page_128 < previous page page_128 next page > Page 128 Hindman had assumed the command of the Trans-Mississippi Department.321 As an Arkansan, deeply moved by the misfortunes and distress of his native state, he had stepped into Van Dorn's place with alacrity, intent upon forcing everything within his reach to subserve the interests of the Confederate cause in that particular part of the southern world. To the Indians and to their rights, natural or acquired, he was as utterly indifferent as were most other American men and all too soon that fact became obvious, most obvious, indeed, to General Pike, the one person who had, for reasons best known to himself, made the Indian cause his own. General Hindman took formal command of the Trans-Mississippi Department at Little Rock, May 31. It was a critical moment and he was most critically placed; for he had not the sign of an army, Curtis's advance was only about thirty-five miles away, and Arkansas was yet, in the miserable plight in which Van Dorn had left her in charge of Brigadier-general J. S. Roane, it is true, but practically denuded of troops. Pike was at Fort McCulloch, and he had a force not wholly to be despised.322 It was to him, therefore, that Hindman 321Department seems to be the more proper word to use to designate Hindman's command, although District and Department are frequently used interchangeably in the records. In Hindman's time and in Holmes's, the Trans-Mississippi Department was not the same as the Trans-Mississippi District of Department No. 2 [See Thomas Jordan, Chief of Staff, to Hindman, July 17, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 855]. On the very date of Hindman's assignment, the boundaries of his command were defined as follows: "The boundary of the Trans-Mississippi Department will embrace the States of Missouri and Arkansas, including Indian Territory, the State of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, and the State of Texas." Ibid., 829. 322 Yet Hindman did, in a sense, despise it and, from the start, he showed a tendency to disparage Pike's abilities and efforts. On the nineteenth of June, he reported to Adjutant-general Cooper, among other things, that he had ordered Pike to establish his headquarters at Fort Gibson and added, "His force does not amount to much, but there is no earthly need of its (footnote continued on next page) Â < previous page page_128 next page >