After the treaties were signed, I presented Colonel Drew's Regiment a flag, and the chief in a speech exhorted them to be true to it: and afterwards, _at his request, I wrote the Cherokee Declaration of Independence_ which is printed with the Memorial of the Southern Cherokees. I no more doubted, then, that Mr. Ross' whole heart was with the South, than that mine was. _Even in May he said to General McCulloch and myself, that if Northern troops invaded the Cherokee Country, he would head the Cherokees and drive them back._ "_I have borne arms_" he said, "_and though I am old I can do it again_." At the time of the treaty there were about nine hundred Cherokees of Colonel Drew's Regiment encamped near, and fed by me, and Colonel Watie, who had almost abandoned the idea of raising a regiment, had a small body of men, not more, I think, than eighty or ninety, at Tahlequah. When the flag was presented, Col. Watie was present, and after the ceremony the chief shook hands with him and expressed his warm desire for union and harmony in the Nation. The gentlemen whom I had invited to meet me in June at the Creek Agency did not do so. They were afraid of being murdered, they said, if they openly sided with the South. In October they censured me for treating with Mr. Ross, and were in an ill humour, saying that the regiment was raised in order to be used to oppress _them_. The same day that the Cherokee Treaty was signed, the Osages, Quapaws, Shawnees and Senecas signed treaties, and the next day they had a talk with Mr. Ross at his residence, smoked the great pipe and renewed their alliance, being urged by him to be true to the Confederate States. I protest that I believed Mr. John Ross, at this time and for long after, to be as sincerely devoted to the Confederacy as I myself was. He was frank, cheerful, earnest, and evidently believed that the independence of the Confederate States was an accomplished fact. I should dishonour him if I believed that he then dreamed of abandoning the Confederacy or turning the arms of the Cherokees against us in case of a reverse. Before I left the Cherokee Country, part of the Creeks, under Opoth-le-Yaholo left their homes, under arms and threatened hostilities. Mr. Ross, at my request, invited the old Chief to meet him, and urged him to unite with the Confederate States. Colonel Drew's regiment was ordered into the Creek Country, and afterwards, on the eve of the action at Bird Creek, abandoned Colonel Cooper, rather than fight against their neighbours. But after the action, the regiment was again reorganized. The men were eager to fight, they said, against the Yankees; but did not wish to fight their own brethren, the Creeks.