which meant, of course, the Cherokee country.  Cooper’s own regiment was the First Choctaw and Chickasaw, of which, two companies, proceeding from Scullyville, had already posted themselves in the upper part of the Indian