Annie Heloise Abel - The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War

Abel, American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist, 225-226 and footnote 522.

appointment to the Confederate command, was the expectation that he would secure the Indian Territory. Obviously, the best way to do that was to occupy it, provided the tribes, whose domicile it was, were willing. But, if the Cherokees can be taken to have voiced the opinion of all, they were not willing, notwithstanding that a sensationally reported8 Federal activity under Colonel James Montgomery,9 in the neighborhood of the frontier posts, Cobb, Arbuckle, and Washita, was designed to alarm them and had notably influenced, if it had not actually inspired, the selection and appointment of the Texan ranger.10

Unable, by reason of the Cherokee objection thereto, to enter the Indian country; because entrance in the face of that objection would inevitably force the Ross faction of the Cherokees and, possibly also, Indians of other tribes into the arms of the Union, McCulloch intrenched himself on its northeast border, in Arkansas, and there awaited a more favorable opportunity for accomplishing his main purpose. He seems to have desired the Confederate government to add the contiguous portion of Arkansas to his command, but in that he was disappointed.11 Nevertheless, Arkansas early interpreted his presence in the state to imply that he was there primarily for her defence and, by the middle of June, that idea had so far gained general acceptance that C.C. Danley, speaking for the Arkansas Military Board, urged President Davis "to meet