The Bureau of Indian Affairs ... has been organized.... So far this Bureau has found but little to do. The necessity for the extension of the military arm of the Government toward the frontier, and the attitude of Arkansas, without the Confederacy, have contributed to circumscribe its action. But this branch of the public service doubtless will now grow in importance in consequence of the early probable accession of Arkansas to the Confederacy; of the friendly sentiments of the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, and other tribes west of Arkansas toward this Government; of our difficulties with the tribes on the Texas frontier; of our hostilities with the United States, and of our probable future relations with the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico.--Extract from the Report of Secretary Walker to President Davis, April 27, 1861 [_Official Records_, fourth ser., vol. i, 248]. [210] Davis would have preferred to have had Toombs for secretary of the treasury [Rhodes, _History of the United States_, vol. iii, 295, _note_ 7]. [211] _Journal_, vol. i, 105. [212] Both Pike and Toombs reached in time the thirty-second degree, or Scottish Rite. Note Pike's glowing tribute to Toombs, quoted in Richardson, _Messages and Papers of the Confederacy_, vol. ii, 142. [213] _Journal_, vol. i, 205. [214] --_Ibid._, 225. [215] Just what particular sets of resolutions those were I have no means of knowing. The most important set of Chickasaw resolutions, those issued under date of May 25, 1861 [_Official Records_, first ser., vol. iii, 585-587] had not yet been passed. The Choctaw resolutions presented may have been and very probably were those of February 7, 1861 [_ibid._]. [216] On the twenty-first of May, President Davis approved "An Act for the protection of the Indian Tribes" [_Journal_, 263], it having gone through its various stages of amendment and having passed Congress, May seventeenth [_ibid._, 244]. Adjutant-general G. W. Andrews reports, November 4, 1912, that nothing additional concerning the text of this law is to be found in the Confederate archives. [217] _Journal_, vol. i, 244. [218] Governor Clark of Texas, also, at this time displayed great interest in the matter. On the fifteenth of May, he wrote to President Davis that he was constituting James E. Harrison, a man thoroughly conversant with the whole subject, "the duly accredited agent of Texas to convey" the Report of April 23, 1861 to Richmond [_Official Records_, fourth ser., vol. i, 322]. [219] See letter from Pearce to President Davis, May 13, 1861 [_ibid._, first ser., vol. iii, 576]. [220] _Official Records_, fourth ser., vol. i, 572-574. [221] Pike was appointed under authority of a resolution passed by Congress, March 5, 1861. See Message of President Davis, December 12, 1861 [_ibid._, fourth ser., vol. i, 785].