command, had appropriated for their own use his money, his
supplies, and had never permitted anything to pass on to Indian
Territory, notwithstanding that it had been bought with Indian funds,
"that was fit to be sent anywhere else." The Indian's portion was the
"refuse," as Pike so truly, bitterly, and emphatically put it, or, in
other words of his, the "crumbs" that fell from the white man's table.

Pike's compliance with Hindman's orders was only partial and he
offered not the vestige of an apology that it was so. What he did send
was Dawson's[402] infantry regiment and Woodruff's battery which went
duly on to Little Rock with the requisite thirty days' subsistence and
the caution that not a single cartridge was to be fired along the way.
The caution Pike must have repeated in almost ironical vein; for the
way to Little Rock lay through Indian Territory and cartridges like
everything else under Pike's control had been collected solely for its
defense.

Respecting the forward movement of the Indian troops, Pike made not
the slightest observation in his

[Footnote 402: C.L. Dawson of the Nineteenth Regiment of Arkansas
Volunteers had joined Pike at Fort McCulloch in April [_Fort Smith
Papers_].]

reply. His silence was ominous. Perhaps it was intended as a warning
to Hindman not to encroach too far upon his department; but that is
mere conjecture; inasmuch as Pike had not yet seen fit to question
outright Hindman's authority over himself. As if anticipating an echo
from Little Rock of criticisms that were rife elsewhere, he ventured
an explanation of his conduct in establishing himself in the extreme
southern part of Indian Territory and towards the west and in
fortifying on an open prairie, far from any recognized base.[403] He
had gone down into the Red River country, he asserted, in order to be
near Texas where supplies might be had in abundance and where, since
he had no means of defence, he would be safe from attack. He deplored
the seeming necessity of merging his department in another and larger
one. His reasons were probably many but the one reason he stressed
was, for present purposes, the best he could have offered. It
was, that the Indians could not be expected to render to him as a
subordinate the same obedience they had rendered to him as the chief
officer in command. Were his authority to be superseded in any degree,
the Indians would naturally infer that his influence at Richmond had
declined, likew