for orders as to what he should do in the event of an emergency and had received none. The circumstance of his surrender and the resulting triumph of the secessionist element could not fail to have its effect upon the watchful Indians to whom the exhibition of present power was everything. That the Texan secessionists fully appreciated the strategic position of the Indian nations and the absolute necessity of making some sort of terms with them was brought out by the action of the convention at its first session. An ordinance was passed "to secure the friendship and co-operation of the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations of Indians;" and three men, James E. Harrison, James Bourland, and Charles A. Hamilton, were appointed as commissioners[128] "to proceed to said nations and invite their prompt co-operation in the formation of a Southern Confederacy."[129] Now before following these men in the execution of their mission, it may be advisable, for breadth of view, to illustrate how Texas still further made Indian relations an issue most prominent in all the earlier stages of her secession movement; but at the very outset it must be admitted that, in so doing, she differentiated carefully between the civilized and the uncivilized tribes. With the one group she was ready to seek an alliance, offensive and defensive, but with the other to wage a relentless, exterminating war. The failure of the United States central government to protect her against the aggressions and the atrocities so-called of the wild tribes was cited by her as one principal justification for withdrawal from the Union,[130] her obvious purpose being to gain thereby the adherence of the northern counties, non-slaveholding but frontier. Almost conversely, on the other hand, Governor Houston gave as one good and sufficient reason for not withdrawing from the Union, the fear that should the Union be dissolved the wild tribes, who were now, in a measure, restrained from committing depredations and enormities by the very nature of their treaty guaranties, would be literally let loose upon Texas.[131] As far as the civilized tribes were concerned, however, all were of one mind and that took the form of the conviction that so great was the necessity of gaining and holding the confidence of the Indians, that Texas must not procrastinate in joining her fortunes with those of her sister states in the Confederacy.[132] James E. Harrison and his colleagues started out upon the performance of the duties assigned them, February 27, 1861. Their report[133] of operations and of observations being somewhat difficult of access and its contents not easily summarized, is herewith appended. Its fullness of detail is especially to be commended.