"In this extract which is indorsed by General Howard as fully reliable, Major Clark, after premising that the freedmen subject to the operations of the treaty of 1866 number about 4,500, and that the Choctaws and Chickasaws, having been almost without exception disloyal to the Government during the rebellion, could hardly be expected to regard the rights of their former slaves with favor, cites the third article of the treaty, and states that at the time of the convention or treaty of Fort Smith, which was made the basis of this treaty, four months after the close of the war, nearly one-half of the colored people who ought to receive the benefits of its provisions were refugees from the Territory, the women and children having fled to the North to escape persecution on account of their loyalty, or having been taken to Texas by their masters to prevent them from becoming free, and the men not yet having been discharged from the Union Army, so that the only loyal people in the Territory were excluded from any participation in the benefits of the treaty."