dispatch. He had difficulty in getting such of his brigade as was
Indian and as had collected at Cantonment Davis, a Choctaw and
Chickasaw battalion and the First Creek Regiment, to stir. They had
not been paid their money and had not been furnished with arms and
clothing as promised. Pike had the necessary funds with him, but time
would be needed in which to distribute them, and the order had been
for him to move promptly. It was something much more easily said than
done. Nevertheless, he did what he could, paid outright the Choctaws
and Chickasaws, a performance that occupied

[Footnote 51: _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, vol.
viii, 462.]

three precious days, and agreed to pay McIntosh's Creek regiment at
the Illinois River. To keep that promise he tarried at Park Hill
one day, expecting there to be overtaken by additional Choctaws and
Chickasaws who had been left behind at Fort Gibson. When they did not
appear, he went forward towards Evansville and upward to Cincinnati, a
small town on the Arkansas side of the Cherokee line. There his Indian
force was augmented by Stand Watie's regiment[52] of Cherokees and at
Smith's Mill by John

[Footnote 52: Watie's regiment of Cherokees was scarcely in either
marching or fighting trim. The following letter from John Ross to
Pike, which is number nine in the John Ross _Papers_ in the
Indian Office, is elucidative. It is a copy used in the action against
John Ross at the close of the war. The italics indicate underscorings
that were probably not in the original.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, PARK HILL, Feb'y 25th, 1862.