It is not the province of the Cherokees to determine the character of the conflict going on in the States. It is their duty to keep themselves, if possible, disentangled, and afford no grounds to either party to interfere with their rights. The obligations of every character, pecuniary and otherwise, which existed prior to the present state of affairs between the Cherokee Nation and the Government are equally valid now as then. If the Government owe us, I do not believe it will repudiate its debts. If States embraced in the Confederacy owe us, I do not believe they will repudiate their debts. I consider our annuity safe in any contingency. A comparison of Northern and Southern philanthropy, as illustrated in their dealings toward the Indians within their respective limits, would not affect the merits of the question now under consideration, which is simply one of duty under existing circumstances. I therefore pass it over, merely remarking that the "settled policy" of former years was a favorite policy with both sections when extended to the acquisition of Indian lands, and that but few Indians now press their feet upon the banks of either the Ohio or the Tennessee.... Judging from all the instructions that Secretary Walker sent out on Indian matters in May of 1861, it would seem that he had very much at heart the enlistment of the Indians and their actual participation in the war. Mention has already been made of how General McCulloch was told by Adjutant-general Cooper to add, if possible, two Indian regiments to his brigade and of how Walker had written Hubbard urging him to persuade the Indians to join forces and raising the number of Indian regiments desired from two to three. In a similar strain Walker wrote[237] to Douglas H. Cooper on the occasion of definitely asking him to give his services to the South. In all these letters no special stress was laid upon an intention to use the Indians as home guards exclusively. On the contrary, one might easily draw, from the letters, a quite opposite inference and conclude that the Indian troops, if raised, were to be used very generally and exactly as any other volunteers might be used. This is important in view of the stand, and a very positive one it was, that Albert Pike took some time afterwards. In his own letter[238] to Johnson of May 11, 1861, he does not specifically say that the Indian soldiers, whose mustering he has in contemplation, are not to be used outside of the Indian country; but he does insist that that country be occupied by them and by a certain number of white regiments--another important point as subsequent events will divulge.