Note (return) — XI. INDIAN TERRITORY IN 1863, JANUARY TO JUNE INCLUSIVE
Reading edition
Steele divined that the Federals would naturally make an early attempt to occupy in force the country north of the Arkansas River and beyond it to the southward in what had hitherto been a strictly Confederate stronghold. It was his intention to forestall them. The two Cherokee regiments constituted, for some little time, his best available troops and them he kept in almost constant motion.770 His great reliance, and well it might be, was upon Stand Watie, whom he had