Every battle and every treaty had ended in a further spoliation of the "hunting grounds" of his people. He was now to end his career as he began, and consistently pursued it, in stern resistance to his hereditary enemies. He calculated that he could put into the field about 1,500 reliable, well-armed warriors, who would be more than a match for the Indians who had entered into the Confederate service. If the white Confederates came to their assistance, he could make an orderly retreat into Kansas, where he hoped to receive help from Union troops, if they should not have advanced before then. Col. Douglas H. Cooper was sent against him, and at first tried diplomacy, but the wily old Hopoeithleyohola had seen the results of too many conferences, and refused to be drawn into one. Cooper then assembled a force of 1,400 men, consisting of some companies of white Texas cavalry and the Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole regiments, under their War Chiefs, D. N. Mcintosh and John Jumper, and moved out to attack Hopoeithleyohola, who beat them back with considerable loss. The advance of Gen. Fremont called for the concentration of every available man to oppose him, so Hopoeithleyohola was given a few weeks' respite. As soon, however, as the Union army retreated to Rolla and Sedalia, Col. Cooper resumed his operations against Hopoeithleyohola, who at Chusto-Talasah, Dec. 9, inflicted such a severe defeat upon him that Cooper retreated in a crippled condition to Fort Gibson. There Col. James Mcintosh, commanding the Confederate forces at Van Buren, Ark., went to his assistance with some 1,600 mounted Texans and Arkansans, and the combined force closed in upon the Union Indians at Shoal Greek. 284 Hopoeithleyohola and his Lieutenant, Haleck-Tustenugge, handled their men with the greatest skill and courage in an obstinate battle, but after four hours of resistance the overpowered Union Indians were driven, pursued by Stand Waitie's murderous half-breeds, who took no men and but few women and children prisoners. Back over the wide, shelterless prairie, bitten by the cruel cold and pelted by the storms of an unusually severe Midwinter, Hopoeithleyohola led his defeated band to a refuge in far-away Kansas. The weather was so severe that Col. Cooper reports some his men as frozen to death as they rode along, but the scent of blood was in the half-breed Stand Waitie's nostrils, and he pressed onward remorselessly. More than 1,000 men, women and children of Hopoeithleyohola's band left their homes to whiten and mark the dismal trail, and the aged Chief himself died shortly after reaching Fort Scott, where he was buried with all the honors of war.