.MTAwMA.NjUzMzY

of the district with the view of selecting a location for a new military post, having learned from the records of my office that an appropriation had been made for that purpose more than a year before and the post ordered to be built, but I could find no evidence that any previous commander had taken interest enough in the matter to go out and examine the country. Col. Leavenworth warned me against going without taking at least two Regiments of Troops and a Battery of Artillery, that if I went with a smaller force I would certainly be killed and my command destroyed, notwithstanding this warning and without waiting for orders I left Ft. Gibson on the first of June with a detachment of ten men, and upon arrival at Ft. Arbuckle,organized a force of about 200 Cavalry and 30 Infantry and proceeded west exploring the country thouroughly beyond the north fork of Red River, passing around the Witchita mountains and returning via Ft. Cobb and the valley in the Washita to Arbuckle, without meeting a hostile Indian and thence to Ft. Gibson in a north easterly direction, without regard to roads, arriving at the latter point on the 13th of July - In my official report of this expedition to Department HdQrs daled July 14 - 1868, I stated the following facts in regard to Indian affairs at that time.

"The valley of the Washita river from a point five miles below Ft. Cobb, to some distance this side of the Chickasaw line is a wide and apparently fertile, but has no good water in it, it is in that section that Col. Leavenworth established his agency for the Comanche and Kiowa tribes and Major Shanklin, agent for two affiliated bands, has also gathered his Indians there. The Witchitas, Wacoes, To-woc-caroes, Kee-Chics, Caddos, and Au-a-dagh-cap. Col. Leavenworth's agency seems very injudiciously located in the brush on a hill-side, five miles south of the Washita with not water enough near him for drinking purposes of the people alone and where, if the Indians settle around him as is intended, they must drive their stock five miles to water. This agency too, instead of being west or south-west of the section occupied by the reserve Indians, Witchitas and affiliated bands (namely within the boundaries of the Kiowa and Comanche reserve,) as defined in the treaty of 1867 is in their midst. Major Shanklin's agency being still farther up to the Washita, I believe that this location of their agency was the first cause of the discontent among Comanches and Kiowas, their want of confidence in their agent Leavenworth and his uncertain, vacillating conduct towards them, together with the failure on the part of the contractors to furnish and of the agents to deliver the annuities and the promised supplies, increased the disaffection and finally