First, allow me to comment on the two chief historians of these guerrillas in the early years, 1877 and 1910, because Don cited one and I will cite the other partly to obtain the information you seek from guerrilla sources. These two wrote to document the major part of the guerrilla experience, at least of the west-central Missouri one, and their works are landmark because they interviewed guerrillas and/or obtained letters from the guerrillas about their experiences in the October 1863 decent to Texas and the March-April 1864 ascent back to west-central Missouri.
Confederate Major John N. Edwards was very much as Don described him, and wrote "Noted Guerrillas or The Warfare of the Border" in the early part of the "Lost Cause" period in the South in 1877 after personally interviewing a large number of Quantrill's and Bill Anderson's (and others') men. Edwards deserves a lot of credit. The guerrillas trusted him as a brother because he was on General Joseph Shelby's staff, and Shelby had a real affinity for the west-central Missouri guerrillas, since he was one himself early in the war. Also, Shelby took many of the west-central Missouri guerrillas into his units from time to time during the war and appreciated their veteran fighting ability. A number of modern historians reject Edwards because of his very flowery prose, his refusal to cite any sources, his obvious exaggerations about numbers of Yankees killed in each fight, his confusion about exactly which guerrilla fought in which fight, and his reluctance to ever write anything negative about the guerrillas, and other things. Over the years I have grown to accept Edwards' "Noted Guerrillas" because the newspaperman Edwards definitely knew his stuff and had actually heard all the guerrila adventures in great detail from the very participants. However, since Edwards was "known to pull a cork now and then" (to quote "True Grit"--both of them) he mangled much of the detail and embellished actual guerrilla feats to make them modern knights of the round table rather than simply record the whole truth. I use Edwards as source IF I can corroborate his stories with other sources that didn't simply quote him to begin with. Remember, that Edwards' 1877 book beat all the other horses out of the starting gate, including almost all of the guerrilla memoirs. What Don Johnson cited as page 227 in his 25 January reply describes Captain Quantrill's descent from Missouri to Texas in October 1863 as Edwards wrote it. By the way, it matches in general what other guerrilla sources also wrote about this same experience (see below).
The second early historian will cause the very pro-southern readers to hiss in derision--William E. Connelley, the author of the 1910 "Quantrill and the Border Wars." Southerners loathe this man because Connelley loathed the guerrillas and he evidently wrote to expose them for the crude killers he considered them to be and not the modern knights that Edwards portrayed them. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but exactly where depends on the teller. Connelley also quoted some letters he and earlier researcher W. W. Scott (the guy who stole Quantrill's skull and arm bones from his grave) and also some guerrilla letters written to Scott. Connelley wrote about Quantrill's descent to Texas in October 1863 on pages 434 and 435, but failed to cite his source. I personally believe his source was guerrilla Sylvester Akers' letters to W. W. Scott, because Connelley cited them a few pages further on talking about Quantrill's experiences in Texas that winter and his ascent back to Missouri in spring of 1864.
About the most detailed and seemingly accurate memoir of Quantrill's descent to Texas in October 1863 is guerrilla John McCorkle's 1914 memoir told to O. S. Barton and entitled "Three Years With Quantrill: A True Story Told by His Scout John McCorkle" on pages 141-144 in the University of Oklahoma 1992 reprint. It is too long to quote here, but describes in detail what John N. Edwards wrote in general. McCorkle tells the who and where in the Indian Territory and, Ken, you will need to see his account about what Quantrill's band did during October 1863 in the Indian Territory on the way to Texas.
Quantrill member Frank Smith's memoir tells in some detail about the guerrillas during October 1863 in the Indian Territory starting with the burials of comrade Bill Bledsoe, the black man Jack Mann "who had committed criminal acts in Jackson County," and a stranger who joined the guerrillas "on the march to Baxter Springs," and whom the guerrillas killed as a spy. Smith's memoir is unpublished and hard to find, so I quote it here. Frank Smith continued:
"Quantrill's command moved on the Boggy Depot at General Cooper's headquarters. Here Quantrill made a report on his summer's
activities then sent it along with Blunt's commission and other personal effects to Price. We moved on across the Red River into
Texas....
....When a unit of Federals came through Indian Territory on a raiding party, Quantrill's men were detached by McCullouch to go
after them. They did so, going as far as the region of Coffeyville, Kansas where they had a skirmish in which they killed 6
Federals. Remained there 2 days then returned to their camp at Mineral Creek [12 miles from Sherman, Smith related earlier]. They
were gone about 2 weeks." [This evidently took place during the winter of 1863-1864.]
Smith wrote (as did other guerrillas) that the Confederate command in Texas convinced Quantrill to divest himself of all but 84 men while he was wintering in Texas. Smith wrote that Quantrill took into what he kept all of Bill Anderson's company and what appears to me to be the more daring and perhaps younger men of his own band.
Quantrill generally turned over to the Confederate army the older, more experienced veterans of his band. I wonder if he had in mind to spare these old friends the debilitating, hard fighting he envisioned when he returned to Missouri in the spring. In my opinion, he kept the ones who fought for blood, but that is just my opinion. Quantrill's brave, organized adjutant of the Lawrence raid, Bill Gregg, parted company with Quantrill's band at this time and gained a lieutenancy in one of Shelby's regular Confederate units and made a good record for himself. He wrote in his memoir (at the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection at the Missouri State Historical Society in Columbia, MO):
"...Quantrill established a camp fifteen miles north west from Sherman [Texas], It was here that the disintegration of Quantrill's
command began, [Dave] Pool, [John] Jarrett, [Cole] Younger and, Gregg [the writer] left, taking with them, altogether about forty
men, most of whom were old, tried and true veterans. Gregg joined Shelby and was given a company. Pool, Jarrett and Younger joined
forces and formed a company."
Bill Gregg wrote a bit more about what happened to Quantrill's band the rest of that winter, but he was not present, and I will not quote it here. Oddly, Connelley in his history entitled his Chapter 33 of this period of Quantrill's band "Disintegration of the Quantrill Band," using the same "disintegration" word Gregg used in his memoir. Perhaps Connelley interview Gregg postwar, but he doesn't state so.
Regarding the ascent back to Missouri, I accept the Connelley account that states that Quantrill started out too early that spring because he was in trouble with the Confederate command and with Bill Anderson and felt rushed to leave. Evidently, things got so bad in Grayson County, Texas that Quantrill and the men he kept in his company moved camp north of the Red River into Indian Territory to keep away from both the Confederate command and Anderson. This I obtained from Connelley's book in Chapter 33 on pages 442-3 citing a W. L. Potter's 1896 letters to W. W. Scott. This also seems to go along with what little Gregg wrote in his memoir about this time (although Gregg was gone, and was evidently later quoting what others told him). Setting out with George Todd and about 70 men the trip north was miserable because it rained much of the trip and the grass was not yet up for the horses to eat. The riders had to cross flood-swollen creeks and rivers the whole way, they remained wet much of the time, and their horses suffered terribly to the point many horses died and they had to trade horses when they arrived in Johnson County, MO at the end of their trek. You will notice that even the Edwards version that Don quoted points out that Bill Anderson and his band left Texas for the trip north three weeks after Quantrill and his men left for Missouri. John McCorkle wrote about Quantrill's experiences in the Indian Territory on pages 145 and 146, although his version is abbreviated. Frank Smith wrote about Quantrill's trip back north:
"On about March 10, 1864 Quantrill, Todd and 64 men started back to Missouri. It rained practically all the way. They
travelled most of the way through mud and water. Went through Indian nation. Stopped by a place where Bledsoe and Jack
Mann were buried. Their skeletons were both lying on the ground. There was no flesh left. The varmints and vultures had
completed the job. They had to swim across most of the rivers in Missouri on their way to Jackson County...."
Ken, because of the Quantrill command's debilitated state and the poor state of their horses (although the horses were in better shape during the start of the trip) I rather doubt they sought out much fighting with Yankees in the Indian Territory. Bill Anderson's band three weeks later, on the other hand, as Don cited in Edwards' "Noted Guerrillas," was ready to begin a new season of fighting and got into some killing in the Indian Territory on pages 236 and 237. Anderson's men were not into writing memoirs after the war (with few exceptions, and they didn't comment on this period), so we don't have much from Anderson's band to help us. Basically, all we have is what Edwards gleaned from interviewing some of them after the war that he wrote into his book.
I hope that helps. I just don't have much on the Indian Territory during the war. I'm a Missouri guy.
Bruce Nichols