All along the edge of the frontier, from Minnesota to the Rio Grande, were problems that drew the West into the movement of the Civil War. The situation was trying for both whites and Indians, but nowhere did the Indians suffer between the millstones as they did in the Indian Territory, where the Cherokee and Creeks, Choctaw and Chickasaw and Seminole, had been colonized in the years of creation of the Indian frontier. For a generation these nations had resided in comparative peace and advancing civilization, but they were undone by causes which they could not control. The confederacy was no sooner organized than its commissioners demanded of the tribes colonized west of Arkansas their allegiance and support, professing to have inherited all the rights and obligations of the United States. To the Indian leaders, half civilized and better, this demand raised difficulties which would have been a strain on any diplomacy. If they remained loyal to the United States, the confederate forces, adjacent in Arkansas and Texas, and already coveting their lands, would cut them to pieces. If they adhered to the confederacy and the latter lost, they might anticipate the resentment of the United States. Yet they were too weak to stand alone and were forced to go one way or other. The resulting policy was temporizing and brought to them a large measure of punishment from both sides, and the heavy subsequent wrath of the United States. John Ross, principal chief in the Cherokee nation, tried to maintain his neutrality at the commencement of the conflict, but the fiction of Indian nationality was too slight for his effort to be successful. During the spring and summer of 1861 he struggled against the confederate control to which he succumbed by August, when confederate troops had overrun most of Indian Territory, and disloyal Indian agents had surrendered United States property to the enemy. The war which followed resembled the guerrilla conflicts of Kansas, with the addition of the Indian element.