Territory, where also were the two Cherokee regiments, Watie’s and Drew’s.  The remaining eight companies of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw were encamped near Fort McCulloch and would have, before moving elsewhere, to await the reorganization of their regiment, now near at hand.  However, Cooper was not without hope that he could effect reorganization promptly and take at least four companies to join those that had just come from Scullyville.  There were six companies in the Chickasaw Battalion, two at Fort Cobb and four on the march to Fort McCulloch; but they would all have to be left within their own country for they were averse to moving out of it and were in no condition to move.  The three companies of the Choctaw Battalion would also have to be left behind in the south for they had no transportation with which to effect a removal.  The Creek commands, D.N.  McIntosh’s Creek Regiment, Chilly McIntosh’s Creek Battalion, and John Jumper’s Seminole Battalion, were operating in the west, along

the Santa Fe Trail and towards Forts Larned and Wise.

June 17 might be said to mark the beginning of the real controversy between Pike and Hindman; for, on that day, not only did Hindman reiterate the order to hurry that aroused Pike’s ire but he encroached upon Pike’s prerogative in a financial particular that was bound, considering Pike’s experiences in the past, to make for trouble.  Interference with his commissary Pike was determined not to brook, yet, on June 17, Hindman put N. Bart Pearce in supreme control at Fort Smith as commissary, acting quartermaster, and acting ordnance officer.[413] His jurisdiction was to extend over northwestern Arkansas and over the Indian Territory.  Now Pike had had dealings already with Pearce and thought that he knew too well the limits of his probity.  Exactly when Pike heard of Pearce’s promotion is not quite clear; but, on the twenty-third, Hindman sent him a conciliatory note explaining that his intention was “to stop the operations of the commissaries of wandering companies in the Cherokee Nation, who” were “destroying the credit of the Confederacy by the floods of certificates they” issued and not “to restrict officers acting under” Pike’s orders.[414] All very well, but Pearce had other ideas as to the functions of his office and lost no time in apprising various people of them.  His notes[415] to Pike’s officers were most impertinently prompt.  They were sent out on the twenty-fourth of June and on the twenty-sixth Pike reported[416] the whole history of his economic embarrassments to the Secretary of War.[417]

[Footnote 413:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 967.]

[Footnote 414:—­Ibid., 946.]

[Footnote 415:—­Ibid., 968, 968-969, 969.]

[Footnote 416:—­Ibid., 841-844.]

[Footnote 417:  George W. Randolph.]