of Indian matters in our country to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and to Lieutenant-General Smith. I expect to hear from them in a few weeks.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

STAND WATIE,

Principal Chief of the Cherokees.

[Inclosure Numbers 4.]

CAMP KANARD,

Creek Nation, August 17, 1863.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

President of the Confederate States:

DEAR FATHER: It was customary under the old Government for the Indians to address the President as their father, and if there were ties and relations which made it necessary in the old, it must be so in the new, where ties and relations are so much stronger. Then, in thus addressing you, we feel all we say; and presenting our wants to one we love, we have the utmost confidence that they will be respected and satisfied.

In the late treaty concluded between the Confederate States and our Nation, it was stipulated that in the appointment of an agent for this tribe our wishes and preference in his appointment should be consulted, and a due deference paid to them in such selection. Believing it to be our right so to do, this preference as to a choice was expressed more than a year ago and forwarded to Your Excellency; but from some cause we have received no expression from yourself in regard to this choice, until the Commissioner of Indian Affairs came out here last winter, when the same choice was expressed to him. He assured us that the man of our choice, Israel G. Vore, should be appointed our agent in due time, as provided for by treaty, but from some cause unknown to us he received no appointment until the Commissioner came this time, when it was again promised us that I. G. Vore should be appointed our agent. Since we made this choice we have seen no cause for a change in choice; therefore urge it as a right, for since we made this selection, which was from a perfect knowledge of the man, we have seen no cause to change; hence urge and insist upon his appointment.

And, again, in the same treaty it was promised that our country should be defended and protected, and, in order to do this most effectually, this people, agreed to raise a regiment of men for the Confederate States, to be used only within the limits of the Indian country and for its defense. Since that time we have turned out another regiment of Creeks and several detached companies. Recently we have passed a conscript act, taking into the army all the men in the country between the ages of eighteen and fifty. The soldiers raised by us were to be furnished as white soldiers in the States. As to how they are furnished we know not; but our soldiers, until recently, were, with few exceptions, unarmed, most of the time without ammunition; bareheaded, bare-footed, without bread, and body in rags. The most of the time we were hard pressed by the enemy, and no force near to aid and assist us, the forces under Brigadier-General Pike having fallen back of our country some hundred miles. Under these great privations which try the souls of men, a few of our people ran off from the country and joined the enemy, who were stationed in the Cherokee country just across our line.

Since Brigadier General D. H. Cooper has had command in part, we have been assisted to some extent-as much, perhaps, as his unequal forces could give; and at this time (except the battalion under Lieutenant-