By no means all the Indians accepted the confederate control. When the Indian Territory forts--Gibson, Arbuckle, Washita, and Cobb--fell into the hands of the South, loyal Indians left their homes and sought protection within the United States lines. Almost the only way to fight a war in which a population is generally divided, is by means of depopulation and concentration. Along the Verdigris River, in southeast Kansas, these Indian refugees settled in 1861 and 1862, to the number of 6000. Here the Indian Commissioner fed them as best he could, and organized them to fight when that was possible. With the return of federal success in the occupation of Fort Smith and western Arkansas during the next two years, the natives began to return to their homes. But the relation of their tribes to the United States was tainted. The compulsory cession of their western lands which came at the close of the conflict belongs to a later chapter and the beginnings of Oklahoma. Here, as elsewhere, the condition of the tribes was permanently changed. The great plains and the Far West were only the outskirts of the Civil War. At no time did they shape its course, for the Civil War was, from their point of view, only an incidental sectional contest in the East, and merely an episode in the grander development of the United States. The way is opening ever wider for the historian who shall see in this material development and progress of civilization the central thread of American history, and in accordance with it, retail the story. But during the years of sectional strife the West was occasionally connected with the struggle, while toward their close it passed rapidly into a period in which it came to be the admitted centre of interest. The last stand of the Indians against the onrush of settlement is a warfare with an identity of its own. CHAPTER XV THE CHEYENNE WAR