2 [Ibid., 963-965]; July 8, 1862
[Ibid., 965-967].]

[Footnote 424:--Ibid., 844-845.]

compare rank with any officer in the Confederate service. The
commissioned colonels of Indian regiments rank precisely as if
they commanded regiments of white men, and will be respected and
obeyed accordingly.

With the same confidence in the justness of his own cause, he
called[425] Pearce's attention to an act of Congress which seemed "to
have escaped his observation," and which Pike considered conclusively
proved that the whole course of action of his enemies was absolutely
illegal.

In some of his contentions, General Pike was most certainly on strong
ground and never on stronger than when he argued that the Indians were
organized, in a military way, for their own protection and for the
defence of their own country. Since first they entered the Confederate
service, many had been the times that that truth had been brought home
to the authorities and not by Pike[426] alone but by several of his
subordinates and most often by Colonel Cooper.[427] The Indians had
many causes of dissatisfaction and sometimes they murmured pretty
loudly. Not even Pike's arrangements satisfied them all and his
inexplicable conduct in establishing his headquarters at Fort
McCulloch was exasperating beyond measure to the Cherokees.[428] Why,
if he were really sincere in saying that his supreme duty was the
defence of Indian Territory, did he not place himself where he could
do something, where, for instance, he could take precautions against
invasions from

[Footnote 425: Pike to Pearce, July 1, 1862, _Official Records_,
vol. xiii, 967.]

[Footnote 426: One of the best statements of the case by Pike is to
be found in a letter from him to Stand Watie, June 27, 1862
[Ibid., 952].]

[Footnote 427: For some of Cooper's statements, illustrative of his
position, see his letter to Pike, February 10, 1862 [Ibid.,
896] and that to Van Dorn, May 6, 1862 [ibid., 824].]

[Footnote 428: It was at the express wish of Stand Watie and Drew that
Hindman placed Clarkson in the Cherokee country [Carroll to Pike, June
27, 1862, ibid., 952].]

Kansas? And why, when the unionist Indian Expedition was threatening
Fort Gibson, Tahlequah, and Cherokee integrity generally, did he not
hasten northward to resist it? Chief Ross, greatly aggrieved because
of Pike's delinquency in this respect, addressed[429] himself to
Hindman and he did so in the fatal da