page_288 < previous page page_288 next page > Page 288 scouts out in all directions and with spies in the very camps of his foes, soon obtained an inkling of the Confederate plan and resolved to dispose of Cooper before Cabell could arrive from Arkansas.810 Cooper's position was on Elk Creek, not far from present Muskogee,811 and near Honey Springs on the seventeenth of July the two armies met, Blunt forcing the engagement, having made a night march in order to do it. The Indians of both sides812 were on hand, in force, the First and Second Home Guards, being dismounted as infantry and thus fighting for once as they had been mustered in. Of the Confederate, or Cooper, brigade Stand Watie, the ever reliable, commanded the First and Second Cherokee, D. N. McIntosh, the First and Second Creek, and Tandy Walker, the regiment of Choctaws and Chickasaws. The odds were all against Cooper from the start and, in ways that Steele had not specified, the material equipment proved itself inadequate indeed. Much of the ammunition was worthless.813 Nevertheless, Cooper stubbornly contested every inch of the ground and finally gave way only when large numbers of his Indians, knowing their guns to be absolutely useless to them, became disheartened and then demoralized. In confusion, they led the van in (footnote continued from previous page) ville, Ark., July 8, 1863, Confederate Records, p. 133; Steele to Blair, July 10, 1863, Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 917; same to same, July 13, 1863, ibid., 925]. 810 See Blunt's official report, dated July 26, 1863 [ibid., part i, 447-448]. 811 Anderson, Life of General Stand Watie, 21. 812 With respect to the number of white troops engaged on the Federal side there seems some discrepancy between Blunt's report [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 448] and Phisterer's statistics [Statistical Record, 145]. 813 See Cooper's report, dated August 12, 1863 [Official Records, vol. xxii, part i, 457-461]. The following references are to letters that substantiate, in whole or in part, what Cooper said in condemnation of the ammunition: Duval to Du Bose, dated Camp Prairie Springs, C. N., July 27, 1863 [Confederate Records, chap. 2, no. 268, p. 159]; Steele to Blair, dated Camp Imochiah, August 9, 1863 [ibid., 185-187; Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 961]. Â < previous page page_288 next page >