your application to the War Office these companies will be ordered into the Department of Indian Territory."

I have no infantry. I had one regiment but it has been sent to Little Rock, and two other regiments raised for me were taken by General Van Dorn. I think it would be a wise measure to send some force of infantry here from Texas. It will be of no use to order them from Arkansas, because anybody there stops anything that is coming or belongs to me.

I am, very respectfully, yours,

ALBERT PIKE,

Brigadier-General Commanding Department of Indian Territory.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF INDIAN TERRITORY,
Fort McCulloch, June 30, 1862.

Honorable GEORGE W. RANDOLPH, Secretary of War:

SIR: The inclosed printed paper has come into my hands, accompanied by letters sent direct by Major N. B. Pearce to the department quartermaster and commissary, copies of which are also inclosed.*

All officers in this department are ordered to report without delay to Major Pearce and obey his instructions.

Major Pearce has no rank as acting quartermaster. Major Quesenbury is a major by commission older than even his commission as assistant commissary of subsistence, and will not be allowed to report to him or obey his instructions.

The funds here and on the way here are necessary for the payment of the Indian troops and the debts contracted for the purpose of supplying them. I shall not permit them to be sent to Major Pearce.

If I should obey his orders by sending away all our funds and by refraining from contracting any debt whatever I should have immediately to disband or send back to Texas the white troops here, and the Indians would disband themselves; perhaps it is desired they should, but that will not happen if I can prevent it, and I shall certainly pay them what belongs to them.

Under these orders I could not buy a peck of corn or a pound of flour. I am feeding with supplies of flour and bacon purchased in Texas most of the Indian troops, and if I were to send back one train without provisions, and tell them I had no money and was not allowed to buy on credit, they would instantly disperse. When I came here early in April we had no money. I advanced all I had ($20,000) of my own and borrowed other funds in my hands ($116,000), and by judiciously paying for all I purchased of small holders succeeded in obtaining abundant credit. In doing so we contracted a large amount of debt for which the parties look to me.

It is hardly credible that the object of these orders and others can be to drive the Indian troops out of the field, and yet I have pretty good reason to think so. It is not credible that any officer can believe they would stay in the service unfed and unpaid. As to feeding them from Fort Smith, that is simply an absurdity.

It is strange, but no less true than strange, that all I have done to keep these Indians loyal has been done in spite of instructions and of orders. I made the treaty, by which alone they became not our enemy, by disobeying an act of Congress, which declared that nothing contained in it should be construed to assume the debts due the Indians,

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*See Pearce to Hindman, p. 965.

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