ROYCE. ] TREATY OF AUGUST 6, 1846. 329 
Ross and the command assigned to Colonel Drew.! After the conelu- 
sion of the treaty this regiment was also placed at the service of the 
Confederate States, and in December? following, in an address to them, 
Ross remarked that he had raised the regiment “ to act in concert with 
the troops of the Southern Confederacy.” 
These two regiments actively participated and co-operated in the mili- 
tary operations of the Confederates until after the battle of Pea Ridge, 
in which they were engaged.’ In the summer of 1862,‘ following this 
battle, Colonel Weir, of the United States Army, commanding a force 
partly composed of loyal Indians on the northern border of the Chero- 
kee country, sent a proposition to John Ross urging that the Cherokees 
should repudiate their treaty with the Confederacy and return to their 
former relations with the United States, offering at the same time a safe 
conduct to Ross and such of his leading counselors as he should des- 
ignate through the Union lines to Washington, where they could nego- 
tiate a new treaty with the authorities of the United States. This prop- 
osition was declined peremptorily by Ross, who declared that the 
Cherokees disdained an alliance with a people who had authorized and 
practiced the most monstrous barbarities in violation of the laws of 
war; that the Cherokees were bound to the Confederate States by the 
faith of treaty obligations and by a community of sentiment and inter- 
est; that they were born upon the soil of the South and would stand or 
fall with the States of the South.’ 
A CHEROKEE CONFEDERATE REGIMENT DESERTS TO THE UNITED STATES. 
Colonel Drew’s regiment of Cherokees had now been in the Confeder- 
ate service about ten months. During that period they had remained 
unpaid, were scantily clothed, and were generally uncared for, un- 
thanked, and their services unrecognized." When, therefore, Colonel 
Weir invaded the Cherokee country in July, 1862, and the power and 

' General Albert Pike in his letter of February 17, 1866, speaks of being escorted 
from Fort Gibson to Park Hill on his way to conclude the treaty of October 7, 1861, 
by eight or nine companies of Colonel Drew’s regiment, which had been previously 
raised as a home guard by order of the national council. 
2 This address (printed as document No.7, accomhpanying the letter of Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs to the President, June 15, 1866) bears date of December 19, 1862. 
This is an evident typographical error for 1861, because the address was in the nature of 
a censure upon the regiment for its defection on the eve of a battle with the forces of 
O-poth-le-yo-ho-lo, the loyal Creek leader. This battle occurred at Bushy or Bird 
Creek, December 9, 1861, and before the expiration of another year Ross had left the 
Cherokee country under the escort of Colonel Weir. 
3Greeley’s American Conflict, Vol. I, p. 32; also, Report of Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs, June 15, 1866, aud numerous other official documents. 
‘Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the President, June 15, 1866, p. 10, 
‘Letter of General Albert Pike, February 17, 1866; also letter of T. J. Mackey, 
June 4, 1366. 
® Letter of General Albert Pike, February 17, 1866. 
