............118 917

Semlnoles..................... ....-- ------.

One Choctaw owned 227 negroes.

Into the Territory the Government also gathered other tribes and
remnants of tribes, Quapaws, Kiowas, Senecas, Comanches, etc., mostly
in the "blanket" stage of savagery.

281

The dominant sentiment in the civilized tribes was strongly averse to
the war and in favor of peace. The memories and traditions as to the
meaning of war were too fresh and grievous. The object lessons as to the
advantage of peace were everywhere striking and overwhelming. They hoped
to maintain a complete neutrality in the struggle, and pleaded to be
allowed to do so. June 17, 1861, John Ross, Principal Chief of the
Cherokees, wrote a long official letter to Gen. Ben. McCulloch, in which
he said that his people had done nothing to bring about the war, were
friends to both sides, and only desired to live in peace.

As in the rest of the South, the Confederates were not listening to any
talk of neutrality, and they proceeded as energetically to stifle it as
they had the Union and peace advocates in the several Southern States.
All the Indian Agents and officials were ardent Secessionists, and
at the head of them was Superintendent Albert Pike, originally a
Massachusetts Yankee, and the son of a poor shoemaker. He had gone South
as one of the numerous "Yankee schoolmasters" who invaded that section
in search of a livelihood, had become a States Rights Democrat, and,
as usual with proselytes, was the most zealous of believers. He was a
lawyer of some ability, a successful politician, an active worker in
Masonry, and made much pretense as a poet. Nothing that he ever wrote
survives today.

[Illustration: 281-General Albert Pike]

Each of the Indian Agents began enlisting men into the Confederate
service and using them to impose Secession ideas upon their
fellow-tribesmen who were either indifferent or actually hostile.

282

The missionaries, being mostly from the North, were strongly for the
Union, and their influence had to be encountered and broken down.

The Indian Agents were commissioned Colonels in the Confederate service,
and were expected to raise regiments, with the Chiefs as subordinate
officers. The leader among the Agents was Douglas H. Cooper, Agent for
the Choctaws, a man of courage, decision and enterprise, who raised a
regiment mainly of the half-breeds of the Choctaws and Chic