To the Chiefs and People of the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws…

[Fort McCulloch, Indian Territory, 31 July 1862]. Broadside, 12” x 9.5”, title above text in two columns, dated and signed in type.

An exceptionally rare and controversial broadside issued by Confederate General Albert Pike, informing the tribes of Indian Territory of his resignation as Commander of the Territory and providing his justification for doing so, the publication of which contributed to calls for his arrest.

A lawyer, military commander, and author, Albert Pike (1809-1891) was born in Boston and educated in the public schools of Byfield and Newburyport, Mass., as well as an academy in Framingham, Mass. From 1824 to 1831, Pike devoted himself to teaching and private study, acquiring a deep conversance with the classics and developing literary ambitions. A man of versatile intelligence and great energy, he left New England to seek opportunity elsewhere, heading west in March of 1831 in the company of two friends. Later that year he arrived in St. Louis, where he joined a trading party organized by Charles Bent, bound for Santa Fe, making the trek just ten years after the Santa Fe trail was opened and just a few months after Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanches along the same route. Some time after his arrival in Santa Fe, he joined an expedition to the Staked Plains. Pike’s accounts of his travels appeared in his Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country (1834) and in the Boston Pearl and Literary Gazette and the Arkansas Advocate.

Following his western adventures, Pike settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, becoming editor and later the sole owner of the Arkansas Advocate, then entering the practice of law and achieving distinction as one of the most able lawyers in the southwest. Pike was a Whig and subsequently a leading member of the Know-Nothing party. During the Mexican War he raised and commanded a cavalry troop, subsequently becoming embroiled in a controversy resulting from his criticism of the conduct of regiment commander Col. Archibald Yell and Lieutenant-Colonel John Selden Roane, the affair ending in a duel between Pike and Roane (both men fired two shots and both walked away unscathed). This conflict set the tone for the balance of Pike’s military career.

Although hailing from Massachusetts and opposed to secession except as a last resort, Pike nevertheless sided with the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out. In the summer of 1861 he was appointed commissioner to treat with the native people west of Arkansas and in November was appointed commander of the department of Indian Territory. Although Pike maintained that it was his understanding that the men he recruited from the native population were to be used strictly for the defense of their territory, they were nevertheless engaged in the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in which they performed poorly, and some committed atrocities, for which Pike was blamed. Viewing his command as independent, and the safety of the native people as his responsibility, Pike came into conflict with General Thomas C. Hindman, the commander of the Trans-Mississippi district, and aired his grievances in a circular entitled Letter to the President of the Confederate States (3 July 1862). The result was a withering censure from Jefferson Davis, and Pike submitted a letter of resignation on 12 July 1862, although it was not accepted until November.

In the broadside offered here, issued on July 31st, Pike announces his resignation to his Native American charges and outlines the circumstances leading to it, noting that he was prompted to resign by an order to go to “Fort Smith and North-Western Arkansas, there to remain and organize troops, and defend that country, instead of remaining in your country where the President has placed me; a duty which would have kept me out of your country for months.” He observes that while President Davis gave him all that he asked for in the way of white troops, arms, and supplies, these were subsequently taken by others:

General Van Dorn, in March, took from me, at Fort Smith and Little Rock, two regiments of my infantry, six of my cannon, all my cannon powder, and many rifles; and let his soldiers take nearly all the coats, pantaloons, shirts, socks, and shoes I had procured for you...By other orders all the rest of my infantry, and all the artillery except one company with six guns have been taken away; and that company with its six guns has been ordered to Fort Smith, with the last armed man from Arkansas. If I had gone out of your country as it was demanded I should, into North-Western Arkansas...your country and your welfare could no longer have been my first object...I should have had to give what little ammunition remains, to the troops in that State, and to take all the moneys I had sent to be paid to you, and all that are on their way here for you, to feed, supply, and pay the white troops under me in North-Western Arkansas; an act of injustice to you which no power on earth could make me do; and for this reason I resigned. Some other person must be found to do that great wrong.

Pike goes on to provide assurances that all will be set right, noting that he has resigned “in order to go to Richmond and make known to the President the manner in which you have been treated.” He vows to do all in his power to see that they receive the money that is due them and reminds them that following the first treaty he made with them, on 10 July 1861, “peace, quiet and prosperity” prevailed for a year. In the latter portion of this address, Pike appeals to the native people to remain faithful to the Confederacy:

I regret to hear that some of the Cherokees have been induced to join the plundering bands that have lately come down from Kansas. I wonder that they do not know and see that when the war ends, if the north should have obtained possession of Indian country, it will never forgive you for having made treaties with us. They will use fair words now; but as soon as they have the power, they will declare that you have forfeited your lands and the moneys due you by them, by making these treaties, and will take your lands, divide them among their soldiers, declare the debts they owe you confiscated, and put an end to your national existence.

In spite of Pike’s efforts to shore up the allegiance of the Cherokees and others, the overall character of this address resulted in an order for his arrest issued by Col. Douglas H. Cooper, who wrote President Davis that Pike was “either insane or untrue to the south.” The arrest, however, never came about and Pike was given leave to return home. He nevertheless continued to denounce his superiors, publishing Charges and Specifications Preferred August 23, 1862, by Brigadier General Albert Pike, against Major Thomas C. Hindman (1863). Upon the expiration of his leave he attempted to resume his command of Indian Territory, but Hindman had him arrested and he was imprisoned for a time in Warren, Texas.

OCLC records just one copy, at New York Historical Society. Parrish & Willingham add copies at Yale, Tulane, and the Gilcrease Museum. The Yale copy was purchased for $2000 by Peter Decker for Frederick Beinecke in the Streeter sale. A facsimile edition was published in an edition of 400 copies for the friends of the Yale Collection of Western Americana in 1980.

A rare and fascinating broadside, of both Confederate and western interest.

REFERENCES: Streeter 570; Parrish & Willingham. Confederate Imprints, 5727; Gilcrease-Hargrett, p. 319: “A paper of superlative interest and importance”; Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography (NY, 1934), Vol. XIV, pp. 593-95.

CONDITION: Very good, old manuscript ink squiggle at lower left of first column of text, expert repair to partial separation along old horizontal fold, reinforced on verso with Japanese tissue.