These two regiments actively participated and co-operated in the military operations of the Confederates until after the battle of Pea Ridge, in which they were engaged.[572] In the summer of 1862,[573] following this battle, Colonel Weir, of the United States Army, commanding a force partly composed of loyal Indians on the northern border of the Cherokee country, sent a proposition to John Ross urging that the Cherokees should repudiate their treaty with the Confederacy and return to their former relations with the United States, offering at the same time a safe conduct to Ross and such of his leading counselors as he should designate through the Union lines to Washington, where they could negotiate a new treaty with the authorities of the United States. This proposition was declined peremptorily by Ross, who declared that the Cherokees disdained an alliance with a people who had authorized and practiced the most monstrous barbarities in violation of the laws of war; that the Cherokees were bound to the Confederate States by the faith of treaty obligations and by a community of sentiment and interest; that they were born upon the soil of the South and would stand or fall with the States of the South.[574] A CHEROKEE CONFEDERATE REGIMENT DESERTS TO THE UNITED STATES. Colonel Drew's regiment of Cherokees had now been in the Confederate service about ten months. During that period they had remained unpaid, were scantily clothed, and were generally uncared for, unthanked, and their services unrecognized.[575] When, therefore, Colonel Weir invaded the Cherokee country in July, 1862, and the power and prestige of the Confederacy seemed, for the time being, to have become less potent in that region, their troops having been withdrawn to other localities, these discontented and unfed Cherokee soldiers found themselves in a condition ripe for revolt. Almost _en masse_, they abandoned the Confederate service and enlisted in that of the United States.