d taken the red men across the border, without their express
consent, to fight in the Pea Ridge campaign. And with what result?
Base ingratitude on the part of Van Dorn, who, in his official report
of the three day engagement, ignored the help rendered[394] and left
Pike to bear the stigma[395] of Indian atrocities alone.

With the thought of that ingratitude still rankling in his breast,
Pike noted additional features of Hindman's first instructions to him,
which were, that he should advance his Indian force to the northern
border of Indian Territory and hold it there to resist invasion from
Kansas. He was expected to do this unsupported

[Footnote 393: Van Dorn would seem to have been a gross offender in
this respect. Similar charges were made against him by other men and
on other occasions [_Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement,
825].]

[Footnote 394: It was matter of common report that Van Dorn despised
Pike's Indians [Ibid., vol. xiii, 814-816]. The entire Arkansas
delegation in Congress, with the exception of A.H. Garland, testified
to Van Dorn's aversion for the Indians [Ibid., 815].]

[Footnote 395: How great was that stigma can be best understood from
the following: "The horde of Indians scampered off to the mountains
from whence they had come, having murdered and scalped many of the
Union wounded. General Pike, their leader, led a feeble band to the
heights of Big Mountain, near Elk Horn, where he was of no use to
the battle of the succeeding day, and whence he fled, between roads,
through the woods, disliked by the Confederates and detested by the
Union men; to be known in history as a son of New Hampshire--a poet
who sang of flowers and the beauties of the sunset skies, the joys of
love and the hopes of the soul--and yet one who, in the middle of the
19th century, led a merciless, scalping, murdering, uncontrollable
horde of half-tame savages in the defense of slavery--themselves
slave-holders--against that Union his own native State was then
supporting, and against the flag of liberty. He scarcely struck a blow
in open fight.... His service was servile and corrupt; his flight
was abject, and his reward disgrace."--_War Papers and Personal
Recollections of the Missouri Commandery_, 232.]

by white troops, the need of which, for moral as well as for physical
strength, he had always insisted upon.

It is quite believable that Van Dorn was the person most responsible
for Hindman's interference with P