Organization of the First Expedition        121
Weer, therefore, went on ahead to the Osage Catholic Mission and ordered the Fort Scott troops to meet him there. His purpose was to promote the enlistment of the Osages, who were now abandoning the Confederate cause.301 He would then go forward and join Double-day, whom he had instructed to clear the way.302
Weer's plans were one thing, his embarrassments, another. Before the middle of June he was back again at Leroy,303 having left Salomon and Doubleday30* at Baxter Springs on the west side of Spring River in the Neutral Lands, the former in command. Weer hoped by his presence at Leroy to hurry the Indians along; for it was high time the expedition was started and he intended to start it, notwithstanding that many officers were absent from their posts and the men of the Second Indian Regiment not yet mustered in. It was absolutely necessary, if anything were going to be done with Indian aid, to get the braves away from under the influence of their chiefs, who were bent upon delay and determent. By the sixteenth he had the warriors all ready at Humboldt,305 their bullet-proof medicine taken, their grand war dance indulged in. By the twenty-first, the final packing up began,306 and it was not long thereafter before the Indian Expedition, after having experienced so many vicissitudes, had definitely materialized and was on its way south. Accompanying Weer were the Reverend Evan Jones, entrusted with
s-»1,01Weer to Moonlight, June 13, 1863.
802 Weer to Doubleday, June 6, 1862.
803 Weer to Moonlight, June 13, 1862.
4 On the twentieth, General Brown requested Salomon to send Double-day to southwest Missouri [Official Records, vol. xiii, 440] and Salomon so tar complied with the request as to post some Companies of Doubleday's regiment, under Lieutenant-colonel Ratliff,  at Neosho  [ibid., 445, 459].
800-Ibid., 434.
*oe — Ibid., 441.