Chapter 5
"So Laudable an Enterprise"
The legislative work of the Cherokee Council, partisan body that it was, with Lewis Downing as its presiding officer and Thomas Pegg as acting Principal Chief, was reactionary, yet epochal. It comprised several measures and three of transcendent importance, passed between the eighteenth [February, 1863] and the twenty-first:
1. An act revoking an allegiance with the Confederate States and re-asserting allegiance to the United States.
2. An act deposing all officers of any rank or character whatsoever, inclusive of legislative, executive, judicial, who were serving in capacities disloyal to the United States and to the Cherokee Nation.
3. An act emancipating slaves throughout the Cherokee country.
Annie Abel
The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865
It was upon General David Hunter, Commander of the Western Department of the Army of the United States of America, that the main responsibility for the refugees from the Indian Territory fell. As they were fleeing north, the destitute renegades had fallen in with a group of buffalo hunters from the Sac and Fox Nations near Osage County, Kansas. After hearing of their tragic experience, these friendly relations sent word ahead of their party to federal officials. William G. Coffin, Federal Southern Superintendent, appealed to General Hunter to send Federal officers and assistance to aid the distressed refugees.1 In addition, Coffin ordered every Federal agent in his charge to assemble at Fort Roe, Kansas to assist the refugees.2
General Hunter sent Captain J. W. Turner, Chief Commissary of Subsistence, and Brigade-Surgeon A. B. Campbell to the refugee Indian encampment to provide assistance to the destitute. However, the plight of the refugees overwhelmed the meager resources of Hunter's men. The few cheap blankets and condemned army tents that were furnished did little to meet the dire needs of those who had endured the exodus to the "Promised Land." According to Campbell, the supplies provided by the army consisted of thirty-five blankets, forty pairs of socks, and a few underclothes. He woefully admitted that he "selected the nakedest of the naked" and gave them what few items there were.3
Campbell then explained to the hundreds who stood about that there was to be nothing left for them. From among those who stood before him, there were "seven, varying in age from three to fifteen years [without] one thread upon their body."4 On the fifteenth of February, with supplies exhausted, the army stopped giving assistance altogether; the horror was such that was "beyond the power of any pen to portray." 5 Annie Abel described the situation in her work The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865, "The inadequacy of the Indian Service and the inefficiency of the Federal never showed up more plainly, to the utter discredit of the nation, than at this period and in this connection."6 Yet, from the midst of this chasm of despair was to come the hope for a new day.
1 Edmund Danzinger, Jr. "The Office of Indian Affairs and the Problems of Civil War Refugees in Kansas" Kansas Historical Quarterly 35 (Autumn, 1969): 261-263. 2 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 130 Volumes, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1900), Vol. CXVII, 5. 3 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. CXVII, 6. 4 Ibid. 5 Seminole Agent G.C. Snow, quoted in Abel, The American Indian in the Civil War, 83. 6 Annie Abel, The American Indian in the Civil War, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 84; Michelle Starr, "The Other Civil War: Muskogee Autumn." Civil War Times Illustrated 1983 22(1): 26-31.