John Ross, Prin'l Chief, Cherokee Nation.]

[Footnote 53: Pike's Report, March 14, 1862, _Official Records_,
vol. viii, 286-292.]

[Footnote 54: James McIntosh to S. Cooper, January 4, 1862,
Ibid., 732; D.H. Cooper to Pike, February 10, 1862,
Ibid., vol. xiii, 896.]

[Footnote 55:--Ibid., 819.]

[Footnote 56:--Ibid., vol. viii, 287.]

[Footnote 57:--Ibid., 208-215, 304-306.]

Leetown on the seventh and that at Elkhorn Tavern[58] on the eighth.
At Leetown, Pike's Cherokee contingent[59] played what he, in somewhat
quixotic fashion, perhaps, chose to regard as a very important part.
The Indians, then as always, were chiefly pony-mounted, "entirely
undisciplined," as the term discipline is usually understood,
and "armed very indifferently with common rifles and ordinary
shot-guns."[60] The ponies, in the end, proved fleet of foot, as
was to have been expected, and, at one stage of the game, had to
be tethered in the rear while their masters fought from the
vantage-ground of trees.[61] The Indian's most effective work was
done, throughout, under cover of the woods. Indians, as Pike well
knew, could never be induced to face shells in the open. It was he who
advised their climbing the trees and he did it without discounting, in
the slightest, their innate bravery.[62] There came a time, too, when
he gave countenance to another of their