Preliminary steps such as these led naturally to a comprehension of the need for a Bureau of Indian Affairs[204] and, on the twelfth of March, President Davis recommended[205] that one be organized and a commissioner of Indian affairs appointed. His recommendations were acted upon without delay and a law[206] in conformity with them passed. This happened on the fifteenth of March and on the day following, the last of the session, Davis nominated David Hubbard,[207] ex-commissioner[208] from Alabama to Arkansas, for the Indian portfolio. For some time, however, Hubbard had little to do.[209] It is wise therefore to leave him for a while and resume the examination of congressional work. The journal entries through February and March show that the Provisional Congress had, not infrequently, Indian matters placed before it and, at times presumably, communications direct from the tribes. On the fourth of March, Robert Toombs, himself on the Finance Committee and at the same time Secretary of State,[210] offered the following resolution:[211] _Resolved_, That the President be, and he is hereby authorized to send a suitable person as special agent of this Government to the Indian tribes west of the State of Arkansas. Whether this was called forth by the investigations of the Committee on Indian Affairs under the Chilton resolution of the twenty-first of February or whether it grew out of a correspondence between Toombs and Albert Pike does not appear. Toombs and Pike were friends, brother Masons[212] in fact, and then or soon afterwards in intimate correspondence on the subject of Indian relations. The resolution passed, but there the matter seems to have rested for a time. On the tenth of May, William B. Ochiltree proposed[213] that the Committee on Indian Affairs consider the condition of Reserve Indians in Texas; and, on the fifteenth, a most important measure was introduced[214] in the shape of a bill, reported by Keitt from the Committee on Indian Affairs, "for the protection of certain Indian tribes." This opened up the whole subject of prospective relations with the great tribes of Indian Territory and, taken in connection with the provision for a special commissioner, was fruitful of great results.