kasaws.

The Cherokee regiment was almost wholly half-breeds, with Stand Waitie,
a half-breed, courageous, implacable, merciless, as its Colonel. Albert
Pike was rewarded for his great service in bringing the Indians into
line with a commission of Brigadier-General, C. S. A., and placed in
command of the whole force.

Principal Chief John Ross temporarily bowed to superior force and gave
his adhesion to the Southern Confederacy. A large portion of his people
would not do this. They, with a similar element in the other Nations,
gathered around the venerable Chief Hopoeithleyohola, nearly 100 years
old, and whose span of life began before the Revolutionary War. He had
been a dreaded young war leader against Gen. Jackson in the sanguinary
scenes at Fort Mimms, Tallapoosa, and Red Sticks in 1813-14. When he was
a boy his people were allied with the Spaniards in Florida to resist the
British encroachments upon their tribal empire in Georgia. When he was
a War Chief, the British at Pensacola and Mobile had put muskets and
ammunition into his hands for his men to resist the North Carolinians,
Georgians, Tennesseeans and Kentuckians. In every decade he had fought
and treated with the grandfathers and fathers of the same men who were
trying to coerce him.

283

Every battle and every treaty had ended in a further spoliation of the
"hunting grounds" of his people. He was now to end his career as
he began, and consistently pursued it, in stern resistance to his
hereditary enemies. He calculated that he could put into the field about
1,500 reliable, well-armed warriors, who would be more than a match for
the Indians who had entered into the Confederate service. If the white
Confederates came to their assistance, he could make an orderly retreat
into Kansas, where he hoped to receive help from Union troops, if they
should not have advanced before then.

Col. Douglas H. Cooper was sent against him, and at first tried
diplomacy, but the wily old Hopoeithleyohola had seen the results of
too many conferences, and refused to be drawn into one. Cooper then
assembled a force of 1,400 men, consisting of some companies of white
Texas cavalry and the Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole regiments, under
their War Chiefs, D. N. Mcintosh and John Jumper, and moved out to
attack Hopoeithleyohola, who beat them back with considerable loss.

The advance of Gen. Fremont called for the concentration of every
available man to oppose him, so Hopoei