Note (return) — X. NEGOTIATIONS WITH UNION INDIANS

policy. His conclusions were right, his premises, necessarily unrevealed, were false. Wattles became involved in the emigration movement, if he did not initiate it, and, subsequent to making his report upon the house-building, received a private communication from Dole, asking his opinion "of a plan for confederating the various Indian tribes, in Kansas and Nebraska, into one, and giving them a Territory and a Territorial Government with political privileges."642 This was in 1861, long before any scheme that Lane or Pomeroy had devised would have matured. Wattles started upon a tour of observation and inquiry among the Kansas tribes and discovered that, with few exceptions, they were all willing and even anxious to exchange their present homes for homes in Indian Territory. Some had already discussed the matter tentatively and on their own account with the Creeks and Cherokees. On his way east, after completing his investigations, Wattles stopped in New York and "consulted with our political friends" there "concerning this movement, and they not only gave it their approbation, but were anxious that this administration should have the credit of originating and carrying out so wise and so noble a scheme for civilizing and perpetuating the Indian race." Would Wattles and his friends have said the same had they been fully cognizant of the conditions under which the emigrant tribes had been placed in the West?