[1][2][3][4][5] The Union army was unprepared for the logistical challenges of trying to regain control of Indian Territory from the Confederate government after abandoning its forts there early in the Civil War.

[B][6]Colonel Frederick Salomon placed Weer under arrest and assumed command of the expedition and withdrew to meet up with the supply trains.

It had become feasible to resupply Union positions (e.g., Fort Gibson) in eastern Indian Territory by water instead of overland.

Previously, the Union could only supply its forces in Indian Territory by wagon train from Fort Scott, Kansas.

It had no military effect, and the monetary loss to the Union was soon dwarfed by the Confederate ambush of a very large wagon train at the Second Battle of Cabin Creek.

[4][5] A Confederate military force commanded by General Stand Watie,[D] ambushed a Union supply steamboat on the Arkansas River in Indian Territory.

The raid did not have an official military name; many years later, a publication by the Oklahoma Civil War Sesquicentennial referred to it as the "Pleasant Bluff Action.

Its cargo was primarily commissary goods and food for the Native American refugees who had recently returned from their exile in Kansas and Missouri, hoping to recover their homes and farms they had abandoned in Indian Territory.

[12] As the steamboat rounded a bend at Pleasant Bluff, located just below the mouth of the Canadian River near the present-day town of Tamaha in Haskell County, Oklahoma, a Confederate force of about 400 men,[1][15] commanded by Colonel Stand Watie, opened fire with cannon and small arms.

[13] Cook wanted to hold off the Confederates until Union reinforcements arrived, but he saw the ship's captain and the sergeant sailing the steamboat's yawl across the river toward the enemy position.

Meanwhile, Watie's men boarded the abandoned steamboat and managed to tow it to a sandbar on the south side of the river.

[15] According to another account the cargo included a load of men's dress clothing, with top hats, dinner jackets with tails, fancy trousers and spats.

Later that day, Colonel John Ritchie and 200 men from the 2nd Regiment of the Indian Home Guard arrived from the Union camp and began to fire on the Confederates.

[10] The raid did not have an official military name; many years later, a publication by the Oklahoma Civil War Sesquicentennial referred to it as the "Pleasant Bluff Action.