Major Clark being thus placed in charge of the prisoners for the purpose of emigrating them, at once informed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, that claims were "made for about seventy of the Seminole negroes, and the courts here have issued their warrants to take them. The United States District Attorney has been consulted. He gives it as his opinion, that the Sheriff must be allowed to serve the process. It appears they are claims from Georgia, purchased from _Creek Indians_. No movement of the Indians or negroes can be made at present. The Indians are almost in a state of mutiny." This state of feeling arose from these attempts again to separate the Indians and negroes. Many of them were intermarried: they had been separated; their families broken up, but were now reunited, and they determined to die rather than be again separated. The Exiles had also fought boldly beside the Indians; they had encountered dangers together, and had become attached to each other; and soon as the subject of surrendering the Exiles to bondage was named, the Indians became enraged, threatening violence and death to those who should attempt again to separate them from the Exiles. The claimants mentioned by Major Clark, were from _Georgia_. The pirates who robbed E-con-chattimico and Walker of their slaves and seized the Exiles resident with those chiefs, as stated in a former chapter, were from Georgia. Watson, the more dignified dealer in human flesh, and acting in accordance with the advice of the Secretary of War, was also from Georgia; and all these claims were said to be derived from Creek Indians, who, as we have seen, professed to own all the Exiles who fled from Georgia after the close of the Revolution, and prior to 1802, together with their descendants. Information, respecting these difficulties of reënslaving the Exiles, reached the authorities at Washington, and created great embarrassment. The War Department appears never to have anticipated that negroes, who were already prisoners of war, would find friends or means to awaken the sympathy of others. But it was clear that any litigation would make the public acquainted with the facts.