d dilated upon the causes that had moved him to action. He
shifted all blame for failure to keep faith with the Indian nations
from himself and from the Confederate government to the men upon whom
he steadfastly believed it ought to rest. He deprecated the plundering
that would bring its own retribution and begged the red men to be
patient and to keep themselves true to the noble cause they had
espoused.

Remain true, I earnestly advise you, to the Confederate States
and yourselves. Do not listen to any men who tell you that the
Southern States will abandon you. They will not do it. If the
enemy has been able to come into the Cherokee country it has not
been the fault of the President; and it is but the fortune of war,
and what has happened in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
and even Arkansas. We have not been able to keep the enemy from
our frontier anywhere; but in the interior of our country we can
defeat them always.

Be not discouraged, and remember, above all things, that you can
have nothing to expect from the enemy. They will have no mercy on
you, for they are more merciless than wolves and more rapacious.
Defend your country with what help you

[Footnote 446: Pike to the Secretary of War, July 20, 1862,
_Official Records_, vol. xiii, 859-860.]

[Footnote 447:--Ibid., 869-871.]

can get until the President can send you troops. If the enemy ever
comes to the Canadian he cannot go far beyond that river. The war
must soon end since the recent victories near Richmond, and no
treaty of peace will be made that will give up any part of your
country to the Northern States. If I am not again placed in
command of your country some other officer will be in whom you
can confide. And whatever may be told you about me, you will soon
learn that if I have not defended the whole country it was because
I had not the troops with which to do it; that I have cared for
your interest alone; that I have never made you a promise that I
did not expect, and had not a right to expect, to be able to keep,
and that I have never broken one intentionally nor except by the
fault of others.

The only fair way to judge Pike's farewell address to his Indian
charges is to consider it in the light of its effect upon them,
intended and accomplished.[448] So little reason has the red man had,
in the course of his long experience wit