into this region. It is not expected that you will give battle to
a large force, but by felling trees, burning bridges, removing
supplies of forage and subsistence, attacking his trains,
stampeding his animals, cutting off his detachments, and other
similar means, you will be able materially to harass his army and
protect this region of country. You must endeavor by every means
to maintain yourself in the Territory independent of this army.
In case only of absolute necessity you may move southward. If the
enemy threatens to march through the Indian Territory or descend
the Arkansas River you may call on troops from Southwestern
Arkansas and Texas to rally to your aid. You may reward your
Indian troops by giving them such stores as you may think proper
when they make captures from the enemy, but you will please
endeavor to restrain them from committing any barbarities upon the
wounded, prisoners, or dead who may fall into their hands. You may
purchase your supplies of subsistence from wherever you can most
advantageously do so. You will draw your ammunition from Little
Rock or from New Orleans via Red River. Please communicate with
the general commanding when practicable.[82]

It was an elaborate programme but scarcely a noble one. Its note of
selfishness sounded high. The Indians were simply to be made to serve
the ends of the white men. Their methods of warfare were regarded as
distinctly inferior. Pea Ridge was, in fact, the first and last time
that they were allowed to participate in the war on a big scale.
Henceforth, they were rarely ever anything more than scouts and
skirmishers and that was all they were really fitted to be.

[Footnote 81: _Official Records_, vol. viii, 282, 790; vol. liii,
supplement, 796.]

[Footnote 82:--Ibid., vol. viii, 795-796.]

II. LANE'S BRIGADE AND THE INCEPTION OF THE INDIAN

The Indian Expedition had its beginnings, fatefully or otherwise,
in "Lane's Kansas Brigade." On January 29, 1861, President Buchanan
signed the bill for the admission of Kansas into the Union and the
matter about which there had been so much of bitter controversy was at
last professedly settled; but, alas, for the peace of the border, the
radicals, the extremists, the fanatics, call them what one may, who
had been responsible for the controversy and for its bitterness, were
still unsettled. James Lane was chief among them.