The Indian Territory in the Civil War Message Board

Brig Gen J.S. Roane, Cmdg Indian Territory

Head Quarters First Division, First Army Corps
Army of the West, Fort Smith, Arks.
November 5, 1862

General,

Upon the subject of my command in the Indian country, I desire to make a suggestion or two. When I enter the Indian country it will be expected that I concentrate them and if possible secure the cooperation with the Southern Confederacy. In order to do that it will be necessary to feed and clothe them, and pay the soldiers what is due them for past services. I am ordered in the morning to start to Ft. Gibson to collect the troops and organize them so that they may be held true to the south. What is the prospect before me to accomplish this: to support the troops there is not two days rations for a thousand men in twenty miles of Ft. Gibson and from the best information I can procure there is not provision enough in the whole Indian Territory to support the troops now in the Service there one month. What there is to be done? The Indians are to be fed or they will join our enemy’s who are both willing and able to feed them. In fact a few moments since when I sent to the commissary to purchase bread and meat for my own table I was informed that a regular requisition must be made out and approved by you, before he was authorized to supply me. Now this is rather remarkable. If I can not supply my own mess table, how is it expected that I should feed the starving nations of Indians whom I am sent amongst. The Indians have no clothing, absolutely none. What am I to do: Go to Gibson, order the Indian troops amounting to several thousand there and then let them freeze and starve to death, and what good is to result from all this to the government. I am willing and rather anxious to go into the Indian country, but I must ask that means be placed at my command to both feed and clothe the command. I am positively assured that it is utterly impossible to support any number of men either at Ft. Gibson or any other portion of the Indian nation, unless it be south near where Genl. Pike is located and I had as well be on the moon as there for all the good I would be enabled to do. And then the question comes up, can these troops be fed here? I answer no. There is not in this region of country more provisions today than would be required to feed the women, old men, and children now in the country and I see nothing but starvation awaiting any army that may be left here, and as for the Indians, God help them. If the River would rise, corn could be brought from the lower part of the River but as it is the only chance is wagons and that is a poor one. Look at this thing General and devise a remedy. I know that I place a subordinate officer in bad odor with his commander to be suggesting difficulties, and writing that this thing can not be bad and that cannot be done, and that this enterprise must fail & etc., and I have not been much in the habit of this thing; but when I am ordered to Fort Gibson fifty miles from any place, where there is not ten ears of corn for sale in forty miles, with five thousand naked, starving soldiers around me, and double that number of famished, starving dying women and children and not one dollar furnished me to purchase subsistence and no subsistence to purchase if I had millions. I feel called upon to speak plainly and ask that you will consider this subject. As to my being at Gibson or Ft. Smith, it is about the same thing only I am sixty miles nearer where something can be procured in case of starvation.

If the management of the Indian country was left to me, I would locate them in the Indian country as near this place as practicable and clothe and feed them the best I could and supply their families with as much cotton and provisions as possible, and when thus organized use them for the defence of the Indian Country. In order that the Indians may be properly managed it will be necessary that some one in whom the commanding Generals have confidence should be placed in command; that he be supplied with ample funds and allowed the largest discretion, and his every act not devised both before and after it is done.

I confess that it is with great reluctance that I enter upon the discharge of the duty assigned me, and unless I am allowed some discretion I despair of doing anything and will have to ask to be relieved from a service where I know I can not meet the expectation of my commanders or sub serve the interest of my country. When Genl. Cooper comes I will report at length the true condition of the Indian Country. I sent for him today.

I am General
Very Respectfully,
Your Obdt. Servt.
John Selden Roane

To:
Maj. Genl. T. C. Hindman
Comd’g Troops in the field