Indian Refugees

Humbolt, Kansas, Thursday, Feb. 6, 1862. The regiment came in today. Emerson had a letter for me from father. It was cheering to a soldier boy’s heart.

Friday 7th. It has been a cold day. I am cook for our mess and I do not like it. Am not feeling well.

Saturday 8th. A colored man by name of Thomas began cooking for our mess.

Sunday 9th. The weather has been mild today. Chaplain Ayers preached for us in the evening. He is an old man and quite feeble and not at all fitted for position of chaplain.

Camp Hunter, Humbolt, Kansas, Monday, Feb. 10th. This is a town of about one hundred population. It is built upon a level prairie on the east side of the Neoshe River, about half a mile from the river. Our camp is between the town and the river. The bluff next to the river is about twenty five feet high, of perpendicular rocks. It is about one hundred yards from the foot of the rocks to the water. We get our cooking water from the river, using a ladder to get down. Above and below the camp the bluff is much lower, so a road is cut down, leading to a ford opposite our camp. There is a good deal of timber in the river bottom, which, opposite our camp and across the river, is quite wide.

Last night five of our men deserted. This morning Lt. Hughs with ten men was sent in one direction on search of them and Sergeant Thomas went west with nine men. I was one of them. We traveled over a prairie eighteen miles without a house and at one P.M. reached Belmont, a village of about twenty log houses, mostly deserted, where we got dinner, then marched twelve miles south to Fort Roe, on the Verdigrin River. There was a camp of six thousand Indians there. They had been driven from their lands in the Indian Territory by rebel Indians and Whites, and were under government protection at Ft. Roe. We stopped at the house of a white settler. There is timber along the river.