should prefer the selection of a regular officer of experience and rank. All I can say is, that if it should please the Government to employ me, I will do all and the best I can. If I am employed, I shall wish to indicate one gentleman, eminently qualified, for the appointment of surgeon. Please see to it, if the contingency occurs, that permission to do this be given me.

Arkansas can raise ten regiments. I can raise on shortest notice all that we will need on the frontier. I do not think the troops so raised or called for would be dissatisfied to be placed under my command; but of all this it is more fit you should speak than I. Above all, do not, out of regard for me, in any way embarrass President Davis or the Secretary of War, if other arrangements are thought of. I am nothing, and seek nothing to benefit myself.

Immediate action, speedy raising and arming and forwarding of troops to our frontier, is imperatively demanded. Not a day ought to be lost. I wish to Heaven we were there now. The moment you can say that I am or am not to be commissioned, telegraph me. Moments are worth lives now.

God bless you.

ALBERT PIKE.

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. ARMY,

Montgomery, May 13, 1861.

Major DOUGLAS H. COOPER, Choctaw Nation:

SIR: The desire of this Government is to cultivate the most friendly relations and the closest alliance with the Choctaw Nation and all the Indian tribes west of Arkansas and south of Kansas. Appreciating your sympathies with these tribes, and their reciprocal regard for you, we have thought it advisable, to enlist your services in the line of this desire. From information in possession of the Government it is deemed expedient to take measures to secure the protection of these tribes in their present country from the agrarian rapacity of the North, that, unless opposed, must soon drive them from their homes and supplant them in their possession, as indeed, would have been the case with the entire South but for our present efforts at resistance. It is well known that with these unjust designs against the Indian country the Northern movement for several years has had its emissaries scheming among the tribes for their ultimate destruction. Their destiny has thus become our own, and common with that of all the Southern States entering this Confederation.

Entertaining these views and feelings, and with these objects before us, we have commissioned General Ben. McCuloch, with three regiments under his command, from the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, to take charge of the military district embracing the Indian country, and I now empower you to raise among the Choctaws and Chickasaws a mounted regiment, to be commanded by yourself, in co-operation with General McCulloch. It is designed also to raise two other similar regiments among the Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, and other friendly tribes for the same purpose. This combined force of six regiments will be ample to secure the frontiers upon Kansas and the interests of the Indians, while to the south of the Red River three regiments from Texas, under a different command, have been already assigned to the Rio Grande and western border.

It will thus appear, I trust, that the resources of this Government are adequate to its ends, and assured to the friendly Indians. We have