At Cane Hill, Confederate and Union forces came from contrasting but varied commands. In the Trans-Mississippi Army, Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman commanded four divisions, including John S. Marmaduke's Fourth Division, which drew cavalrymen from Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, among them Col. Joseph O. Shelby's Iron Brigade. Hindman's army suffered a severe shortage of supplies, leaving many men poorly clothed and equipped, and many Texans in Marmaduke's division were dismounted before the battle and did not fight. Even so, Marmaduke's Confederates conducted an effective fighting withdrawal from Cane Hill, saving their commissary train and bringing badly needed food to the Confederate army in the Arkansas River Valley. Opposing them was the First Division of the Army of the Frontier under Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt, part of a force organized by Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis under Brig. Gen. John Schofield. Known as the Kansas Division, Blunt's command included white troops from several states, Indian Home Guard units raised from Unionist American Indians, and the First and Second Kansas Colored Infantry Regiments, recruited largely from former slaves, though those two Kansas regiments were guarding supplies at Fort Scott during the battle.