... That the nations on the borders of this State (Arkansas) are anxious and desirous to be armed; that they can and will muster into the service 25,000 men; that they have immense supplies of beeves, sufficient to supply the meat for the whole Confederate service. All they ask is arms and enrollment. If within your power to forward their views with the President, it would be a great step in the right direction, and erect a more effectual barrier against the Kansas marauders than any force that could be sent against them, and thereby protect the northern boundary of both Arkansas and Louisiana. The reasons why every effort should be made to arm these people (now heart and soul with us) to defend themselves and us are so palpable, that I do not attempt to urge them upon you, but do solicit your attention, so far as is compatible with your high position, to this matter, to impress its importance on the President, and use your well-known influence to effect this much desirable result.... General McCulloch, in a letter[254] also of the twenty-eighth of May, more particularly specified the tribes that were friendly to the South, but he too mentioned some of them, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, as "anxious to join the Southern Confederacy." It should not be a matter of surprise then to find that on the fourteenth of June, George Hudson, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, acting in accordance with the will of the General Council, which had met four days before, publicly declared[255] the Choctaw Nation, "free and _independent_." The chief's proclamation was, in effect, a conscription act and provided for the enrollment, for military service in the interests of the Confederacy, of all competent males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. The General Council had authorized this and had further arranged for the appointment of commissioners "to negotiate a treaty of alliance and amity" with the Confederate States. Under such conditions, the work of Albert Pike must have seemed all plain sailing when once he was safely beyond the Cherokee limits; but his efforts,[256] vain though they were, to persuade that tribe into an alliance did not end[257] with the first recorded interview with Ross. He kept up his intercourse with the Ridge faction; but finally decided that as far as Ross and the nation as a whole were concerned it would be best to await the issue of events. It was only too apparent to all the southern agents and commissioners that Ross would never yield his opinion unless compelled thereto by one of three things or a combination of any or all of them. The three things were, pressure from within the tribe; some extraordinary display of Confederate strength that would presage ultimate success for southern arms; and encroachment by the Federals. It was the combination that eventually won the day. Pike, meanwhile, had passed on to the Creek country.