August 14, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 14, 1863
Dear Mother:

Your favor with father's came to-day. It seems a long time between letters, I read them over and over. They are the second I have had since we came to this miserable town. The sallow faced natives here call it Arkansaw. I don't blame them. Any kind of a name is good enough for such a dismally flat sickly country. I have had a touch of chills twice the last week. Our Regiment has moved again nearer the river and nights when all is still I can hear the swash of the waves along the shore. There are a lot of boats passing day and night and all up the river boats are loaded with Grant's soldiers bound for the Tennessee and Potomac campaigns. It looks as if we are to hold this place for some time. Our duty being to stand provost guard on city patrols The most of the troops here a week ago have been ordered out to garrison Little Rock.

The war cloud that has been looming up in Arkansaw has about vanished. It looks as if the rebs cannot muster force enough to make a stand.

The darkies are bringing in lots of fruit and selling it to the soldiers. They buy it of their former masters and "tote" it down on their heads. I am eating sparingly of green fruit.

So father's contraband (negro) has left him so soon. Well, you remember what I told you about their tricks. Making them free has rattled them. They think they have nothing to do now but play the banjo and dance juba. They are a funny race and no mistake. I like to hear them laugh.

I am sorry that the corn crop is likely to fail. Perhaps the frost has not spoiled it all. What in the world can you do with the pigs? If it wasn't for the wolves you could turn them on the hills to eat acorns.

It gives me the blues that you are having such poor crops. And so Indian Charley and his band don't come back this summer as he used to with bear meat and venison. Well athat means better hunting this fall for you. But what has become of poor Charley and his family? I am so afraid he was killed in Minnesota last summer or he killed somebody himself, some white man, and has gone west with the rest of the Sioux. You know Mother, I can never forget Charley. He was always good to us when during the first years no whites lived near us and his band might have scalped us all and nobody would have known it for months after.

So Mr. Cripps got his rifle back from Indian Curley. That proves to my mind that Curley never was in the Minnesota massacre. If he had been he would never have showed up. It proves another thing. It proves that Indians are honest when they are dealing with honest people. It would have been a wicked thing if Cripps had shot Curley
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on suspicion that he had used his rifle shooting whites in Minnesota. It was to save his own life that he stayed away this long. He knew the whites were wild over the Sioux war and ready to shoot any red man on sight. I see by the paper you sent me, that every Sioux has been driven from Minnesota their home for generations. What's the matter with the white race? Why couldn't they live with the Indians around them as we have done all these years in peace and friendship?

You see mother I have nothing around here to write about of interest. I like better to talk about home matters.

Poor William Thomas of Mondovi is very low and they say he cannot live. What seems strange, the doctor says it is homesickness that is killing him. Dan Hadley and Obe Hilliard have just dropped in with a melon just to tease me. They know I can't eat such stuff. Dan says to remember him to the Gilmanton girls.

Good bye mother and father.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

P. S. -- I had sealed this letter, and have opened it to say that our Orderly has just notified me that I am on the list to go to Memphis day after to-morrow, to the General hospital. I