\ 
 
RED EAGLE S LEAP. 
 
FAMOUS AMERICAN INDIANS. 
 
 RED EAGLE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 WARS WITH THE CREEK INDIANS 
 OF ALABAMA. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, 
 
 751 BROADWAY. 
 
\ d- f 
 
 COPYRIGHT B? 
 
 DODD, MEAD AlsfD COMPANY* 
 1878. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A WORK of this kind necessarily makes no pre 
 tension to originality in its materials ; but while 
 all that is here related is to be found in books, 
 there is no one book devoted exclusively to the 
 history of the Creek war or to the life of William 
 Weatherford, the Red Eagle. The materials here 
 used have been gathered from many sources 
 some of them from books which only incidentally 
 mention the matters here treated, touching them 
 as a part of larger subjects, and many of them 
 from books which have been long out of print, 
 and are therefore inaccessible to readers gen 
 erally. 
 
 The author has made frequent acknowledg 
 ments, in his text, of his obligations to the writ 
 ers from whose works he has drawn information 
 upon various subjects. By way of further ac 
 knowledgment, and for the information of read 
 ers who may be tempted to enlarge their reading 
 in the interesting history of the South-west, he 
 appends the following list of the principal books 
 
 M116221 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 that have been consulted in the preparation of 
 
 this volume : 
 
 Parton s " Life of Andrew Jackson." 
 
 Eaton s " Life of Andrew Jackson." 
 
 Pickett s " History of Alabama." 
 
 Drake s " Book of the Indians." 
 
 McAfee s " History of the Late War in the 
 
 Western Country." 
 
 Claiborne s " Notes on the War in the South." 
 Meek s " Romantic Passages in South-western 
 
 History." 
 
 " Indian Affairs, American State Papers." 
 Kendall s " Life of Jackson." 
 Waldo s " Life of Jackson." 
 Russell s " History of the Late War." 
 Brackenridgc s " History of the Late War." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Showing, by way of Introduction, how Red 
 Eagle happened to be a Man of Consequence 
 in History, . .... 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Red Eagle s People, . 2 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Red Eagle s Birth and Boyhood, .... 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Beginning of Trouble, 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Red Eagle as an Advocate of War The Civil 
 War in the Creek Nation, . . . 59 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Battle of Burnt Corn, . . . . .71 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Red Eagle s Attempt to abandon his Party, . .78 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Claiborne and Red Eagle, . ... 84 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Red Eagle before Fort Mims, . . - 95 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Massacre at Fort Minis, . .103 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Romantic Incidents of the Fort Mims Affair, . 114 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Dog Charge at Fort Sinquefield and Affairs 
 on the Peninsula, 120 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pushmatahaw and his Warriors, . . . .132 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Jackson is helped into his Saddle, . . .136 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The March into the Enemy s Country, . . 146 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Battle of Tallushatchee, 161 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Battle of Talladega, 167 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 General Cocke s Conduct and its Consequences, 180 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Canoe Fight, 19* 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Advance of the Georgians The Battle of 
 Autosse 20 7 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 How Claiborne executed his Orders The Battle 
 of the Holy Ground Red Eagle s Famous 
 Leap, . -214 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 I low Jackson lost his Army, .... 230 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 A New Plan of the Mutineers, .... 243 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Jackson s Second Battle with his own Men, . 254 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Jackson dismisses his Volunteers without a Bene 
 diction, 259 
 
CONTENTS, 9 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI, 
 
 PAGB 
 
 How Jackson lost the rest of his Army, . . 267 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIL 
 
 Battles of Emuckfau and Enotachopco How 
 the Creeks "whipped Captain Jackson," . 282 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 How Red Eagle "whipped Captain Floyd" 
 The Battle of Calebee Creek, . . . .303 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Red Eagle s Strategy, ...... 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Jackson with an Army at last, . . . . 314 
 
I0 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Great Battle of the War, . 3 l8 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Red Eagle s Surrender, . . 3 2 9 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 Red Eagle after the War, ... - 34 
 
RED EAGLE 
 
 WARS WITH THE CREEK INDIANS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 SHOWING, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION, HOW 
 RED EAGLE HAPPENED TO BE A MAN OF 
 CONSEQUENCE IN HISTORY. 
 
 IT is a long journey from the region round 
 about the great lakes, where Tecumseh lived, to 
 the shores of the Alabama and the Tombigbee 
 rivers, even in these days of railroads and steam 
 boats ; and it was a much longer journey when 
 Tecumseh was a terror to the border and an 
 enemy whom the United States had good rea 
 son to fear. The distance between Tecumseh s 
 home and that of Red Eagle is greater than that 
 which separates Berlin from Paris or Vienna ; 
 and when Tecumseh lived there were no means 
 of communication between the Indians of the 
 North-west and those of the South, except by 
 long, dangerous, and painful journeys on foot. 
 
 A man of smaller intellectual mould than Te 
 cumseh would not have dreamed of the possi 
 bility of establishing relations with people so 
 distant as the Creeks were from the tribes of the 
 North-west. But Tecumseh had all the qualities 
 
RED EAGLE. 
 
 .qf k : man <pf;genjiu, the chief of which are breadth 
 and comprehensiveness of view and daring bold 
 ness of conception. The great northern chieftain 
 did many deeds in his day by which he fairly 
 won the reputation he had for the possession of 
 genius, both as a soldier and as a statesman ; but 
 nothing in his history so certainly proves his title 
 to rank among really great men as his boldness 
 and brilliancy in planning the formation of a 
 great confederacy of the tribes, which extended 
 in a chain from the lakes on the north to the Gulf 
 of Mexico on the south. He was wise enough 
 to learn of his foes. He saw that their strength 
 lay in their union ; that it was by " joining all 
 their camp-fires," as he phrased it, that they 
 made themselves irresistible ; and as he saw with 
 consternation that the great tide of white men 
 was steadily advancing westward, he understood, 
 as few men of his race were capable of doing, 
 that there was but one possible way for the red 
 men to withstand the ever-encroaching stream. 
 Separately the tribes were powerless, because 
 separately they could be beaten one by one. 
 Troops who were engaged in reducing an Illinois 
 tribe during one month could be sent the next to 
 oppose another tribe in Mississippi or Alabama. 
 Thus the secret of the white men s success, 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. 15 
 
 Tecumseh saw, lay in two facts : first, that the 
 whites were united, working together for a com 
 mon purpose, and helping each other in turn ; 
 and, second, that the whites used the same troops 
 over and over again to fight the separately acting 
 tribes. 
 
 Seeing all this and understanding it, Tecumseh 
 conceived his great plan a plan equally great, 
 whether we regard it as a stroke of statesman 
 ship or a brilliant scheme of military combina 
 tion. He determined, as he said, to build a dam 
 against the stream. He undertook to form a 
 confederacy of all the tribes from north to south, 
 to teach them to act together, and to oppose the 
 advance of the white men by uniting that power 
 which they were wasting separately. 
 
 It was in execution of this plan that Tecumseh 
 made that journey to the South in the year 1811 
 which, in combination with other causes to be 
 mentioned in their place, induced the Creeks of 
 Southern Alabama to abandon all that they had 
 gained of civilization, and to plunge first into a 
 war among themselves, and afterward into that 
 struggle with the white men which destroyed 
 their nation almost utterly. 
 
 In that war there was one man more conspicu 
 ous than any other more relentless, more dar- 
 
16 RED EAGLE. 
 
 ing, more desperate in his refusal to give or 
 to accept quarter, and at the same time more 
 brilliant in attack and defence, abler in counsel, 
 and having greater skill in the field than any of 
 his fellow-chiefs a man who fought Jackson, 
 Claiborne, Flournoy, Floyd, and Coffee, whose 
 troops, coming from different quarters of the 
 country, surrounded him on every side and out 
 numbered him on every field ; fighting them with 
 credit to his own skill and daring, and with no 
 little damage to these skilled enemies* a man of 
 whom Jackson said, " He is fit to command 
 armies." 
 
 This man was Red Eagle, or, in his native 
 Muscogee tongue, Lamochattee. 
 
 To the white men with whom he lived a great 
 part of his life, and to his enemies in war, he was 
 better known as William Weatherford ; and as 
 the historical accounts of the war in which he 
 won his renown were all written by white men, 
 because Red Eagle could not write, his white 
 name, Weatherford, is the one by which he is 
 generally known in books. His fame was won as 
 an Indian, however ; it was the Indian warrior 
 Red Eagle, not the half-breed planter Weather- 
 ford, who did the deeds which gave him a place 
 in American history ; and this neglect of his 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. \J 
 
 Indian name in all historical works which refer to 
 him is an example of the sarcasm of destiny. It 
 reminds one of the hero of whom Byron tells us, 
 who, falling- in battle covered with glory, lost his 
 only chance for fame by the blunder of a printer, 
 who misspelled his name in the gazette. We 
 have preferred to call the great commander of 
 the Creeks by his Indian name, Red Eagle, on 
 the title-page of this book, but in writing of him 
 it will be necessary frequently to use the name 
 Weatherford instead. 
 
 The story of the Creek war naturally follows 
 the life of Tecumseh, with which this series of In 
 dian biographies was introduced ; and indeed the 
 one story is necessary to the complete telling of 
 the other. It may be best told in the form of a 
 life of Red Eagle, who commanded on one side, 
 and whose genius for command alone made the 
 war an affair worth writing about ; but, un 
 luckily for the biographer, the materials for a 
 biography of Red Eagle, in the strict sense of 
 the word, are meagre and difficult to get at. 
 
 I hinted at the chief cause of this meagreness 
 and obscurity when I said, just now, that Red 
 Eagle could not write. I always thought, in 
 reading Caesar De Bello Gallico, that the Roman 
 commander had a great advantage over the poor 
 
1 8 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Gauls in his rather remarkable dexterity in the use 
 of the pen. We do not know how good or how 
 bad his handwriting was ; but whether he wrote 
 with perfect Spencerian precision or in a scrawl 
 as illegible as Mr. Greeley s, Caesar knew how 
 to tell his side of the story, and there was nobody 
 to tell the other side. Perhaps the tale would 
 read very differently if some clever Gaul had 
 been able to write an account of the war in classic 
 Latin for the school-boys of the nineteenth cen 
 tury to puzzle out with the aid of a dictionary. 
 So Red Eagle, if he had known how to write, 
 would probably have given us a view of the 
 things done in the Creek war which we do not 
 get from his enemies. 
 
 It is not merely in the military sense that the 
 word enemies is here used, but in the literal one 
 as well ; for very nearly all the information AVC 
 have about Red Eagle and his performances is 
 drawn from the writings and the spoken testi 
 mony of men who hated him with a degree of 
 violence of which one can scarcely conceive in 
 our time. These men wrote while boiling with 
 the passions of a war which seriously threatened 
 the existence of this American nation, and they 
 hated Red Eagle as one of the men who added 
 very greatly to the country s peril, and sorely 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. 19 
 
 taxed its resources when its resources were few 
 est. Their hatred was so violent that they could 
 not restrain its expression ; while they granted 
 to Red Eagle the possession of courage and abil 
 ity, they could not write of him without flying 
 into a passion and heaping hard names upon his 
 head. 
 
 One of them, in a grave treatise about the war, 
 scolded in this way about him : 
 
 " Among the first who entered into the views 
 of the British commissioners was the since cele 
 brated Weatherford, with whom it may not be 
 amiss to make the reader better acquainted at 
 this time. Weatherford was born in the Creek 
 nation. His father was an itinerant pedler, 
 sordid, treacherous, and revengeful ; his mother 
 a full-blooded savage of the tribe of the Semi- 
 noles. He. partook of the bad qualities of both 
 his parents, and engrafted on the stock he 
 inherited from others many that were peculiarly 
 his own. With avarice, treachery, and a thirst 
 for blood, he combines lust, gluttony, and a 
 devotion to every species of criminal carousal." 
 
 That, certainly, is as pretty a bit of angry vitu 
 peration as one hears from the lips of the worst 
 of scolds, and so wholly did the distinguished 
 author of the book from which it is taken lose his 
 
20 KED EAGLE. 
 
 temper, that he lost his discretion with it, and 
 forgot that so coarse and brutal a fellow as he 
 here declares Reel Eagle to have been a man so 
 wholly given over to debauchery is sure to show 
 in his face, his person, and his intellectual opera 
 tions the effects of his character, impulses, and 
 habits. In the very next paragraph this writer 
 tells us certain things about Red Eagle which 
 forbid us to believe that he was a drunkard, a de 
 based creature, a glutton, or a brute. He says : 
 
 " Fortune in her freaks sometimes gives to the 
 most profligate an elevation of mind which she 
 denies to men whose propensities are the most 
 virtuous. On Weatherford she bestowed genius, 
 eloquence, and courage. The first of these qual 
 ities enabled him to conceive great designs, the 
 last to execute them ; while eloquence, bold, 
 impressive, and figurative, furnished him with a 
 passport to the favor of his countrymen and fol 
 lowers. Silent and reserved, unless Avhen excited 
 by some great occasion, and superior to the 
 weakness of rendering himself cheap by the fre 
 quency of his addresses, he delivered his opinions 
 but seldom in council ; but when he did so he 
 was listened to with delight and approbation." 
 
 That does not read like an account of the par 
 liamentary methods of a brutish man, degraded 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. 21 
 
 by vice and debauched with drunkenness and 
 gluttony ; it sounds rather like a description of 
 the wise ways of some Webster or Clay. 
 Drunken men with the gift of eloquent speech do 
 not hoard it and use it in this adroit way. This 
 is not all, however. Men who are given over to 
 vice, glutton}^, and drunkenness usually carry 
 the marks of their excesses in their appearance 
 and their ways of thinking ; but our writer who 
 has told us that Weatherford was such a man, 
 tells us how he looked and acted, and what his 
 ability was, in this*wise : 
 
 " His judgment and eloquence had secured the 
 respect of the old ; his vices made him the idol 
 of the young and the unprincipled. It is even 
 doubted whether a civilized society could behold 
 this monster without interest. In his person tall, 
 straight, and well-proportioned ; his eye black, 
 lively, and penetrating, and indicative of courage 
 and enterprise ; his nose prominent, thin, and 
 elegant in its formation ; while all the features of 
 his face, harmoniously arranged, speak an active 
 and disciplined mind." A little further down 
 the page this writer calls Weatherford " the key 
 and corner-stone of the Creek confederacy," and 
 characterizes him as " this extraordinary man." 
 Our purpose is not now to defend Red Eagle s 
 
22 RED EAGLE. 
 
 memory or to extol his character, though there 
 is good reason to remember him with honor for 
 his courage in war . and for his good faith in 
 peace ; and there are abundant proofs that the 
 praise which the hostile writer whom we have 
 quoted could not deny to the fallen chieftain, was 
 far juster than the abuse he heaped upon him. 
 We have made these extracts merely to show in 
 what spirit of unfair prejudice all the contempo 
 raneous accounts of Weatherford s life and deeds 
 were written. It will be better to form our own 
 opinions of the Creek warrior s character after we 
 shall have reviewed the events of his life ; and no 
 one who so examines the facts, although they 
 come to us only from his enemies, can fail to form 
 a much higher opinion of the unfortunate man than 
 that which the chroniclers of his day have offered 
 to us ready-made. 
 
 The enmity and prejudice of which we have 
 spoken operate still more strongly in another 
 way to embarrass the biographer who seeks to 
 learn details of Weatherford s life. Where the 
 writers of his day have misrepresented his char 
 acter or conduct, it is not difficult to discover 
 the fact and to correct the misjudgment ; but, 
 unluckily, they too often neglected even to mis 
 represent him. Caring only for their own side 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. 23 
 
 and their own heroes, these historians, who were 
 generally participants in the events they chron 
 icled, took the utmost pains to tell us just where 
 each body of American troops fought ; who com 
 manded them in the first, second, third, and so on 
 to the tenth degree of subordinate rank ; how 
 many Americans and how many friendly Indians 
 there were in each part of every field ; how many 
 of these were killed and wounded every thing, in 
 short, which they could find out or guess out 
 about the details of their side of the fight, while 
 the other side seemed to them unworthy of any 
 thing more than the most general attention. 
 They were so careless indeed of the Indian side 
 of these affairs that it is in many cases impossible 
 to discover from any of the accounts what chiefs 
 commanded the Creek forces in important bat 
 tles, or even what chiefs were present. In other 
 cases this information is given to us by accident, 
 as it were, not in the accounts of the battles, but 
 by means of a casual reference in an account of 
 something else. Thus one of the writers devotes 
 many pages and a good deal of stilted rhetoric to 
 his account of the Fort Mims massacre, a bloody 
 affair, in which Weatherford won solely by rea 
 son of the fact that he was a better and more 
 skilful officer than the American commander, 
 
24 RED EAGLE. 
 
 manifesting indeed some of the best qualities of 
 an able general ; but with all this historian s 
 minuteness of detail, he wholly forgets to men 
 tion the fact that Weatherford had anything to 
 do with the matter. His neglect is not the result 
 of any want of information, as is shown by the 
 fact that, in writing of other things afterward, he 
 incidentally mentions the Creek warrior as the 
 leader of the Indians at Fort Minis. 
 
 To the carelessness of the contemporaneous 
 writers, to whom alone we can at this day look 
 for information upon detailed points of interest, 
 must be added, as a cai se of the meagreness of 
 the record, their lack of opportunity. The In 
 dians kept their own secrets. They were fight 
 ing to destroy the whites, not to win renown ; 
 and the Americans who fought them had little 
 chance to hear news of any kind from the forces 
 on the other side. 
 
 Notwithstanding this lack of detailed informa 
 tion respecting Red Eagle s life and deeds, how 
 ever, we know with certainty that he was, as the 
 writer quoted a few pages back said, the " key 
 and corner-stone of the Creek confederacy," the 
 commander of the Creek armies, the statesman 
 who guided the Creek councils, and the general 
 who planned and conducted the Creek cam- 
 
INTRODUCING RED EAGLE. 25 
 
 paigns. His was the master mind on the Indian 
 side, as positively as Jackson s was on the side of 
 the Americans ; and therefore while there is an 
 unfortunate lack of information of a strictly bio 
 graphical nature concerning this remarkable man, 
 it is still possible to write his life by writing an 
 account of the Creek war. After all, it is the 
 things a man does which make up his life ; and 
 the story of his deeds is his biography, whether 
 or not it includes the dates of his birth and his 
 death, or tells with precision when or how he did 
 this or that. 
 
 Accordingly, instead of beginning this story 
 of Red Eagle s life with a chapter about his 
 birth and parentage, after the customary manner 
 of grave biographers, and following his career 
 incident by incident, confining the narrative to 
 an account of his direct, personal share in each 
 transaction, I shall write an account of the war 
 he made, regarding the whole series of events as 
 properly parts of one great affair which Red 
 Eagle devised and executed. 
 
 To make such an account clearly intelligible, 
 however, it will be necessary first to recount 
 briefly the history of the Southern Indians, and 
 to show who and what the Creeks were, what 
 their condition was at the time of the war s be- 
 
26 RED EAGLE. 
 
 ginning, and what they hoped to gain by their 
 contest with the whites which was not by any 
 means a mere outbreak of savagery like some of 
 the Indian troubles of our time, but rather a war 
 deliberately undertaken with very definite pur 
 poses, after long consideration and no little get 
 ting ready. 
 
 Upon many points the best authorities are con 
 flicting, partly because their works were written 
 each with a special purpose and from a special 
 point of view, and partly because of carelessness 
 in the collection and weighing of facts ; but it is 
 still possible to arrive at the truth in all essential 
 particulars, and to construct, out of the frag 
 mentary materials at command, a consecutive 
 account of the brilliant campaign of 1813-14, in 
 which Red Eagle w r as the foremost figure on one 
 side, and Andrew Jackson the master spirit on 
 the other. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 RED EAGLE S PEOPLE. 
 
 RED EAGLE, or William Weatherford, was 
 only in part an Indian, as we shall see presently ; 
 but his life was so entirely the life of an Indian, 
 in that part of it at least which gave him his title 
 to a place in history, that we must naturally 
 think of him as a member of his mother s race, 
 rather than as a white man, and we must regard 
 the Indian nation to which he belonged as his 
 people. He was born a Creek, arid not only so, 
 but a great chief of the Creek nation ; that is to 
 say, a chief of the highest hereditary rank. 
 
 The Creek nation was not a tribe, but a confed 
 eracy of tribes, united as the Roman Empire was 
 by successive conquests. The original Romans 
 in this case were the Muscogees, a tribe of In 
 dians so much further advanced toward civiliza 
 tion when white men first encountered them thaij 
 most of the Indian tribes were, that they had been 
 able to preserve greatly more of their own his 
 tory than savages are ordinarily able to do. They 
 had fixed laws, too, not merely rules of the chase, 
 
23 RED EAGLE. 
 
 but laws by which they were governed in the or 
 dinary affairs of life ; and many of their practices 
 when the tribe was first known to white men in 
 dicate that they were then rapidly working out a 
 system of government and semi-civilization for 
 themselves, or else that, as they themselves be 
 lieved, they were descended from a race formerly 
 civilized, of whose civilization they still retained 
 traces in their customs. 
 
 About the year 1775, an adventurous young 
 Frenchman named Le Clerc Milfort visited the 
 Creeks, and marrying a woman of the nation be 
 came a chief among them. After living with them 
 for twenty years, he returned to France and was 
 made a brigadier-general. In the year 1802, Mil- 
 fort published a book about the strange people 
 among whom he had lived half a lifetime, and 
 from him, or rather through him, the world has 
 learned what the Creeks believe to be the history 
 of their nation. 
 
 This history, Milfort says, existed in the shape 
 of a sort of record not a written record, of 
 course, but not merely oral tradition. The Creek 
 historians had certain strings of beads, shells, and 
 pearls which aided them somewhat as written 
 books aid civilized men to preserve the memory 
 of their nation s past. These beads meant differ- 
 
RED EAGLE S PEOPLE. 
 
 29 
 
 ent things according to their arrangement, and 
 by their aid the historians were able to remember 
 and transmit the traditions committed to their 
 charge with something like accuracy. 
 
 The story, as they tell it, is probably apocry 
 phal in most of its details, but it is less improba 
 ble, at worst, than is the story of the foundation 
 and early history of Rome. According to the 
 Creek historians, the Muscogees fought with the 
 Aztecs against Cortez, and when the Spanish in 
 vader gained a secure foothold in Mexico they 
 took up their march northward. On their way 
 they encountered the Alabamas, whom they 
 drove before them for years, following them from 
 one part of the land to another, and giving them 
 no rest. They chased the Alabamas to the Mis 
 souri River, thence to the Ohio, and thence to 
 Alabama, whither they followed their steps. 
 Finally, in the early part of the eighteenth cen 
 tury, the persecuted Alabamas despaired of find 
 ing a secure refuge from their relentless persecut 
 ors, and to save themselves Irom further destruc 
 tion consented to form a close alliance with the 
 Muscogees, submitting to the laws of their con 
 querors and becoming in ettect Muscogees. This 
 was the beginning ot that confederacy which at- 
 terward became the Creek Nation. The Tooka- 
 
30 RED EAGLE. 
 
 batcha tribe, fleeing from their enemies in the 
 north, sought the protection of the Muscogees 
 next and became members of the nation. Other 
 tribes were added to the nation one after another, 
 until the confederacy, whose seat was in the region 
 along the Alabama, Coosa, and Tombigbee rivers, 
 became an empire, embracing in its rule all the 
 people round about them, and carrying terror 
 even to the tribes beyond the Savannah River. 
 
 The country which the Muscogee confederacy 
 inhabited was and still is singularly well watered 
 and fertile. Their two great rivers, the Alabama 
 and the Tombigbee, are fed by numberless creeks 
 of large and small size, and the number of these 
 streams prompted the white men who traded 
 with the Muscogees to call their land the Creek 
 country, and from the land the name was trans 
 ferred to its people, who were thereafter called 
 the Creeks. 
 
 These Creeks, as we have said, had a sort of 
 semi-civilization of their own when the whites 
 first visited them. They had fixed rules and cus 
 toms governing marriage and divorce. They 
 lived in houses, wore scanty but real clothing, 
 and were governed by a rude system of laws. 
 Curiously enough, they even had a system ol so 
 cial caste among them, a sort oi graduated order 
 
RED EAGLE S PEOPLE. 31 
 
 of nobility. There were certain families who held 
 high hereditary rank, hereditary privileges, and 
 hereditary authority the family of the Wind, the 
 family of the Bear, the family of the Deer, etc. ; 
 and of these the family of the Wind was the 
 highest in rank and authority. They constituted, 
 indeed, a sort of royal family, the family of the 
 Bear ranking just below them. 
 
 When Colonel Benjamin Hawkins was sent on 
 an important mission to the Creeks in the year 1798 
 he found an organized and somewhat complicated 
 system of government in existence among them. 
 Each town had its separate local government, pre 
 sided over by a Micco, who belonged always to 
 one of the chief families. They had their public 
 buildings and pleasure houses, their fixed rules for 
 the conduct of public business, for the promotion 
 of warriors, and for all the other things which 
 need systematic regulation. 
 
 Beginning thus with a foundation of recognized 
 customs upon which to build a civilization, the 
 Creeks improved rapidly under the influence of 
 the white men when they were brought into con 
 tact with them. They already cultivated the 
 ground, and, according to their tradition, had al 
 ways done so. From the white men they learned 
 to trade, to carry on their commerce with regu- 
 
32 RED EAGLE. 
 
 larity, and even to manufacture cloths and other 
 needed articles. They lived generally in peace 
 with the white men, and, when the war that de 
 stroyed all this good beginning came, these peo 
 ple had their horses and their houses, their farms, 
 their hoes, and their looms. They were not yet 
 civilized, but they were well advanced toward the 
 acquisition of the arts of peace. They had too 
 much hunting land, and the spontaneous or near 
 ly spontaneous productions of their rich soil and 
 genial climate made living somewhat too easy for 
 their good ; but in spite of these strong incentives 
 to idleness, the Creeks were steadily improving. 
 Many of them intermarried with the whites, and 
 in part adopted white men s modes of living. 
 Missionaries went among them, and even the 
 traders were in an important sense missionaries. 
 Many of the Creeks learned to read and write, a 
 few were educated men, most of these being half- 
 breeds, whose fathers sent them north to attend 
 schools. 
 
 Their condition was made the more favorable 
 for advancement by the good treatment they re 
 ceived at the hands of the United States Govern 
 ment. It is constantly said in our time that the 
 government has never dealt justly or kept honest 
 faith with the Indians, and this reproach is usually 
 
RED EAGLE S PEOPLE. 33 
 
 coupled with a reference to the wiser, better, and 
 more humane methods of the British in Canada ; 
 but if one were disposed to argue the question, 
 it might easily be shown that both the assertion 
 of the uniform failure of the Americans to deal 
 justly with Indians, and the implication that the 
 English have as uniformly treated the savages 
 well, are false. In the case of the Creeks, it ap 
 pears to be certain that the American Government 
 did all that could be done to elevate the savages, 
 and was only thwarted in the attempt by the in 
 terference of British agents red and white who 
 incited Red Eagle s people to undertake the war 
 which resulted in the destruction of their pros 
 perity and their ultimate removal from the land 
 they inhabited. 
 
 Mr. Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne, a prominent 
 citizen of Virginia, and a man specially well in 
 formed on the subject, in a work which was writ 
 ten immediately after the Creek war ended, 
 wrote as follows on the subject of the govern 
 ment s treatment of the Creeks : 
 
 14 It has been demonstrated that the conduct of 
 the United States to the Creek Indians was both 
 just and honorable. Without any consideration 
 save that which arises from the consciousness ot 
 doing a good act, the government of the United 
 
34 RED EAGLE. 
 
 States had, for more than twenty years, en 
 deavored to reclaim them from a savage to a 
 civilized state. By the exertions of government, 
 bent only on augmenting the stock of human hap 
 piness, it was evident that the situation of the 
 Creeks was greatly ameliorated. Many of them 
 spoke and wrote our language. Pious men were 
 sent, at the expense of government, to instruct 
 them in the religion oi Christ. The rising gene 
 ration were instructed in numerous schools. . . . 
 A sentiment of pity, a fit cement for lasting friend 
 ship, had taken possession of the American breast 
 toward the Indians ; and our citizens and govern 
 ment vied with each other in acts of benevolence 
 and charity toward them. They were instructed 
 in the fabrication of the implements of husbandry. 
 The loom and the spinning-wheel were in full 
 operation through the whole nation ; while the 
 art of house-building, so essential to the accom 
 modation of man and his protection irorn the 
 winds and waters of heaven, was rapidly approxi 
 mating to perfection. If any of our citizens in- 
 iured them a punishment was provided by law, 
 and the temper of the nation, in unison with the 
 temper of the government, rendered its infliction 
 certain. And such was the progress of the 
 Creeks in civilization, and the obligations they 
 
RED EAGLE S PEOPLE. 35 
 
 were under to the United States, that no one be 
 lieved they could be cajoled into a confederacy 
 against us." 
 
 One other point must not be overlooked, be 
 cause, although its bearing upon the prospects ot 
 the Creeks may not be fully evident to readers 
 who have given the subject no attention, it was 
 really the most promising thing in their situation. 
 The tribal relation among them was weakening. 
 They were taking the first steps from communism, 
 which is the soul of savage life, to that individu 
 alism which is the foundation of civilization. 
 They were beginning to hold individual property, 
 and thereby to become men, with interests and 
 wills of their own, instead of mere members of a 
 tribe. This \vas brought about in part by their 
 trading with the whites and in part by their in 
 termarriages. The traders who married Creek 
 wives and lived in the nation were shrewd fel 
 lows, strongly inclined to look sharply after their 
 own interests ; and their half-breed children, who 
 retained their rank as Creeks, many of them being 
 chiefs of high degree, inherited their fathers in 
 stincts and learned their fathers ways. It would 
 not have required many years of peace in these 
 circumstances to have made-of the Creeks a na 
 tion of civilized men. Until the seeds of hostility 
 
36 RED EAGLE. 
 
 to the Americans were sown among them by the 
 agents of the British and the Spanish, their ad 
 vancement was steady, and the effort which the 
 Americans were making to civilize them was the 
 fairest and most hopeful experiment perhaps that 
 has ever been made in that direction on this con 
 tinent. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 RED EAGLE S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 WILLIAM WEATHERFORD, the Red Eagle, was 
 born in the Creek country, and born a chieftain. 
 The exact date of his birth is not known, but as 
 he was a man of about thirty or thirty -five years 
 of age when the Creek war broke out in 1813, his 
 birth must have occurred about the year 1780. 
 He is commonly spoken of in books, and especial 
 ly in books that were written while a feeling of 
 intense antipathy to him continued to exist, as 
 the son of a Scotch pedler, or the son of a Geor 
 gia pedler, the phrase carrying with it the sugges 
 tion that Red Eagle was a man of contemptible 
 origin. This was not the case. His father was 
 a Scotch pedler, certainly, who went to the Creek 
 country from Georgia, but he was by no means 
 the sort of person who is suggested to our minds 
 by the word pedler. He was a trader of great 
 shrewdness and fine intellectual ability, who 
 managed his business so well that he became rich 
 in spite of his strong taste for the expensive sport 
 of horse-racing. 
 
38 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Besides this, men usually luive two parents, 
 and Red Eagle was not an exception to this rule. 
 If he was the son of a Scotch pudler from Geor 
 gia, he was also the son of an Indian woman, who 
 belonged to the dominant family of the Wind ; 
 that is to say, she was a princess, her rank among 
 the Creeks corresponding as nearly as possible to 
 that of a daughter of the royal house in a civi 
 lized monarchy. 
 
 Red Eagle s connection with persons of distinc 
 tion did not end here. He was the nephew of the 
 wife of Le Clerc Milfort, the Frenchmar men 
 tioned in a former chapter, who, after a t\venty 
 years residence among the Creeks, returned to 
 France and received a brigadier-general s commis 
 sion at the hands of Napoleon. Red Eagle was 
 the nephew, through his mother, of AlexanderJMc- 
 Gillivray, a man of mixed Scotch, French, and In 
 dian blood, \v\\o by dint of his very great ability 
 as a soldier, a ruler of the Creeks, and a wily, 
 unscrupulous diplomatist, made a prominent 
 place for himself in history. He was commis 
 sioned as a colonel in the British service ; later 
 he became a commissary of subsistence in the 
 Spanish army, with the rank and pay of colonel ; 
 and f nnlly he received from Washington an ap 
 pointment as brigadier-general, with full pay. 
 
RED EAGLE S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 39 
 
 He is described by Mr. A. J. Pickett, in his His 
 tory of Alabama, as " a man of towering intellect 
 anj vast infoimation, who ruled the Creek coun 
 try for a quarter of a century." Another writer 
 says that Alexander McGillivray " became the 
 great chief or emperor, as he styled himself, of 
 all the confederate Muscogee tribes;" and adds, 
 " He was a man of the highest intellectual abilities, 
 of considerable education, and of wonderful tal 
 ents for intrigue and diplomacy. This he ex 
 hibited conspicuously through the period of the 
 American Revolution, in baffling alike the schemes 
 of our countrymen, both Whig and Tory, of the 
 Spaniards in Florida, of the British at Mobile, and 
 of the French at New Orleans, and by using them 
 simultaneously for his o\vn purposes of political 
 and commercial aggrandizement. A more wily 
 Talleyrand never trod the red war paths of the 
 frontiers or quaffed the deceptive black drink at 
 sham councils or with deluded agents and emis 
 saries." 
 
 Reading these descriptions of the character 
 and abilities of his uncle, knowing how shrewd 
 a man his father was, and remembering that his 
 mother was a member of that family of the Wind 
 who had for generations managed to retain for 
 themselves the foremost place in the councils and 
 
4O RED EAGLE. 
 
 campaigns of their warlike race, we may fairly 
 assume that Red Eagle came honestly by the 
 genius for intrigue and lor command which 
 brought distinction to him during the Creek war. 
 He may fairly be supposed to have inherited 
 those qualities of mind which fitted him to be a 
 leader in that fierce struggle, and as a leader to 
 hold his own surprisingly well against greatly 
 superior numbers of good troops, commanded by 
 Andrew Jackson himsell. 
 
 When Charles Weatherford, the Scotch trader 
 Irom Georgia, married the sister of General Alex 
 ander McGillivray, or Emperor Alexander Mc- 
 Gillivray, as he preferred to be called, he ac 
 quired by that alliance a measure of influence 
 among the Creeks which few men even of pure 
 Muscosree blood could boast. This influence was 
 
 o 
 
 strengthened as his shrewdness and the soundness 
 of his judgment made themselves apparent in the 
 councils of the nation. More especially he made 
 himself dear to the hearts of the Creeks by his 
 skill in managing their diplomatic relations with 
 the Spanish authorities in Florida, and the Ameri 
 can agents. 
 
 In all this, however, the wily Scotchman served 
 himself while serving the nation, and he rapidly 
 grew to be rich. He lived, literally as a prince, 
 
RED EAGLE S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 41 
 
 at his home on the eastern bank of the Alabama 
 River, on the first high ground below the con 
 fluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers. 
 
 Here he built for himself a home, and, still re 
 taining his interest in commerce, set up a trading 
 house. His love of horse-racing has already been 
 mentioned, and now that he was a man of wealth 
 and consequence it was natural that he should in 
 dulge this taste to the full. He laid out a race 
 track near his trading house, and devoted a large 
 share of his attention to the business of breeding 
 fine horses. Even in thus indulging his passion 
 for horse-racing, however, Charles Weatherford 
 was shrewd enough to make the sport contribute 
 to his prosperity in other ways than by means of 
 profitable gambling. He so managed the races 
 as to attract his neighbors, principally the Alaba- 
 mas, to his place of business, and so secured to 
 himself their trade, which would otherwise have 
 gone to the traders on the opposite side of the 
 river, in the village of Coosawda. 
 
 Here William Weatherford was born, the son 
 of the wealthiest man in that part of the country, 
 and by inheritance a chief of the ruling family of 
 the nation. He had for tutors no less competent 
 men than his two uncles, Alexander McGillivray, 
 and the accomplished Frenchman Le Clerc Mil- 
 
42 RED EAGLE. 
 
 fort. Young Weatherford evinced the best ca 
 pacity for acquiring knowledge, but it was only 
 such knowledge as he wanted to acquire. Caring 
 nothing about reading and writing, he refused to 
 learn to read and write, and no persuasions would 
 overcome his obstinacy in this particular. lie 
 took pains, however, to acquire the utmost com 
 mand of the English language, partly because it 
 was useful to him as a means of communication 
 with the Americans, and partly because he found 
 that command of a civilized tongue gave him a 
 greater force in speaking his native Creek lan 
 guage, and it was a part of his ambition to be dis 
 tinguished for eloquence in council. He learned 
 French, also, but less perfectly, and acquired 
 enough of Spanish to speak it in ordinary conver 
 sation. He travelled, too, for improvement, mak 
 ing several journeys while yet a boy to Mobile 
 and Pensacola, picking up as he went whatever 
 information there was to acquire. 
 
 He thus became in an important sense an edu 
 cated man. He could not read or write, it is 
 true ; but it is probable that Homer was equally 
 ignorant, and not at all certain that Hannibal or 
 Richard Cceur de Lion, great commanders as 
 they were, were much better scholars. 
 
 The chief function of education is to train the 
 
RED EAGLE S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 43 
 
 mind, and the chief difference between the edu 
 cated man and one who is not so is that the mind 
 of the one has been trained into a state of high 
 efficiency while that of the other has not. Read 
 ing and writing offer the shortest roads, the sim 
 plest means, to this end ; but they are not the only 
 ones, and if Red Eagle had little or no knowledge 
 of letters, he had nevertheless an active intellect, 
 trained under excellent masters to a high degree 
 of efficiency, and hence was, in the true sense of 
 the term, a man of education. 
 
 In his tastes and instincts this son of a Scotch 
 man was altogether an Indian. He devoted him 
 self earnestly to the work of acquiring the knowl 
 edge of woodcraft and the skill in the chase which 
 his people held in highest esteem. He was a nota 
 ble huntsman, a fine swimmer, a tireless walker. 
 He was a master marksman, alike with the bow 
 and with the rifle. He was passionately fond of 
 all athletic sports, too, and by his skill in them 
 he Avon the admiration almost the worship of 
 all the youth of his nation. He was the fleetest 
 of foot of all the young men who ran races in the 
 Creek villages, and his fondness for the sports of 
 his people was so great that he was never absent 
 from any gathering of the young men for contests 
 of strength, activity, or skill, however. distant the 
 
44 RED EAGLE. 
 
 place of meeting might be. He was their chief 
 by right of his accomplishments, as well as by in 
 heritance as the son of Sehoy the princess. Es 
 pecially in the great Creek game of throwing the 
 ball a game which closely resembled a battle be 
 tween hundreds of men on each side, and one in 
 which success was achieved only by great per 
 sonal daring and endurance added to skill, bones 
 being broken frequently in the rude collisions of 
 the opposing forces, and men being killed and 
 trampled under foot not infrequently the young 
 Red Eagle was an enthusiastic and successful 
 player. 
 
 While yet a little child, Red Eagle showed that 
 he had inherited his father s love for horses, and 
 his persistence in riding races, breaking unruly 
 colts, and clashing madly over the roughest coun 
 try on the back of some one of his father s untamed 
 animals, gave him the finest skill and most con 
 summate grace of a perfect horseman. An old 
 Indian woman who knew the young chief in his 
 youth, telling of his daring, his skill, and his 
 grace as a horseman, said, " The squaws would 
 quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him 
 as he rode by the corn-patch." 
 
 All these things added to Red Eagle s popular 
 ity with the old and young of his nation, and the 
 
RED EAGLE S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 45 
 
 daring and enthusiasm which he showed in the 
 sports of his people were exercised frequently in 
 their service. In the wars of the Creeks with 
 neighboring nations, the Choctaws and the Chick- 
 asaws, and in their campaigns on the borders of 
 Tennessee, Red Eagle distinguished himself for 
 courage, tireless activity, and great skill in war 
 fare, even before he had reached manhood, so that 
 when his growth was fully gained he was already 
 a man of the widest and most controlling in 
 fluence among the Creeks, by reason both of his 
 birth and of his achievements. 
 
 His popularity was enhanced doubtless by the 
 beauty of his face and the comeliness of his per 
 son, for all the writers who have described Red 
 Eagle, and all the men of that time who have given 
 oral accounts of him, agree in telling us that he 
 was a singularly handsome man, with brilliant 
 eyes, well-cut features, shapely limbs, and impos 
 ing presence. 
 
 That nothing which could help him to influence 
 and power might be lacking, Red Eagle was gifted 
 with eloquence at once stirring and persuasive. 
 His natural gift had been cultivated carefullv, 
 and, as we have seen in a former chapter, he 
 adroitly hoarded his power in this respect, taking 
 care not to weaken the force of his oratorv bv 
 
46 RED EAGLE. 
 
 making it cheap and common. He would not 
 speak at all upon light occasions. While others 
 harangued, he sat silent, permitting decisions to 
 be made without expressing any opinion what 
 ever upon the matters in dispute. It \vas only 
 when a great occasion aroused deep passions that 
 Red Eagle spoke. Then his eloquence was over 
 whelming. He won his audience completely, and 
 bent men easily to his will. He knew how to 
 arouse their passions and to play upon them for his 
 own purposes. Opposition gave way before the 
 tide of his speech. His opponents in debate 
 were won to his views or silenced by his over 
 whelming oratory ; and he who was his people s 
 commander in the field was no less certainly their 
 master in the council on all occasions which were 
 important enough to stir him to exertion. He 
 had vices, certainly, but they were the vices of 
 his time and country, and there is no sufficient 
 evidence that he carried them to excess, while his 
 retention of physical and intellectual vigor afford 
 the strongest possible proof of the contrary. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 
 
 WE all know how trouble begins. Whether a 
 big or a little quarrel is the thing about which we 
 inquire, and whoever the parties to the dispute 
 may be, the trouble may always be traced back 
 to some small occurrences which led to larger 
 
 o 
 
 ones, which in their turn provoked still greater, 
 until finally the trouble came. 
 
 We have seen that there was peace and justice 
 between the Americans and the Creek Nation, and 
 that the Creeks had every reason in their own in 
 terest to continue living upon friendly terms with 
 the whites. A good many of them fully under 
 stood this, too, and sought to persuade others of 
 it ; and it is probable that when the first troubles 
 came the great majority of the Creeks earnestly 
 wished to keep the peace, and to make use of the 
 means of advancement offered to them by the 
 American Government and people. Unluckily, 
 they were the victims of bad advice, and the old 
 story followed : one thing led to another. 
 
 It is not easy, in this case, to say precisely what 
 
48 KED EAGLE. 
 
 the one thing was which led to another. That is 
 to say, it is not easy to determine what was the 
 first of the long chain of events which led the 
 prosperous and improving Creeks into dissensions, 
 and thence into the war out of which they came 
 a broken and disheartened remnant of a once 
 powerful nation ; but tracing the matter as far 
 back as it is necessary to carry the inquiry, we 
 discover that a public road was one of the earliest 
 causes of the trouble. 
 
 The Creeks were made masters of their own 
 country by the Treaty of 1790, and their absolute 
 title to their lands was respected by the United 
 States Government, which defended them rigor 
 ously against encroachments upon their domain. 
 That government, having become possessed of a 
 wide tract of territory lying west of the Creek 
 Nation, toward which the tide of emigration was 
 rapidly turning, wished to provide a more direct 
 and better road than any that existed, and with 
 that end in view sought permission of the Creeks 
 to run the new Federal Road, as it was called, by 
 a direct route through the Creek territory. The 
 principal chiefs, beginning to learn some of the 
 natural laws thai govern commerce, saw that the 
 passage of a good road through the heart of the 
 nation would necessarily benefit them, and make 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 49 
 
 their commerce with the outer world easier and 
 more profitable. Accordingly these chiefs gave 
 the Creek Nation s consent, and the road was 
 made. Over this the people quarrelled among 
 themselves, dividing, as wiser people are apt to 
 do, into two fiercely antagonistic parties. Those 
 of them who objected to the thoroughfare were 
 seriously alarmed by the great numbers of emi 
 grants who were constantly passing through their 
 country to the region beyond. They said that 
 they would soon be walled up between white set 
 tlements on every side. The land on the Tom- 
 bigbee River was already becoming peopled to 
 such an extent that the hope, which many of the 
 Creeks had secretly cherished, of driving the 
 whites away from the banks of that river and re 
 covering the territory to themselves must soon 
 be abandoned, and they held, therefore, that in 
 granting the right of way for the road the chiefs 
 had betrayed the nation s interests. 
 
 There never yet was a quarrel which somebody 
 did not find it to his interest to stimulate, and in 
 this case the Spanish settlers, or squatters as they 
 would have been called if they had lived thirty 
 or forty years later, did all they could to in 
 crease the bitterness of the Creeks toward those 
 chiefs who were disposed to be friendly with the 
 
50 RED EAGLE, 
 
 Americans, and toward the Americans. These 
 Spaniards still insisted that the territory in. which 
 they lived, and from which they were gradually 
 driven away, belonged of right to Spain, and 
 they saw with great jealousy the rapid peopling 
 of that territory with Americans. The agents of 
 the British, with whom the United States was on 
 the point of going to war, added their voice to 
 the quarrel, stimulating the Spanish and the In 
 dians alike to hostility. It was very clearly seen 
 by these agents that an Indian war, especially a 
 war with the powerful Creeks, would greatly 
 weaken this country for its contest with Great 
 Britain. Emissaries of the British infested the 
 Creek country, stirring up strife and sowing the 
 seeds of future hostility among them. The 
 Spanish in Florida, although our government 
 Avas at peace with Spain, willingly became the 
 agents for the British in this work, and secret 
 messages were constantly sent through them 
 promising arms, ammunition, and aid to the 
 Creeks in the event of a war. 
 
 All these things gave great anxiety to Colonel 
 Hawkins, the agent who had charge of the 
 Creeks, but the trouble was not yet in a shape 
 in which he could deal vigorously with it. He 
 called a council, and did all that he could to con- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 5 I 
 
 vince the Indians of the government s kindly 
 disposition. The friendly chiefs assured him of 
 their constancy, and their assurance lulled his 
 suspicions somewhat. He knew these chiefs to 
 be sincere, but neither he nor they knew to what 
 extent their influence with the nation had been 
 weakened. 
 
 Then came Tecumseh, who, in the spring of 
 the year 1811, arrived in the Creek country, ac 
 companied by about thirty of his warriors. He 
 came with a double mission : as the agent of the 
 British he was charged with the duty of prepar 
 ing the tribes of the South to join in the approach 
 ing war, as soon as a state of war should be de 
 clared ; as Tecumseh he came to execute his own 
 purpose, namely, the formation of a great offen 
 sive and defensive alliance between the tribes of 
 the North and those of the South, against the 
 A nerican nation and people. 
 
 Tecumseh did not come as a stranger to the 
 Creeks. The fame of his exploits in the North 
 had reached them, and he was known to them 
 even "more favorably in another way. Nearly 
 twenty-five years before, Tecumseh, then a 
 young man, had dwelt among the Creeks for 
 about two years, and the stories of his feats as a 
 hunter had lived after him as a tradition. Hence 
 
52 RED EAGLE. 
 
 when he came again in 1811 he was a sort of 
 hero of romance to the younger Creek warriors, 
 a great man of whose deeds they had heard 
 stories during their childhood. 
 
 On his way to the South, Tecumseh tarried 
 awhile with the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, 
 trying to win them to his scheme, but without 
 success. In Florida, he made easy converts of 
 the warlike Seminoles ; and returning thence he 
 visited the Creeks, arriving in October. While 
 Colonel Hawkins w r as holding the Grand Council 
 at Tookabatcha, of which we have spoken, and 
 was trying to placate the Creeks, Tecumseh, fol 
 lowed by his warriors, dressed in their most im 
 pressive savage costumes, consisting of very little 
 else than buffalo tails and other ornaments, 
 marched into the meeting. Marching solemnly 
 round and round the central square of the town, 
 Tecumseh, when he had sufficiently impressed 
 the lookers-on with a proper sense of his dignity, 
 went through the most solemn ceremonies of 
 friendship with his hosts. Greeting the chiefs in 
 the most cordial fashion, he and his followers ex 
 changed tobacco with them a proceeding which 
 attested their fellowship in the strongest possible 
 way. 
 
 In the main the Creeks received Tecumseh 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. S3 
 
 cordially, returning his protestations of brother 
 hood in kind ; but one chief, Captain Isaacs, 
 whose fidelity to his obligations as a friend of the 
 \vhites was proved afterward on the battle-field, 
 rejected the overtures of the men from the North. 
 He shook his head when asked to shake hands ; 
 he refused to exchange tobacco ; and, with the 
 frankness of a brave man convinced of his duty, 
 he told Tecumseh to his face that he was a bad 
 man, and added, "You are no greater than I 
 am." 
 
 Tecumseh had come to the council for the pur 
 pose of using it for his own ends, but while 
 Colonel Hawkins remained he made no effort to 
 put his plan into execution. Colonel Hawkins 
 could have thwarted him, in part at least, if the 
 wily Indian had openly avowed the object of his 
 visit ; but Tecumseh was too shrewd to do that. 
 Colonel Hawkins prolonged the council from day 
 to day, but still Tecumseh kept silence. Each 
 day he would say, " The sun has gone too far to 
 day ; I will make my talk to-morrow." But the 
 to-morrow of the promise did not come while 
 Colonel Hawkins remained, and finally, worn out 
 with the delay, that officer brought his conference 
 with the chiefs to an end and departed. 
 
 Then Tecumseh opened his lips. Calling the 
 
54 RED EAGLE. 
 
 people together, he made them a speech, setting 
 forth his views and urging them upon the Creeks. 
 He told them that the red men had made a fatal 
 mistake in adopting the ways of the whites and 
 becoming friendly with them. He exhorted 
 them to return at once to their former state 
 of savagery ; to abandon the ploughs and looms 
 and arms of the white men ; to cast off the 
 garments which the whites had taught them to 
 wear ; to return to the condition and customs of 
 their ancestors, and to be ready at command to be 
 come the enemies of the whites. The work they 
 were learning to do in the fields, he said, was un 
 worthy of free red men. It degraded them, and 
 made them mere slaves. He warned them that 
 the whites would take the greater part of their 
 country, cut down its forests and turn them into 
 cornfields, build towns, and make the rivers mud 
 dy with the washings of their furrows, and then, 
 when they were strong enough, would reduce the 
 Indians to slavery like that of the negroes. There 
 is every reason to believe that Tecumseh was con 
 vinced of the truth of all this. He was con 
 vinced, too, that the whites had no right to live 
 on this continent. He told the Creeks, as he had 
 told General Harrison, that the Great Spirit had 
 given this land to the red men. He said the 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. 55 
 
 Great Spirit had provid cl the skins of beasts for 
 the red men s clothing, and that these only should 
 they wear. Then he came to the subject of the 
 British alliance, telling the Creeks that the King 
 of England was about to make a great war in be 
 half of his children the red men, for the purpose 
 of driving all the Americans off the continent, and 
 that he would heap favors upon all the Indians 
 who should help him to do this. 
 
 A prophet who accompanied Tecumseh fol 
 lowed him with a speech, in which he reiterated 
 what his chief had said, but gave it as a message 
 from the Great Spirit ; still further to encourage 
 the war spirit among them, this teacher by au 
 thority promised a miracle in behalf of the Creeks. 
 He assured them that if they should join in the 
 war they would do so at no personal risk ; that 
 not one of them should be hurt by the enemy ; 
 that the Great Spirit would encircle them wher 
 ever they went w r ith impassable mires, in which 
 the Americans would be utterly destroyed, with 
 no power or opportunity to harm the divinely 
 protected Indians. 
 
 All this was well calculated to stir the already 
 moody and discontented Creeks to a feeling of 
 hostility, and when the speech-making was over 
 there was a strong party, probably more than a 
 
56 RED EAGLE. 
 
 majority of the Creeks, ready and anxious to 
 make immediate war upon the Americans. 
 Colonel Hawkins s Ion 2: labors in the interest of 
 
 O 
 
 peace had been rendered fruitless, and the war 
 party in the nation was more numerous and more 
 firmly resolved upon mischief than ever. 
 
 Tecumseh s labors were not yet finished, how 
 ever. As a shrewd politician works and argues 
 and pleads and persuades in private as well as in 
 his public addresses, so Tecumseh, who was a 
 particularly shrewd politician, went all through 
 the nation winning converts to his cause. He 
 won many, but although he was received as an 
 honored guest by the chief Tustinnuggee Thluc- 
 co, or the Big Warrior, he could make no impres 
 sion upon that wise warrior s mind. It was not 
 that Big Warrior was so firm a friend to the 
 whites that nothing could arouse him to enmity. 
 He had his grudges, and was by no means in love 
 with things as they were ; but he foresaw, as Te 
 cumseh did not, that the war, if it should come, 
 would bring destruction to his nation. He esti 
 mated the strength of his foes more accurately 
 than his fellows did, and was convinced that there 
 was no hope of success in the war Avhich Tecum 
 seh was trying to bring about. He was valorous 
 enough, but he was also discreet, and he there- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. $/ 
 
 fore obstinately remained true to his allegiance. 
 His obstinacy at last roused Tecumseh s ire, and 
 it was to him that Tecumseh made his celebrated 
 threat that when he reached Detroit he would 
 stamp his foot on the ground and shake down all 
 the houses in Tookabatcha a threat which it is 
 said that an earthquake afterward led the Creeks 
 to believe he had carried out. The story of the 
 earthquake is repeated by all the writers on the 
 subject, but some of the accounts of it contradict 
 facts and set dates at defiance ; and so, while it is 
 not impossible and perhaps not improbable that 
 an opportune earthquake did seem to make Te 
 cumseh s threat good, the story must be received 
 with some caution, as the different versions of it 
 contradict each other. So, for that matter, it is 
 not safe to trust the records upon any point, with 
 out diligent examination and comparison. Thus 
 the fact that the battle of Tippecanoe was fought 
 during this Southern journey of Tecumseh makes 
 it certain that the mission was accomplished in 
 the year 1811 ; yet Pickett, in his History of Ala 
 bama, gives 1812 as the year, and several other 
 writers follow him. Again, some of the writers 
 to whom we must look for the facts of this part 
 of American history confound Tecumseh s two 
 years sojourn among the Creeks about the year 
 
58 
 
 EAGLE. 
 
 1787 with his visit in 1811, saying that that visit 
 lasted two years a statement which would make 
 great confusion in the mind of any one familiar 
 with the history of events in the North in which 
 Tecumseh bore a part. A careful comparison of 
 dates shows that Tecumseh started to the South 
 in the spring of the year i8n,and returned to 
 the North soon after the battle of Tippecanoe was 
 fought that is to say, near the end of the same 
 year. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR 
 THE CIVIL WAR IN THE CREEK NATION. 
 
 WE have called Tecumseh a wily politician, and 
 in whatever he undertook his methods were 
 always those of the political manager. He was 
 quick to discover the temper of individuals as well 
 as of bodies of men, and he was especially shrewd 
 in selecting his agents to work with him and for 
 him. He was not long in picking out Red Eagle as 
 the man of all others likely to draw the Creeks into 
 the scheme of hostility. Red Eagle s tastes and 
 temper, as we have. already seen, were those of 
 the savage. He was a rich man, and had all the 
 means necessary to the enjoyment of those sports 
 and pastimes which he delighted in ; but above 
 all else he was an Indian. He looked upon the 
 life of the white men with distaste, and saw with 
 displeasure the tendency of his people, and more 
 especially of his half-breed brothers, to adopt 
 the civilization which he loathed. Moreover, he 
 cherished a special hatred for the Americans a 
 hatred which his uncle and tutor, General Me- 
 
60 RET) EAGLE. 
 
 Gillivray, had sedulously instilled into his mind 
 in his boyhood ; and this detestation of the Ameri 
 cans had been strengthened by the British and 
 Spanish at Mobile and Pensacola, during his fre 
 quent visits to those posts. His favorite boast 
 was that there was " no Yankee blood in his 
 veins." 
 
 Besides his prejudice, Red Eagle s judgment 
 taught him to fear the encroachments of the 
 Americans, and men are always quick to hate 
 those whom they fear. Red Eagle saw with 
 genuine alarm that the white men were rapidly 
 multiplying in the Tombigbee country, and he 
 knew that the Americans had made acquisitions 
 of new territory which would still further invite 
 American emigration into the neighborhood of 
 the Creek Nation. All this he saw with alarm, be 
 cause he was convinced that it boded ill to his 
 people. With many others he feared that the 
 race which held black men in a state of slavery 
 would reduce red men to a similar condition as 
 soon as their own numbers in the country should 
 be great enough to render resistance useless. 
 Convinced of this, Red Eagle believed that it was 
 the part of wisdom to make a fight for freedom 
 before it should be forever too late. 
 
 Tecumseh, finding in the young chief a man of 
 
RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR. 6 1 
 
 the highest influence in the nation, whose preju 
 dices, fears, and judgment combined to make 
 him an advocate of war, took him at once into his 
 councils, making him his confidant and principal 
 fellow-worker. Red Eagle eagerly seconded Te- 
 cumseh s efforts, and his influence won many, es 
 pecially of the young warriors, to the war party 
 in the nation. His knowledge of the Creeks, too, 
 enabled him to suggest methods of winning them 
 which his visitor would not have thought of, 
 probably. One of these was to work directly 
 upon their imaginations, and to enlist their super 
 stition on the side of war through prophets of 
 their own, who, by continuous prophesyings, 
 could do much to counteract the influence of the 
 older Creek chiefs, most of whom were attached 
 to the Americans, and being well-to-do were op 
 posed to war, which might lose them their houses, 
 lands, cattle, and negro slaves. The possession 
 of property, even among partly savage men, is a 
 strong conservative influence always. 
 
 Acting upon Red Eagle s hint, Tecumseh di 
 rected his prophet to " inspire" some Creeks with 
 prophetic powers. The first man selected for 
 this purpose was wisely chosen. He was a 
 shrewd half-breed named Josiah Francis, a man 
 
62 RED EAGLE. 
 
 whose great cunning and unscrn.pulousness fitted 
 him admirably for the business of " prophet." 
 
 The prophet of the Shawnees took Francis to a 
 cabin and shut him up alone for the space of ten 
 days. During that time the inspiring was ac 
 complished by the Shawnee, who danced and 
 howled around the cabin, and performed all man 
 ner of rude gesticulations. At the end of the ten 
 days he brought the new prophet forth, telling 
 the people that he was now blind, but that very 
 soon his sight which may be said to have been 
 taken away to be sharpened would be restored 
 to him, so improved that he could see all things 
 that were to occur in the future. 
 
 Francis, of course, lent himself willingly to this 
 imposture, and consented to be led about by the 
 Shawnee prophet, stepping like a blind man who 
 fears to stumble over obstacles. Suddenly he de 
 clared that he had received his vision, duly made 
 over, with modern improvements and prophetic 
 attachments. 
 
 Francis used his new powers both directly and 
 by proxy in the interest of the war party, creat 
 ing many other prophets to help him, among them 
 Sinquista and High Head Jim ; and the diligence 
 with which all these workers for war carried on 
 their prophesyings, pleadings, and speech-making 
 
RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR. 63 
 
 increased the numbers of the war party, and 
 added to the ill-feeling, which was already in 
 tense, between the Creeks who wished to make 
 war and those who sought to keep the peace. 
 The Creek nation was ripe for a civil war a war 
 of factions among themselves ; it only needed a 
 spark to create an explosion, and the spark was 
 not long in coming, as we shall see. 
 
 Tecumseh, having secured so good a substitute 
 for himself in Red Eagle, felt that his own pres 
 ence was no longer needed in the Creek coun 
 try. He accordingly took his departure for the 
 north by a circuitous route, in order that he 
 might visit the tribes on the Missouri River and 
 in Illinois, and stir them up to hostility. He 
 took with him the Creek chief Little Warrior, 
 and thirty men of the nation. These Creeks ac 
 companied him in all his wanderings until they 
 reached Canada, where they remained a consid 
 erable time, receiving attentions of the most flat 
 tering kind from British officers and from the 
 secret agents of the British. Upon their depart 
 ure for the return journey, they were provided 
 with letters which directed the British agents at 
 
 O 
 
 Pensacola to provide the Creeks with arms and 
 ammunition in abundance. 
 
 On their way back they committed an outrage 
 
64 RED EAGLE. 
 
 which, although it had no direct bearing upon 
 the quarrel among the Creeks at home, proved in 
 the end to be the beginning of that civil war 
 which grew into a war with the whites. In the 
 Chickasaw country they murdered seven fam 
 ilies, and making a prisoner of a Mrs. Crawley, 
 carried her with them to their own country. 
 This outrageous conduct was at once reported 
 by the Chickasaw agent to Colonel Hawkins, the 
 agent for the Creeks, and he immediately de 
 manded the punishment of its perpetrators. 
 Under the compact which existed between the 
 Creeks and the government, the chiefs of the 
 tribe were bound to comply with this demand, 
 upon pain of bringing the responsibility for the 
 misdeed upon the nation, and as we have said 
 the majority of the chiefs were anxious to fulfil 
 their duties and thus to preserve peace. Accord 
 ingly, a council of friendly chiefs determined to 
 arrest Little Warrior s band and punish them. 
 They sent two parties of warriors to do this, one 
 under command of Chief Mclntosh, and the other 
 led by Captain Isaacs. These forest policemen 
 speedily accomplished their mission, pursuing 
 and fighting the offenders until all of them were 
 put to death. This was in the spring of 1812. 
 Justice being satisfied, the Creeks might now 
 
RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR. 65 
 
 have remained at peace with the whites if they 
 had joined the older chiefs in wishing to do so ; 
 but unfortunately that which placated the whites 
 only served to incense the war party among the 
 Creeks against both the whites and the peace 
 ful men of their own nation. Murders and other 
 outrages occurred frequently. The men of the 
 war party became truculent in their bearing, and 
 matters were in a ferment throughout the nation. 
 The prophets prophesied, and the orators made 
 speeches denouncing the " peacefuls, " as they 
 called the Creeks who opposed war, as bitterly 
 as they did the whites. The Alabamas were 
 especially violent, probably in consequence of 
 their close neighborhood with Red Eagle, whose 
 influence over them was almost without limit. 
 They committed outrages especially designed to 
 force the beginning of war, among other things 
 killing a mail-carrier, .seizing the United States 
 mail and carrying it to Pensacoia, where they 
 robbed the bags of their contents. 
 
 Big Warrior, who had stood so firmly against 
 Tecumseh s threats, still held out, but he was 
 now thoroughly aroused. He invited the chiefs 
 of the war party to a council, but they scorned to 
 listen to his pleas for a hearing. Failing to bring 
 them to him, he sent a messenger to them with 
 
66 RED EAGLE. 
 
 his "talk," which was in these words: You 
 are but a few Alabama people. You say that the 
 Great Spirit visits you frequently ; that he comes 
 in the sun, and speaks to you ; that the sun 
 comes clown just above your heads. Now we 
 want to see and hear what you have seen and 
 heard. Let us have the same proof, then we will 
 believe. You have nothing to fear ; the people 
 who did the killing on the Ohio are put to death, 
 and the law is satisfied. 
 
 This was a perfectly sensible, logical, reason 
 able talk, and for that reason it angered the men 
 to whom it was sent. Men in a passion always 
 resent reason when it condemns them or stands 
 in the way of their purposes. The Alabamas 
 answered Big Warrior s sensible proposition by 
 putting his messenger to death. Thus the civil 
 war among the Creeks, for it had become that 
 now, went on. The peaceful Indians remained 
 true to their allegiance, and fought their hostile 
 brethren when occasion required, although they 
 did what they could to avoid collisions with them. 
 In such a time as that even civilized men be 
 come disoiderly, and the hostile Creeks grew daily 
 more and more turbulent. They collected in 
 parties and went upon marauding expeditions, 
 sometimes sacking a plantation, sometimes mur- 
 
RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR. 67 
 
 dering a party of emigrants, sometimes making a 
 descent upon the dwellings of peaceful Creeks, 
 and doing all manner of mischief. 
 
 The long-threatened war between the United 
 States and Great Britain had been formally 
 declared in the year 1812, and it was now the 
 spring of 1813. The Americans at the beginning 
 of the war had asserted their title to the town 
 and harbor of Mobile, which, although a part of 
 the territory ceded many years before to this 
 country by the French, had until now been held 
 by the Spanish. The affair was so well managed 
 that the place was surrendered without bloodshed 
 and occupied by the American iorces ; but its 
 surrender served to increase the hostility of the 
 Spanish in Florida, and although we were nomi 
 nally at peace with Spain, the Spanish authori 
 ties at Pensacola, Avho had already done much to 
 stir up Indian hostilities, lent themselves readily 
 to the schemes of the British. During the lat 
 ter part of August, 1812, they went so far as 
 to permit a British force to land at Pensacola, 
 take possession of the fort there, and make the 
 place a base of military operations against us. 
 
 From the very beginning of the troubles the 
 Indians had maintained communication with 
 Pensacola, and parties of them went thither fre- 
 
68 RED EAGLE. 
 
 quently to procure arms and ammunition, whicfc 
 were freely furnished. It was with one of these 
 parties, on their return from Pensacola, that the 
 first battle of the Creek war was fought. Of 
 that we shall hear in another chapter. Meantime 
 it is worth while to explain how the plans of the 
 war party were discovered in time to save many 
 lives. 
 
 A friendly half-breed, McNac by name, was 
 driven from his home by one of the petty 
 marauding parties spoken of a few pages back, 
 and his cattle were carried to Pensacola by the 
 marauders, and sold. After hiding in the 
 swamps for some time,- McNac at last ventured 
 out at night to visit his home and see precisely 
 what damage had been done. He was unlucky 
 enough to meet High Head Jim.at the head of a 
 party of hostile Indians, and as there was no 
 chance of safety either in flight or fight, McNac 
 resorted to diplomacy, which in this case, as in 
 many others, meant vigorous lying. He declared 
 that he had abandoned his peaceful proclivities, 
 and had made up his mind to join the war party. 
 McNac appears to have had something like a 
 genius for lying, as he succeeded in imposing his 
 fabrications upon High Head Jim, who, suspi 
 cious and treacherous as he was, believed Me- 
 
RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR. 69 
 
 Nac implicitly, and confided to him the plan of 
 the hostile Creeks. This plan was to kill Big 
 Warrior, Captain Isaacs, Mclntosh, Mad Drag 
 on s Son, and the other friendly chiefs, before go 
 ing finally upon the war-path, and, having thus 
 deprived the friendly Creeks of their leaders, to 
 compel them to join in the war upon the Ameri 
 cans. Then, High Head Jim said, the war 
 would begin by simultaneous attacks upon the 
 various settlements. Having exterminated the 
 whites upon their borders, they were to march in 
 three columns against the people of Tennessee, 
 Georgia, and Mississippi, receiving assistance 
 from the Choctaws and the Cherokees. 
 
 McNac bore- this information at once to the 
 intended victims, and thus enabled them to secure 
 their safety in various ways ; but the civil war 
 increased in its fury. The hostile bands still 
 confined themselves as yet chiefly to attacks upon 
 the peaceful members of their own nation, de 
 stroying their houses, killing or driving off their 
 cattle, and stealing whatever portable property 
 they possessed. 
 
 Colonel Hawkins still hoped for peace, rather 
 unreasonably, it must be confessed, and avoided 
 interference as far as possible ; but he extended 
 protection to Big Warrior, and with the assist- 
 
70 RED EAGLE, 
 
 ance of a force of friendly Creeks rescued that 
 chieftain and escorted him to a place of safety. 
 
 In such a state of affairs, of course, a collision 
 between the whites and the Indians was inevi 
 table, and when it came, as will be related in the 
 next chapter, the Creek war of 1813 was begun. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN. 
 
 IN the month of July, 1813, Peter McQueen, 
 High Head Jim, and the Prophet Francis, having 
 collected a large amount of plunder in their de 
 scents upon the homes of peaceful Indians and the 
 plantations of half-breeds, sought a market for 
 their booty. Collecting their followers to the 
 number of about three "hundred men, they loaded 
 a number of pack-horses, and set out for Pensa- 
 cola, driving a herd of stolen cattle before them. 
 It was their purpose to exchange these things at 
 Pensacola for arms, ammunition, whiskey, and 
 whatever else they wanted ; and combining pleas 
 ure with business, they amused themselves on the 
 route by burning villages and committing mur 
 ders upon Indians who persisted in their friend 
 ship for the whites. 
 
 Meantime the white people had at last become 
 thoroughly alarmed. The news which McNac 
 brought of his conversation with High Head Jim 
 convinced even the most sceptical that a war of 
 greater or smaller proportions was at hand, and 
 
72 RED EAGLE. 
 
 it was the conviction of the wisest men among" 
 
 o 
 
 them that the best way to save themselves from 
 impending destruction was to strike in time. 
 The British had now begun seriously to threaten 
 a descent upon the south-west, and it seemed to 
 be more than probable that the savages were 
 only delaying their general outbreak until their 
 allies the British should appear some\vhere upon 
 the coast, and force the militia of the Tensaw and 
 Tombigbee settlements to march away to meet 
 them. Then the country would be defenceless, 
 and the Indians could easily exterminate all that 
 remained of the white population. 
 
 The pioneers who lived in that part of the 
 country were brave, hardy, and resolute men, and 
 they no sooner saw their danger distinctly than 
 they took up arms with which to defend them 
 selves. They resolved to assert their resolution 
 by attacking not the Indian towns, but the roving 
 parties of Indian outlaws who were bringing the 
 war about. If they could crush these, punishing 
 them effectually, they thought, the great body of 
 the Creeks would think twice before deciding to 
 make the contemplated war. 
 
 Accordingly a summons was sent out for volun 
 teers. About two hundred men, or nearly that 
 number, some of them white men, some half- 
 
THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN. 73 
 
 breeds, and some friendly Indians, promptly 
 answered the call. Among theme was Captain 
 Samuel Dale, better known in history as Sam 
 Dale, the hero of the canoe fight, one of the 
 strangest and most desperate affairs of the war, 
 some account of which will be given in its proper 
 place. 
 
 This little army was commanded by Colonel 
 Caller, assisted by one lieutenant-colonel, four 
 majors, and more captains and lieutenants than 
 have been counted. Deducting these from the 
 total force, we are led to the conviction that 
 there must have been an average of about one 
 officer to every two men ; but even this enormous 
 proportion of officers did not prevent the men 
 from behaving badly in the presence of the 
 enemy and getting sharply beaten, as will be re 
 lated presently. 
 
 When the several companies composing this 
 expedition were brought together, the line of 
 march was taken toward Pensacola, with the pur 
 pose of encountering Peter McQueen and his 
 force on their return. On the morning of July 
 2/th, 1813, the advance scouts came in and re 
 ported that McQueen s force was encamped upon 
 Burnt Corn Creek, just in advance of Caller s 
 
74 RED EAGLE. 
 
 column, and that officer promptly determined to 
 attack them. 
 
 Forming his men in line he advanced cautiously 
 through the reeds until the Indian camp lay just 
 below. Then, with a yell, the men dashed for 
 ward to the charge, and after a few moments 
 resistance the surprised and beaten Indians aban 
 doned their camp with its horses and its rich 
 stores of ammunition and food, and fled precipi 
 tately to the creek, by which the camp was en 
 circled except upon the side from which the 
 white men came. Dale, who was a born Indian 
 fighter, Captain Dixon Bailey, and Captain 
 Smoot who were also resolute men and good 
 officers, Bailey being an eduated half-breed saw 
 at a glance that to pursue the flying savages was 
 to crush them utterly ; and they therefore led 
 their men, some seventy-five or eighty in number, 
 forward, and crowded the Indians as closely as 
 possible. Had they been promptly supported, 
 McQueen s force would have been utterly de 
 stroyed, and there might have been no Creek war 
 or us to write and read about. Unluckily the 
 other officers were less wise than Dale and Bailey 
 andSmoot. When the Indians gave way and ran, 
 leaving their camp with its pack-horses loaded 
 with goods, the officers and men of the main 
 
THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN. 75 
 
 body supposed that their work was done. In 
 stead of joining in the pursuit, they broke their 
 ranks, threw down their arms, and busied them 
 selves securing the plunder. 
 
 Peter McQueen was a shrewd fellow in his 
 way, and he was not long in discovering the 
 weakness of the force which had followed him 
 to the creek. Rallying his men he gave them 
 battle, and began pressing them back. Colonel 
 Caller, who was leading the advance, instead of 
 ordering his main body to the front, as a more 
 experienced officer would have done, determined 
 to fall back upon them as a reserve. Dale, 
 Smoot, and Bailey could have maintained their 
 position while waiting for the reinforcements to 
 come up, but when ordered to fall back upon the 
 main body, their brave but untrained and inex 
 perienced men retreated rather hastily. The 
 men of the main body, having broken ranks to 
 plunder, were in no condition to resist panic, and 
 seeing the advance companies retreating, with the 
 yelling Indians at their heels, they fled precip 
 itately. Caller, Dale, Bailey, and Smoot tried 
 to rally them, but succeeded only in getting 
 eighty men into line. This small force, com 
 manded by their brave officers, made a desperate 
 stand, and brought the advancing savages to a 
 
?6 RED EAGLE, 
 
 halt. Dale was severely wounded, but he fought 
 on in spite of his suffering and his weakness. 
 Finally, seeing that they were overmatched and 
 that their comrades had abandoned them to their 
 fate, the little band retreated, fighting as they 
 went, until at last the Indians abandoned the 
 pursuit. Some of the Americans went home, 
 others became lost and were found, nearly dead 
 with fatigue and starvation, about a fortnight 
 later, 
 
 Thus ended the battle of Burnt Corn. It was 
 lost to the white men solely by the misconduct of 
 officers and men, but that misconduct was the 
 result of inexperience and a want of discipline, 
 not of cowardice or any lack of manhood. 
 
 The Indians were badly hurt. Their losses, 
 though not known definitely, are known to have 
 been greater than those of the whites, of whom 
 only two were killed and fifteen wounded. They 
 had lost their pack-horses, and nearly all the 
 fruits of their journey to Pensacola, so that they 
 were forced to return to that post to procure 
 fresh supplies. 
 
 The affair was a much more serious disaster to 
 the whites, however, than at first appeared. The 
 expedition had been undertaken for the purpose 
 of destroying McQueen s party, and thereby in- 
 
THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN. 77 
 
 timidating the war-inclined Creeks. In that it 
 had utterly failed. The Creeks were victors, 
 though they had suffered loss. Their victory en 
 couraged them, and their losses still further in 
 censed them. The war which before was threat 
 ened was now actually begun. The first battle 
 had been fought, and others must follow of neces 
 sity. The Creeks believed themselves to be able 
 to exterminate the whites, and they were now 
 determined to do so. 
 
 In this determination they were strengthened 
 not merely by the general countenance given to 
 them at Pensacola, but by very specific and 
 urgent advice from the British and Spanish offi 
 cers there, Avho, as we learn from official doc 
 uments, urged the Creeks to make the war at 
 once, saying : 
 
 ;< If they [the Americans] prove too hard for 
 you, send your women and children to Pensacola 
 and we will send them to Havana ; and if you 
 should be compelled to fly yourselves, and the 
 Americans should prove too hard for both of us, 
 there are vessels enough to take us all off 
 together." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RED EAGLE S ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS 
 PARTY. 
 
 RED EAGLE, as we have already related, was 
 the most active and efficient leader of the war 
 party during all the time of preparation. At last 
 the war which he had so earnestly sought to bring 
 about had come, but it had not come in the way 
 in which he had hoped, and Red Eagle hesitated. 
 
 In the first place the war had come too soon. 
 Red Eagle was too shrewd and too well informed 
 to believe the predictions of his prophets Sin- 
 quista and Francis, \vho told the Creeks that 
 if they would completely abandon those things 
 which they had learned of the whites and become 
 utter savages, not one of them should be killed in 
 the war ; that the Great Spirit would rain down 
 fire upon the whites, create quagmires in their 
 path, cause the earth to open and swallow them, 
 and draw charmed circles around the camps ol 
 the Creeks, into which no white man could come 
 without immediately falling down dead. Like 
 many another shrewd leader, Red Eagle was 
 
ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS PARTY. 79 
 
 willing to make use of this sort of appeals to 
 superstition, while he was himself unaffected by 
 them. He saw clearly enough that the white 
 men were strong, because he knew that their 
 numbers and resources were not limited by what 
 he could see. He knew that armies would come 
 from other quarters of the country to aid the set 
 tlers on the Tombigbee River and in the Tensaw 
 settlement. Therefore he did not wish to under 
 take what he knew would be a severe contest, 
 single-handed. He wanted to wait until Tecum- 
 seh, who had promised to return, should come ; 
 he was disposed to wait also for the British to 
 land a force somewhere on the coast before be 
 ginning the war. 
 
 Moreover, his schemes and his advocacy 01 
 war had been from the first founded upon his con 
 viction that the friendship of the Creeks and half- 
 breeds in the lower towns for the whites would 
 give way when they should see that the war was 
 inevitable. He had sought to bring about a war 
 in which the whole Creek nation should be united 
 against the whites ; what he had brought about 
 was a very different affair. He now saw that the 
 friendliness of the people of the lower towns, 
 who were his nearest friends and kinsmen, in 
 cluding his brother, Jack Weatherford, and his 
 
80 RED EAGLE. 
 
 half-brother, David Tait, was much more firmly 
 fixed than he had imagined. He had supposed 
 that it was merely the indisposition of rich men 
 to imperil their property by bringing on a state 
 of war ; he now knew that it was a fixed purpose 
 to remain at peace with the white men, and even 
 to join them in fighting the Creeks whenever the 
 war should come. If he had cherished a doubt 
 of this so long, he had proof of it in the presence 
 of some of these friends of his in the American 
 force at the battle of Burnt Corn, whither they 
 had gone as volunteers. 
 
 All this put a totally different face upon mat 
 ters. Red Eagle was eager for a war between 
 the Creeks and whites, but a war between a part 
 of the Creeks on the one hand, and the rest of the 
 Creeks with the whites on the other, a Avar in 
 which he must fight his own brothers and his 
 nearest friends, was a very different and much 
 less attractive affair. 
 
 There was still another cause of Red Eagle s 
 hesitation at this time perhaps a stronger cause 
 than either of the others. He was in love, and 
 his sweetheart was among the people whom he 
 must fight if he fought at all. He was a rich 
 planter, and lived at this time on a fine place near 
 the Holy Ground, and being a young widower 
 
ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS PARTY. 8 1 
 
 he had conceived a passionate fancy for one Lucy 
 Cornells, a young girl of mixed Indian and white 
 blood, who has been described by persons who 
 knew her as very attractive and beautiful. How 
 ever that may be, it is certain that Red Eagle s 
 devotion to her was profound. 
 
 This girl s father, when McNac s discovery of 
 the Indian plans spread consternation through 
 the settlements, fled with his daughter to the 
 Tensaw country and took refuge in Fort Minis ; 
 and Red Eagle had thus a sweetheart added to 
 the list of persons near and dear to him, whose 
 lives he must put in danger if he went to war. 
 Anticipating the events of this history somewhat, 
 it may as well be added here that Red Eagle s 
 love for this maiden prompted him, Avhen he was 
 about to attack Fort Minis, to give secret warn 
 ing to her father, as is believed upon evidence 
 accepted at the time as satisfactory. Cornells 
 left the fort before the attack, and although he 
 remained with the whites and fought with them 
 in the war, Red Eagle was permitted to carry off 
 his daughter to the nation. 
 
 Let us return to the time of which we write in 
 this chapter. All these things were strong in 
 ducements to Red Eagle to abandon his warlike 
 purposes, but it was now too late for him to still 
 
82 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the storm he had raised. Had he now preached 
 peace among his warlike followers, his life would 
 not have been worth a day s purchase. 
 
 He kept his own counsel, and in his perplexity 
 determined, about the time of the battle of Burnt 
 Corn, to seek the advice of his brother, Jack 
 Weatherford, and his half-brother, David Tait. 
 Making his way to their places on Little River, 
 he laid the whole case before his relatives. They 
 advised him secretly to remove his family, his 
 negroes, and so much of his live-stock as might 
 be, to their plantations, which lay within the 
 friendly district, and, quitting the nation, to re 
 main quietly with them until the troubles should 
 come to an end, taking no part in the war on 
 either side. 
 
 After reflecting upon the matter, Red Eagle 
 determined to act vipon this advice ; and thus the 
 Creeks were very near losing the services of that 
 chieftain whose genius alone enabled them to 
 maintain their w^r with any hope of success. 
 When Red Eagl<? returned to his plantation to 
 put this plan into operation, however, he found 
 that it was now to/ late. Knowing at least some 
 of the reasons the/ chief had for abandoning his 
 support of their canse, some of the hostile Creeks 
 had visited his house in his absence, and had 
 
ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS PARTY. 83 
 
 seized upon his children and his negroes, holding 
 them as hostages for his fidelity. They plainly 
 told him of their doubts of him, and threatened 
 to kill his children if he should falter for a 
 moment. 
 
 There was nothing left for him to do but yield 
 to his fate, and boldly lead his men to battle 
 against the foes whom he cordially hated. His 
 Rubicon was crossed, his die was cast, and there 
 was no possibility of retreat. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE. 
 
 IF Weatherford was at last ready to enter upon 
 the long-contemplated war, so too the white 
 people at last began to understand that their 
 hopes of a reconciliation of some kind with the 
 Creeks were delusive, and they began to take 
 measures for their defence. Even yet, however, 
 they seem to have had no adequate conception of 
 the real nature and extent of the storm that was 
 brewing. Their measures of defence were not 
 proportioned to the need, were not of the right 
 kind, except in part, and were carried forward 
 lazily, listlessly, and apparently with a deep- 
 seated ccnviction that, after all, the making of 
 preparation might be a useless waste of labor in 
 anticipation of a danger which might never come. 
 
 There can be little doubt that if these people 
 had fully understood their own situation they 
 could and would have saved themselves by adopt 
 ing a vigorous offensive policy from the outset. 
 Colonel Caller s expedition to Burnt Corn was a 
 type and example of what they ought to have 
 
CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE. 85 
 
 attempted. They should have struck the first 
 blows, and should have followed them up as 
 rapidly as possible. If they had understood their 
 own situation they would probably have done 
 this. They would have organized the whole 
 population into an aVmy, and if they had done 
 this they might almost certainly have conquered 
 a peace with comparatively small loss to them 
 selves before Weatherford had time to bring his 
 roving parties together for the contest. 
 
 Instead of this, however, the only attempt that 
 was made to meet hostility half-way the Burnt 
 Corn expedition ended in failure, and the men 
 who had undertaken it dispersed to their homes. 
 It was now too late for a policy of offensive de 
 fence. The battle of Burnt Corn was followed 
 by an immediate concentration of the hostile 
 Creeks, and the most that could be done by the 
 whites to avert the threatened destruction was to 
 fortify certain central posts and send messengers 
 for assistance. 
 
 The method of fortifying was the same in all 
 cases, with such variations of detail as the na 
 ture of the ground, the number of men engaged 
 in the construction of the works, and the other 
 circumstances of each case rendered necessary. 
 In general plan the so-called forts were nearly 
 
86 RED EAGLE. 
 
 square, the most elaborate of them being con 
 structed upon the plan of Foit Minis, which is 
 represented on another page. Whatever their 
 form was, they were made of timbers set on end 
 in the ground, as close together as possible, form 
 ing a close and high wall, pierced with port-holes 
 for the use of riflemen. Heavy gates were pro 
 vided, and within the inclosure strong block 
 houses were built, in which a stout resistance 
 could be made even after the outer works should 
 be carried. 
 
 There were more than a score of these forts in 
 different parts of the settlements. In that part 
 of the peninsula formed by the Alabama and 
 Tombigbee rivers which now constitutes Clarke 
 County, Alabama, there were stockades built, 
 which were known as Fort Glass, Fort Sinque- 
 field, etc., each taking its name from the owner 
 of the place fortified. 
 
 Into these forts the people now began to flock 
 in anticipation of a general outbreak ; and they 
 were none too soon, as Weatherford had already 
 collected his men in considerable numbers. The 
 principal tort was on the plantation of one Samuel 
 Minis, a rich Indian or man of mixed blood, who 
 lived on the little lake called Tensaw, or Tensas, 
 as it is now sometimes spelled on the maps, which 
 
CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE. 87 
 
 lies within about a mile of the Alabama River, a 
 few miles above the confluence of that river with 
 the Tornbigbee. Mims s place was near the high 
 road which led to Mims s ferry, and hence was 
 a natural centre of the neighborhood. 
 
 Minis and his neighbors, with the help of a 
 number of half-breed refugees from the Creek 
 nation, constructed there a large stockade fort 
 ress, and the people of the surrounding country, 
 white, black, red, and mixed, congregated there 
 for safety. 
 
 Meantime the appearance of a British fleet off 
 the coast had awakened the government to the 
 danger in which Mobile lay, and on the 28th of 
 June, 1813, Brigadier-General Ferdinand L. Clai- 
 borne, a distinguished soldier who had won a 
 fine reputation in the Indian wars of the North- 
 \vest, was ordered, with what force he had, to 
 march from the post of Baton Rouge to Fort 
 Stoddard, a military station on the Mobile River, 
 not far below the confluence of the Alabama and 
 Tombigbee rivers. 
 
 Upon receiving this order General Claiborne 
 made application for the necessary funds and sup 
 plies, but the quartermaster could put no more 
 than two hundred dollars into his army chest 
 a sum wholly inadequate to the purpose. But 
 
88 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Claiborne was not a man to permit small obstacles 
 to interfere with affairs of- importance. He bor 
 rowed the necessary funds upon his personal 
 credit, giving a mortgage upon his property as 
 security, and boldly set out with his little army. 
 It is worth while to note in passing that, in con 
 sequence of the loss of vouchers for his expendi 
 tures upon the expedition, General Claiborne s 
 patriotic act cost him the whole amount bor 
 rowed, his property being sold after his death, as 
 we learn from a note in Pickett s History of 
 Alabama, to satisfy the mortgage. 
 
 Arriving at Fort Stoddard with his army of 
 seven hundred men on the thirtieth clay of July, 
 General Claiborne at once sought the fullest and 
 most trustworthy information to be had with re 
 spect to the condition of the country, the forces 
 and designs of the Indians, and the strength and 
 situation of the various forts. 
 
 Having thus made himself master of the con 
 ditions of the problem which he was set to solve, 
 he distributed his forces and the volunteers who 
 were at command, among the various stockade 
 posts in such a way as to give the best protection 
 he could to every part of the country. 
 
 To Fort Mims he sent Major Beasley, with one 
 hundred and seventy-five men, who, with seventy 
 
CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE. 89 
 
 militiamen already there, swelled the force at that 
 post to two hundred and forty-five fighting men. 
 Major Beasley, upon taking command, organized 
 his raw troops into something resembling a bat 
 talion, and strengthened the fort by erecting a 
 second line of picketing outside the original gates. 
 Believing the post to be strong enough to spare 
 a part of the force under his command, Major 
 Beasley sent detachments to various other and 
 Aveaker posts, acting upon the principle of pro 
 tecting all points, which had governed General 
 Claiborne. 
 
 Besides the troops, who were simply all the 
 men in the fort, every man capable of shooting 
 a gun being enrolled as a soldier, there were 
 women and children at Fort Minis, who had fled 
 thither from the country for protection, so that 
 the total number of persons there exceeded five 
 hundred ; the exact number is differently stated 
 by different writers, but the most trustworthy 
 account, drawn from several original sources, 
 places the population of the place at five hundred 
 and fifty-three souls. The lives of all these 
 people were committed to the keeping of Major 
 Beasley, who was clothed with ample authority, 
 and free from embarrassing dictation or interfer 
 ence of any kind. His fort was a strong one, 
 
QO RED EAGLE. 
 
 and in sending away some of his men to assist the 
 garrisons of other posts he himself testified that 
 the force which remained was sufficient for the 
 need. His failure to use these means effectually 
 for the protection of the lives over which he was 
 set as guardian was clearly inexcusable, and al 
 though he bravely sacrificed his own life in an 
 attempt to retrieve his fault, he could do nothing 
 to undo its terrible consequences. His fault was 
 not cowardice, but a lack of caution, an utter and 
 inexcusable lack of that prudence and foresight 
 which are as indispensable in a commander as 
 personal courage itself. 
 
 It appears that alarms were frequent in the 
 fort, as was to be expected in a place full of 
 women and children, credulous negroes, and 
 excited militiamen. These alarms Beasley re 
 ported to General Claiborne, and in doing so he 
 probably gave that capable and experienced 
 officer some hint of his own lack of prudence. 
 At any rate, General Claiborne thought it neces 
 sary to issue a general order to Major Beasley, 
 directing him to strengthen his works, use caution 
 in the conduct of affairs, and neglect no means of 
 making the safety of the fort certain. The order 
 ended with this significant sentence : To re 
 spect an enemy and prepare in the best possible 
 
CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE QI 
 
 way to meet him, is the certain means to insure 
 success." All the work done by Major Beasley 
 to strengthen the works was done in obedience 
 to special orders from Claiborne, and even what 
 he specifically ordered done appears to have been 
 done only in part. He directed Major Beasley, 
 for one thing-, to build two additional block 
 houses, but that officer contented himself with 
 beginning to build one, which was never finished. 
 
 With matters in Fort Minis, and the results of 
 Major Beasley s management there, we shall have 
 to do in another chapter. We have first to look 
 at the general situation of affairs as they stood 
 during August, 1813, before Weatherford for by 
 that name, rather than Red Eagle, he is known 
 to the history of what followed struck his first 
 tremendous blow. 
 
 Weatherford had collected his men in the 
 upper towns, and was now moving down the 
 river, managing his advance very skilfully, after 
 the manner of regularly educated military men. 
 In small affairs the Indian general followed the 
 tactics of his race, depending upon cunning and 
 silent creeping for the concealment of his move 
 ments, but he was too able an officer to fall into 
 the mistake of supposing that an army could be 
 advanced in this way for a long distance in 
 
92 RED EAGLE. 
 
 secret. He knew that his movements would be 
 watched very closely and promptly reported. 
 He therefore resorted to strategy or rather to 
 sound methods of grand tactics as a means of 
 concealing, not the fact that he was advancing, 
 but the real direction and objective point of his 
 advance. lie moved southward, taking care to 
 make demonstrations upon his flank which were 
 calculated to deceive his enemy. He threatened 
 the settlements in the peninsula, and constantly 
 kept up a front of observation in a direction dif 
 ferent from that in which his main body was 
 actually moving. In this way he managed to ad 
 vance to McGirth s plantation, on the Alabama 
 River, in the neighborhood of the place where 
 the town of Claiborne now stands, without re 
 vealing the purpose of his advance, and as this 
 halting point was one at which his presence 
 seemed to threaten an attack upon Fort Glass, 
 Fort Sinquefield, and the other posts in what is 
 now Clarke County, his real purpose was still 
 effectually concealed. 
 
 Meantime General Claiborne was not disposed 
 to lie still and permit his wily adversary to deter 
 mine the course of the campaign. We said in the 
 beginning of this chapter that by a timely resort 
 to offensive measures the settlers might have 
 
CLAIHORNE AND RED EAGLE. 93 
 
 averted a general war. It was now General 
 Claiborne s opinion that with the troops at com 
 mand a policy of this kind offered even yet the 
 best prospect of success. Even before he had 
 finished his defensive preparations he planned an 
 offensive campaign, which he was confident of his 
 ability to execute, while he was equally confident 
 that its execution would save a very much severer 
 effort in future. 
 
 On the 2d of August, 1813, he wrote to his com 
 manding general, explaining the situation, and 
 adding these words : 
 
 " If you \vill authorize my entering the Creek 
 nation, I will do so in ten days after the junction 
 of the Seventh Regiment, and if I am not disap 
 pointed, will give to our frontiers peace, and to 
 the government any portion of the Creek country 
 they please. Some force ought to enter the 
 nation before they systematize and are fully pre 
 pared for war. With one thousand men and 
 your authority to march immediately, I pledge 
 myself to burn any town in the Creek nation. 
 Three months hence it might be difficult for three 
 thousand to effect what can be done with a third 
 of the number at present. They gain strength, 
 and their munitions of war enlarge every day." 
 
 How accurately General Claiborne estimated 
 
94 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the difficulties which delay would produce will 
 be abundantly seen as we follow the course of the 
 campaign. There can be little reasonable doubt 
 that the blow \vhich this gallant and enterprising 
 officer wished to strike then would have saved 
 many hundreds of lives on both sides, if he had 
 been permitted to carry his plan into effect ; but 
 there was a difficulty in the way the Creeks had 
 not yet openly attacked the white settlements 
 beyond their border, and until they did so the 
 commanding general had no authority to permit 
 his troops to invade the nation. 
 
FORT MIMS. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RED EAGLE BEFORE FORT MIMS. 
 
 Now .that it was determined that General 
 Claiborne should not invade the Creek country 
 and crush Weatherford before that chieftain s 
 forces should be fully gathered and fully armed, 
 there was nothing for General Claiborne to do 
 but wait the attack of his Indian adversary with 
 what patience he could, taking care to neglect no 
 precaution which might help to secure safety. 
 He visited all the forts one after another, in 
 spected them, and gave minute and careful in 
 structions for their strengthening, everywhere 
 cautioning their commanders to beware of sur- 
 p/ise, and to avoid the danger of falling into care 
 less habits. He knew the Indians well, and knew 
 that they would seek with great care to make 
 their first attack unexpectedly, and also that they 
 would bring as heavy a force as possible to bear 
 upon the point of attack. He knew the temper* 
 of the militiamen too, and seems to have speci 
 ally feared that they would be lulled into a dan- 
 
96 RED EAGLE. 
 
 gerous feeling of security by delay and by re 
 peated false alarms. 
 
 Against all of these dangers this thoroughly 
 capable commander continually cautioned his sub 
 ordinate officers to whom he committed the com 
 mand of the several forts. Had his warnings 
 been duly heeded, a result far different from that 
 which w r e shall have to record would have fol 
 lowed. 
 
 Having delivered his orders, General Claiborne 
 w r ent to the most exposed point, a small fort 
 about sixty miles further into the Indian country, 
 confidently believing that Red Eagle would make 
 his first attack there, with a view of freeing the 
 country of w r hite men before making a decided 
 advance against any of the forts near the conflu 
 ence of the two rivers. In this he erred, as the 
 event showed, but the error was one which r.o 
 foresight or judgment could have avoided. Kcd 
 Eagle was a bold and a shrewd w r arrior, end 
 when he was free to choose his time and place of 
 attack, as he was at this time, it was simply im 
 possible to conjecture with accuracy w^here or 
 when he would strike. He was like the light 
 ning, dealing his blows without a hint, in advance, 
 of their object. General Claiborne having no 
 means of ascertaining what his adversary would 
 
RED EAGLE BEFORE FORT MIMS. 97 
 
 do, and no chance to guess, simply went to the 
 front as a brave commander should. 
 
 Meantime Major Beasley soon began to neglect 
 proper precautions. He left the new blockhouse 
 and the new line of picketing unfinished, although 
 he had idle men in plenty who could have com 
 pleted them with very little effort. The accounts 
 which have been given of the life in the fort indi 
 cate that the commander was utterly wanting in 
 the first qualification of an officer for command 
 namely, a due regard for discipline. He had 
 raw troops under his command troops whose 
 efficiency as soldiers would have been more than 
 doubled during those days of inaction and wait 
 ing if daily or twice daily drills had been ordered 
 and anything like discipline or military order 
 maintained. That a commander intrusted with 
 the charge of so important a fort, especially with 
 the lives of so many helpless women and children 
 committed to his care, should have neglected so 
 good an opportunity to convert his raw recruits 
 into drilled and disciplined soldiers, would 
 scarcely be credible if the fact were not fully at 
 tested. 
 
 Instead of improving the precious days of wait 
 ing in this way, Major Beasley wholly relaxed 
 the reins of discipline. The men gave themselves 
 
98 RED EAGLE. 
 
 up to roystering, card-playing, and uproarious 
 fun-making. 
 
 About this time a negro, whom Weathcrford 
 had captured near McGirth s plantation, escaped, 
 and, making his way to Fort Mims, informed 
 Major Beasley of the whereabouts of the Indian 
 force, telling him also that the Indian chieftain 
 had made careful inquiries about this particular 
 fort, its strength, the number of persons in it, 
 and other details, his anxiety about which indi 
 cated his purpose to attack the post. Major 
 Beasley sent out scouting parties ; but as they 
 discovered no Indians in the neighborhood he 
 appears immediately to have relapsed into his 
 former state of listlessness. He did not respect 
 his enemy, as Claiborne had so earnestly warned 
 him to do. The men, calling the negro from 
 McGirth s plantation a liar, returned to their 
 frolics and their idleness. 
 
 Red Eagle, wiser than his enemy, respected 
 him, and advanced so cautiously that he actually 
 placed his army within striking distance of the 
 fort without Beasley s knowledge, and concealed 
 his men so adroitly that Beasley s scouting par 
 ties failed to discover them. Beasley was as 
 brave a man as Red Eagle, but Red Eagle had 
 the other qualities of a soldier sagacity, caution, 
 
RED EAGLE BEFORE FORT MIMS. 99 
 
 tireless watchfulness which Beasley lacked ; in 
 a contest between the two as commanders, Red 
 Eagle was Beasley s master. One day, while 
 Red Eagle was thus hovering about the fort, 
 watching it as a cat watches its prey, two 
 negroes, who had been guarding some cattle, ran 
 in great terror to the fort, and reported that they 
 had seen Indians in the immediate neighborhood. 
 Major Beasley at once sent a body of horsemen 
 under command of Captain Middleton to ascer 
 tain the facts of the case. Captain Middleton, 
 accompanied by the negroes, went to the spot 
 where they said they had seen the savages ; find 
 ing no Indians there, Captain Middleton, who 
 appears to have thought that Indians are like 
 trees, staying in one place, returned to the fort 
 and reported that a false alarm had been given. 
 The poor negroes were denounced as liars, and 
 0:1 e of them was flogged for having given a false 
 alarm. The other was saved for a while by the 
 intercession of his master, but he was afterward 
 arraigned again, his master s consent having been 
 gained by Major Beasley s threat to expel him 
 and his family from the fort if he persisted in his 
 refusal ; and it is upon record that when the fort 
 was attacked the negro was standing tied, and 
 awaiting his flogging. 
 
100 RED EAGLE 
 
 This incident is mentioned here in illustration 
 of the unaccountable folly of Major Beasley. 
 The writers who have recorded the facts of this 
 officer s behavior have touched them as lightly as 
 possible, sparing him probably because he fought 
 manfully and fell at his post at last ; but it is im 
 possible to regard his conduct with any thing like 
 respect or even patience. His carelessness was 
 a crime, and history must condemn it as such. 
 Charged with the duty of defending an import 
 ant post, he neglected the most essential measures 
 of defence ; intrusted with the lives of more than 
 five hundred persons, he carelessly, criminally, 
 permitted them to be butchered. We have 
 already seen that he neglected discipline in the 
 fort ; he neglected also to surround the fort, as 
 he should have done, with a cordon of picket- 
 guards, who might have been so placed that 
 ample warning would have been given of the 
 approach of the enemy. Instead of that, he 
 actually subjected the negroes who gave warning 
 to ignominious punishment, and, most incredible 
 thing of all, permitted the gates of the fort to stand 
 open until the accumulation of sand at their base 
 rendered it impossible to shut them promptly ! 
 
 The alarm given by the negroes was given on 
 the 29th day of August. The next morning the 
 
RED EAGLE BEFORE- I> O S.T. ,MIMS. }Gf 
 
 negro who had been flogged was again sent out 
 to guard the cattle, and his companion was de 
 tained to receive his punishment. 
 
 Meantime Red Eagle lay within a few hundred 
 yards of the fort, at the head of a thousand war 
 riors. While Major Beasley was using his 
 authority to compel the negro s master to consent 
 to the infliction of the penalty, Red Eagle and his 
 men were quietly watching the fort, looking in at 
 the open gate and making ready to destroy the 
 garrison. The negro who had been whipped 
 again saw the Indians, he being where a picket- 
 guard ought to have been ; but he was afraid to 
 report the fact lest he should be whipped again, 
 and so between his fear of the Indians on the 
 one hand and of Major Beasley s peculiar notions 
 of discipline on the other, the poor fellow de 
 termined to flee to another fort, two or three 
 miles east of Fort Minis. No alarm was given, 
 therefore. Nobody in the fort suspected Red 
 Eagle s presence or prepared to meet his assault. 
 Nobody shut the gate. Nobody did any thing, in 
 short, which ought to have been done, or any 
 thing which indicated that this was a fort, or that 
 its commander knew that a war existed or was 
 likely to exist anywhere on earth. Worst of all, 
 Red Eagle lay there watching his prey like a 
 
IJC52 . R EAGLE. 
 
 tiger, and seeing- just how matters stood. The 
 able commander of the red men knew his business 
 and attended to it. His plan was formed, his 
 men were ready, and he only awaited the coming 
 of the right moment to spring upon his unsus 
 pecting prey. It was nearly noon, and it was the 
 most critical hour of the war. 
 
FORT MI MS (iNTERIORj.; 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. 
 
 THE accounts of what followed, \vhich are 
 given in the various books that treat the subject, 
 are for the most part very meagre, and upon one 
 or two points of minor importance they conflict 
 with each other. Luckily, we have one account 
 which is much more minute than any other, and 
 at the same time is entirely trustworthy. This 
 account is found in Mr. A. J. Pickett s History 
 of Alabama, a work remarkable for the diligence 
 of research upon which it is founded, the author 
 having been at great pains to gather details from 
 the survivors of the various historical events of 
 which he writes. Mr. Pickett had access to the 
 private papers of General Claiborne, and to 
 several survivors of the Fort Minis affair, and 
 from these sources he gathered a mass of particu 
 lars which no other writer upon the subject had 
 within reach. In writing here of the affair, we 
 must depend mainly upon Mr. Pickett s pages for 
 all matters of detail. 
 
 We left Red Eagle at the head of his men, 
 
104 R ED EAGLE. 
 
 within a short distance of the fort, quietly con 
 templating it. His prey was apparently wJthin 
 his grasp and his men were ready, but still Red 
 Eagle waited, repressing the eagerness of his fol 
 lowers sternly. The people in the fort were 
 singing, playing games, and occupying them 
 selves in every way but the soldierly one. They 
 were not on the alert they were completely off 
 their guard. Apparently the time had come to 
 strike, but Red Eagle knew his business, and 
 waited. He knew that to take a stockade fort 
 ress without the aid of artillery he must surprise 
 the garrison completely, and this was what he 
 sought to do by delay. 
 
 Noon came, and with it came the drum for din 
 ner. That was the signal Red Eagle had been 
 waiting for. It was not enough that the garrison 
 should be listlessly off guard. Red Eagle wished 
 them to be occupied with something else, and 
 now they were going to dinner. Giving them 
 time enough collect for that purpose, the Indian 
 commander advanced his line, doing so quietly, 
 contrary to the Indian habit. He was de 
 termined to make the surprise as complete as 
 possible. In this way the Indian line, running 
 rapidly forward, reached a point within thirty 
 yards of the open gates before their approach 
 
THE MASSACRE AT. FORT MIMS. 10$ 
 
 was discovered by anybody within. Then the 
 few men who happened to be near enough made 
 an attempt to close the gate ; but it was too late, 
 even if the accumulated sand at its foot had not 
 prevented. The Indians rushed in pell-mell, and 
 almost in the instant of discovering their presence 
 Major Beasley learned that they were already 
 within the outer lines of his tlefensive works. 
 
 Luckily there was a second line of picketing at 
 this point, partly completed, which prevented the 
 immediate passage of the Indians to all parts of 
 the fort, and gave the whites a defensive work 
 from which to fight their foes. Major Beasley 
 was at last awake to the reality of the danger of 
 which Claiborne had warned him repeatedly, his 
 last warning having come in a letter which Beas 
 ley had received only the day before, and to 
 which he had replied that he was prepared to 
 repel the attack of any force which might come 
 against his fortress. If he had scorned this 
 danger culpably, and had neglected to provide 
 against it as he should have done, he at least 
 did what a brave man could to repel it, now 
 that it had come. He was among the first to 
 confront the enemy, and among the first to fall, 
 mortally wounded. He rejected all offers of 
 assistance and refused to be carried into the 
 
106 RED EAGLE. 
 
 interior of the fort, preferring to remain where 
 he was to animate the troops by his presence and 
 to direct their operations. He continued thus to 
 command them until the breath left his body. 
 
 The fighting was terrible. It was not two 
 bodies of troops struggling for possession of some 
 strategic point, but a horde of savages battling 
 with a devoted band of white men in a struggle 
 the only issue of which was death. The savages 
 fought not to conquer but to kill the whites, every 
 one, women and children as well as men ; and the 
 whites fought with the desperation of doomed 
 men whose only chance of life was in victory. It 
 was hand-to-hand fighting, too. It was fighting 
 with knives and tomahawks and clubbed guns. 
 Men grappled with each other, to relinquish their 
 hold only in death. 
 
 Several Indian prophets were among the first 
 of the savages to fall, and for a time their death 
 spread consternation among their followers. 
 These prophets had confidently told the Indians 
 that their sacred bodies were invulnerable ; that 
 the bullets of white men would split upon them, 
 doing no harm. When they went down before 
 the first volley, therefore, the utter failure of 
 their prophecy caused the Indians to lose faith in 
 the cause, and they were ready like children to 
 
THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. 1 07 
 
 abandon it in their fright. Red Eagle was a man 
 of different mettle. He had used these wretched 
 false prophets to aid him in stirring the enthusi 
 asm of the Creeks, but he had never believed 
 their silly pretences. With such a commander 
 the Creeks soon recovered their courage, and the 
 fight went on. 
 
 Although Weatherford had gained a great 
 advantage by his tactics of surprise and sudden 
 onset, his task was still a very arduous one. He 
 had possession of the outer gates, but the whites 
 were still intrenched, and he must dislodge them 
 an undertaking which subjected him to heavy 
 loss of men. Everybody within the fort who 
 could shoot a gun or strike a blow with axe or 
 club was engaged in the fight. Weatherford, 
 like the general of real genius that he was, sent 
 some of his men to threaten the other sides of the 
 fort, thereby compelling the whites to distribute 
 their force all around the inclosure, and thus to 
 weaken the defence at the main point of attack. 
 Captain Middleton had charge of the eastern 
 side, and fell at his post. Captain Jack fought 
 desperately on the southern face, and Lieutenant 
 Randon on the west. Fortunately if we may 
 call any thing fortunate about an affair which 
 ended in utter misfortune the northern face of 
 
108 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the fort, against which Weatherford hurled his 
 men in greatest numbers and with greatest des 
 peration, was defended by Captain Dixon Bailey, 
 a man of mixed blood, who, it will be remem 
 bered, distinguished himself in the battle of Burnt 
 Corn, and who seems to have had some of the 
 qualities of an able commander. He saw and 
 tried to make use of one chance of success. He 
 knew and told his men that the force of an Indian 
 attack was greatest in its beginning ; that unless 
 success crowned their efforts Indians were apt 
 to weary of their work after a little while. He 
 urged his followers, therefore, to fight with de 
 termination and with hope. He urged every 
 non-combatant who could do so to join in the 
 defence, and even some of the w T omen did so. 
 His judgment of the Indian character was right, 
 and it was presently vindicated by the conduct of 
 the savages, who relaxed their efforts to take the 
 fort, and began making off with what plunder 
 they could secure. But Red Eagle was there ; 
 and his presence was a factor for which Captain 
 Bailey had not made due allowance. Riding 
 after the retreating bands he quickly drove them 
 back, and stimulated his forces to renewed exer 
 tions of the most desperate character. 
 
 Then Captain Bailey saw that his hope had 
 
THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. 109 
 
 been made vain by the resolution of this com 
 mander and by his genius for controlling men. 
 It was now three o clock, and the battle had 
 lasted three hours. Captain Bailey seeing no 
 chance for its cessation by the failure of savage 
 determination, resolved to abandon the defences, 
 and marching boldly out, attempt to cut a way 
 through Red Eagle s hosts to Fort Pierce, a few 
 miles distant. From this attempt he \vas re 
 strained only by force. 
 
 The savages were now steadily gaining ground. 
 One point after another was abandoned by the 
 whites, w r hose numbers were rapidly diminishing. 
 The savages fell as fast as the whites did, or even 
 faster, but as they greatly outnumbered their 
 entrenched foes they could afford this. Deduct 
 ing the \vomen and children from the whole num 
 ber of people in the fort, it will be seen that the 
 savages \vhose force was estimated variously at 
 from one thousand to fifteen hundred fighting 
 men outnumbered the fighting men of the fort 
 at least three to one, and perhaps even as greatly 
 as six or seven to one. With the fall of each 
 white man, therefore, the relative superiority of 
 the Indians was increased, even though two or 
 three of the assailants should fall at the same 
 time. 
 
IIO RED EAGLE. 
 
 Little by little the fort yielded. From one 
 defensive point to another the various bands of 
 white men were driven, fighting- as they went, 
 and contesting every inch of the assailants ad 
 vance. Two brothers of Captain Dixon Bailey, 
 James and Daniel Bailey, went with some other 
 men into Mims s house, and piercing the roof 
 with portholes did excellent work upon bodies of 
 savages who were protected by barriers of vari 
 ous kinds against the fire of men on the ground. 
 To silence their fire some of the Indians shot 
 burning arrows into the shingles of the house and 
 succeeded in setting it on fire. They also fired 
 several other buildings, and the poor people who 
 still remained alive were now driven to their last 
 place of refuge, a small inclosure around the 
 loom house, called in the fort the bastion. From 
 every quarter the warning cry To the 
 bastion !" went up, anel very soon the small in 
 closure was so full of people that there w^as 
 scarcely room for any one to move. Meantime 
 the fire was gaining on every hand. Around the 
 burning houses demoniac savages danced and 
 shrieked and howled, while the women and chil 
 dren within the burning buildings could do noth 
 ing but wring their hands and commit themselves 
 
THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. Ill 
 
 to heaven while awaiting certain and horrible de 
 struction. 
 
 Red Eagle was a soldier, not a butcher ; and 
 now th at his victory was secure he sought to stop 
 the bloodshed and spare the lives of the helpless 
 people who remained ; he called upon his war 
 riors to desist and to receive the survivors as 
 prisoners, but the yelling savages would not listen 
 to him. He attempted to assert his authority 
 and compel them to stop the carnage, but the 
 authority which he was able to wield in setting 
 these savages on, failed utterly when he tried to 
 call them off. When he thus sought to save the 
 lives of white men and women and children, his 
 followers remembered that he had not long before 
 tried to withdraw altogether from the war, and 
 with loud shrieks of anger they now turned upon 
 him, threatening to put him to death if he should 
 further plead for mercy. He could do nothing 
 but submit, and turn r.way in horror from the 
 sight of the brutal slaughter which he had made 
 possible. Mounting his superb black horse he 
 rode away, resolved to have at least no personal 
 share in the horrible butchery. 
 
 The few remaining people in the fort were now 
 shut up in a slaughter-pen. A few of them cut 
 a hole through the outer picketing and made a 
 
112 RED EAGLE. 
 
 dash for life. Of these about twenty escaped in 
 different directions, and in one way or another 
 managed after many hardships to reach other 
 forts. All the rest of the people in the fort were 
 butchered, except a few negroes kept by the 
 savages as slaves, and one half-breed family, of 
 whom we shall hear more presently. 
 
 The persons who escaped by flight were Dr. 
 Thomas G. Holmes, a negro woman named 
 Hester, a friendly Indian named Socca, Lieuten 
 ant Peter Randon, Josiah Fletcher, Sergeant 
 Matthews, Martin Rigdon, Samuel Smith, a half- 
 breed, Joseph Perry, Jesse Steadham, Edward 
 Steadham, John Horen, Lieutenant W. R. Cham 
 bers, two men named Mourrice and Jones, and 
 some others whose names have not come down 
 to us. 
 
 Thus ended the battle of Fort Mims, in some 
 respects the most remarkable battle between 
 Indians and white men of which history any 
 where tells us. It had lasted for five hours 
 without cessation, a most unusual thing in Indian 
 warfare, which consists chiefly of sudden onsets 
 that are not long persisted in if stoutly resisted. 
 At Fort Mims the assault was kept up, in the face 
 of desperate resistance, from noon until nearly 
 sunset a persistence due solely to the fact that 
 
THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. 113 
 
 the savages were for once commanded by a real 
 soldier, who possessed the qualities of an able and 
 determined general. The Indians here, as every 
 where else, were disposed after a while, as has 
 been said, to relinquish their purpose and content 
 themselves with what they had accomplished in 
 the w r ay of destruction, but, as we have seen, 
 Red Eagle sternly drove them back into battle, 
 and succeeded in carrying the fort. If there 
 were nothing else in his career to prove his title 
 to respect as a really able military man, his man 
 agement of this Fort Mims affair would suffi 
 ciently establish his claim. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 ROMANTIC INCIDENTS OF THE FORT 
 MIMS AFFAIR. 
 
 IT was Dr. Thomas G. Holmes who planned 
 the sortie by which the persons named in the last 
 chapter made their escape. He cut the hole 
 through the picketing and headed the desperate 
 charge, which was opposed by a thick line of sav 
 ages who, anticipating some such attempt, had 
 placed themselves in position along a fence for 
 the purpose of making escape impossible. It is 
 indeed a marvel that anybody should have suc 
 ceeded in breaking through their line and reach 
 ing the woods beyond. Dr. Holmes had his 
 clothes riddled with bullets as he ran, but he 
 managed to reach the thick woods unhurt, and 
 there concealed himself in the hole made by the 
 uprooting of a large tree. Remaining thus hid 
 den until night, he was not discovered by any of 
 the bands of Indians who beat the bushes in every 
 direction, bent upon leaving no white man or 
 friendly Indian alive. After night he had in 
 tended to make his escape under cover of dark- 
 
INCIDENTS OF THE FORT MIMS AFFAIR. 11$ 
 
 ness from the neighborhood, but the light from 
 burning buildings prevented this until midnight, 
 when, by careful creeping, he made his way with 
 out discovery, among the camp-fires of the sleep 
 ing savages, who now rested from their bloody 
 toil. As Dr. Holmes could not swim, it was 
 impossible for him to cross the river to the forts 
 and settlements there, and hence he wandered 
 about in the swamp for five clays, living upon 
 roots and other such things, until finally, almost 
 famished, he emerged from the cane-brakes and 
 sought the highlands, really caring very little in 
 his desperation whether he should fall into the 
 hands of friends or foes. Coming upon some 
 horses which were tied, and finding that they 
 belonged to white men who were somewhere 
 near, he fired his gun to attract their attention ; 
 but unluckily it alarmed them, and they fled to 
 the river and hid themselves, remaining there for 
 two days and nights. Left thus alone, Holmes 
 went to a house in the neighborhood, and 
 succeeded in catching some chickens, which in his 
 ravenous hunger he ate raw. He was finally 
 discovered by a white man, the owner of the 
 place, and taken to a place of safety. Many 
 vears afterward he related the story of his ad- 
 
Il6 RED EAGLE. 
 
 ventures to Mr. Pickett, from whose pages we 
 have condensed it. 
 
 Lieutenant Chambliss was twice severely 
 wounded in his flight, but reached the friendly 
 woods at last and concealed himself in a heap of 
 logs, meaning to make his way to a place of safety 
 as soon as night should fall. About dark, how 
 ever, a roving band of the savages surrounded 
 the log heap, and to the dismay of poor Cham- 
 bliss, set fire to it. His position was terrible. 
 The fire rapidly ate into the pile, and to remain 
 there was to be roasted alive, while any attempt 
 to come out would be met, of course, by imme 
 diate destruction with knife or tomahawk. The 
 fire was now scorching him, but he lay still, en 
 during it as long as it was possible to suffer in 
 silence. Just as it became absolutely necessary 
 for him to withdraw, he w r as delighted to see the 
 Indians, who had now lighted their pipes, walking 
 away. Silently, in order that the savages might 
 not hear him, he crept out of the burning pile 
 and concealed himself more effectually elsewhere. 
 Wounded and famishing he wandered about for 
 awhile, managing at last to reach Mount Vernon. 
 
 The most romantic incident of this terrible 
 affair remains to be told. Zachariah McGirth, 
 
INCIDENTS OF THE FORT MIMS AFFAIR. I I/ 
 
 with his half-breed wife and his children, was one 
 of the inmates of Fort Mims until the day of the 
 massacre. On the morning of that day, a few 
 hours before the attack was made, he left the 
 fort, intending to visit his plantation at a point 
 higher up on the Alabama River. Leaving his 
 family in the fort he went to the river, accom 
 panied by some negroes, and began his journey 
 in a boat. He had gone but a few miles when 
 the sound of the firing at the fort reached his 
 ears, and he thus learned that the attack had 
 come. Anxious about the fate of his wife and 
 children, he turned back, and secreting himself in 
 the woods, passed the long afternoon in a state of 
 the most terrible suspense. When the sound of 
 musketry at last died away, the great volumes of 
 smoke revealed to him the fact horrible in its 
 significance to him that the savages had tri 
 umphed. Desperate now with distress, he hid 
 the negroes and boldly went to the scene of the 
 slaughter, not caring whether t le Indians had left 
 or not. Finding no savages there, but seeing 
 heaps of the slain everywhere, he summoned his 
 negroes and began a search for the bodies of his 
 w r ife and children. They were nowhere to be 
 found, and McGirth was forced to conclude that 
 
Il8 RED EAGLE. 
 
 his family were among those who had been 
 burned in the buildings. 
 
 As a matter of fact, McGirth s wife and chil 
 dren were the half-breed family who had been 
 spared, as related in the preceding chapter. 
 There was a young warrior among Weatherford s 
 men who, many years before, when he was an 
 orphan and hungry, had been tenderly cared for 
 by McGirth s wife, and during the horrible 
 slaughter at Fort Minis this young warrior hap 
 pened to recognize the woman who had be 
 friended him in his time of sorest need. To save 
 her and her children he had to tell his comrades 
 that he wished to make them his slaves, and 
 under this pretence he carried them to his home 
 in the nation. 
 
 McGirth knew nothing of this, of course, and 
 as he had very tenderly loved his family, he now 
 became entirely reckless of danger, not caring to 
 live, but being desperately bent upon doing all 
 that he could for the destruction of the Creeks, 
 who, as he believed, had bereft him of his wife 
 and his children. He became the most daring 
 scout and express rider in the American service, 
 making the most perilous journeys, shrinking from 
 no danger, and many times serving the Ameri 
 can cause when nobody else could be found to 
 
INCIDENTS OF THE FORT MIMS AFFAIR. I 19 
 
 perform the important duties which he under 
 took. One day, several months after the massa 
 cre at Fort Minis, McGirth was in Mobile, when 
 some one came to him with a message, saying 
 that a party of poor Indians who had made their 
 way down the river from the hostile country 
 wished to see him. Answering the summons he 
 was ushered into the presence of his wife and 
 seven children, whom he had thought of for 
 months, as among the victims of the savages at 
 Fort Mims. It was as if they had suddenly 
 arisen from the dead. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD 
 AND AFFAIRS ON THE PENINSULA. 
 
 IT was a part of Weatherford s tactics to pre 
 vent the concentration of his enemies as far as 
 that was possible, and to keep the whole country 
 round about in such a state of apprehension that 
 no troops or militiamen could be spared from 
 one stockade fort for the assistance of another. 
 Accordingly, when he advanced to the assault on 
 Fort Mims he sent the prophet Francis with a 
 force of Creeks into the country which lies in the 
 fork of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, and 
 which in our day constitutes Clarke County. In 
 this part of the country there were several stock 
 ade forts erected, one in each neighborhood, by 
 the settlers, as a precautionary measure, when 
 the disturbed state of the country first aroused 
 serious apprehensions. Fort Sinquefield, named, 
 as all these fortresses were, after the owner of 
 the place on which it was built, stood a few miles 
 north-east of the village of Grove Hill, which is 
 now the county seat of Clarke County. Fort 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD. 121 
 
 White was further to the west, and Fort Glass was 
 about fifteen miles to the south, near the spot on 
 which the present village of Suggsville stands. 
 
 When the battle of Burnt Corn brought actual 
 war into being-, most of the settlers removed with 
 
 O 7 
 
 their families into these forts and prepared to 
 defend themselves. When General Claiborne 
 arrived with his seven hundred men he sent some 
 small reinforcements to these posts, under com 
 mand of Colonel Carson, who rebuilding Fort 
 Glass, christened it Fort Madison, and made it 
 his headquarters and the head-quarters of the 
 district round about. 
 
 It was the mission of the prophet Francis to 
 harass this part of the country, and on the next 
 day but one after the massacre at Fort Mims, 
 Francis struck his first blow within two miles of 
 Fort Sinquefield. Notwithstanding the general 
 alarm, Abner James and Ransom Kimball, with 
 their families, numbering seventeen souls in all, 
 remained at Kimball s house, intending within a 
 day or two to remove to the fort. Francis at 
 tacked the house and killed twelve of the seven 
 teen persons. The other five escaped in various 
 ways. One of those who escaped was Isham 
 Kimball, a youth sixteen years of age, who sur 
 vived the war, became a public officer in his 
 
122 RED EAGLE. 
 
 county, and was living there as late as the year 
 1857 5 from his account and that of Mrs. Merrill, 
 a married daughter of Abner James, who also 
 was living in Clarke County in 1857, the original 
 recorders of this bit of history derived their in 
 formation with respect to details. 
 
 Mrs. Merrill s adventures were very strange 
 and romantic, and as we shall not again have 
 occasion to write of her, it may not be amiss to 
 interrupt the regular course of this narrative and 
 tell what happened to her. At the time of the 
 massacre at Kimball s house, she, with her infant 
 child in her arms, was knocked down, scalped, 
 and left as one dead among the slain. She lay 
 senseless for many hours, but during the night 
 she revived, and with a mother s instinct began 
 to search among the dead bodies of her kinsmen 
 for her babe. She was overjoyed to find that it 
 still breathed, although some member of the sav 
 age band had made an effort to scalp it, cutting 
 its head all round, but failing probably because 
 the hair was so short to finish the horrible opera 
 tion. The poor mother, wellnigh dead though 
 she was, made haste to give her babe the breast, 
 and had the gratification of seeing it revive 
 rapidly in consequence. Then, taking it in her 
 arms, she made an effort to reach Fort Sinque- 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SLVQUEF1ELD. 1 23 
 
 fkicl, about two miles distant. Finding- at last 
 that her strength was failing rapidly, and that she 
 could carry the child no longer, she secreted it 
 ard used the little remaining strength she had in 
 crawling to the stockade and entreating some one 
 there to rescue her child. This of course was 
 quickly done, and notwithstanding the severity 
 of her injuries both she and the child recovered 
 under good treatment. 
 
 But the strangest, or at any rate the most 
 romantic, part of the story is yet to be hold, At 
 the time of these occurrences Mrs. Merrill s hus 
 band was absent, serving as a volunteer under 
 General Claiborne. The news of the butchery, 
 including the positive information that Mrs. Mer 
 rill and lur child were slain, was carried to the 
 post where Merrill was serving, and he heard 
 m thing of her wonderful escape. During one 
 ( the battles which followed each other rapidly 
 that autumn, Merrill, before his anxious wife 
 f( und any means of communicating with him, was 
 terribly wounded and left for dead on the battle 
 field, and the report of his death was borne to 
 his wife. Recovering his consciousness after his 
 comrades had left the field , Merrill fell in with 
 some Tennessee volunteers, and was sent with 
 their wounded to Tennessee, where, after long 
 
124 RED EAGLE. 
 
 nursing, he was finally restored to health. After 
 several years had passed Mrs. Merrill married 
 again, without even a suspicion that her first hus 
 band was living believing indeed that she knew 
 him to be dead. She was living happily with her 
 second husband and with a large family grow 
 ing up about her, when one evening a family 
 who were emigrating from Tennessee to Texas 
 stopped at her house and asked for entertainment 
 for a night. They were hospitably received after 
 the generous custom of the time and country, but 
 they had scarcely settled themselves as guests 
 before the head of the emigrating family and the 
 wife of the host recognized each other. The one 
 was Merrill and the other was his wife, and both 
 had married again, each believing the other to be 
 dead. After some consultation it was decided 
 that, as each had acted in perfectly good faith, 
 and as both the families were happy as they 
 were, it would be the part of wisdom to let mat 
 ters stand, and to live their new lives without 
 trying to recover the old. 
 
 Let us now return to the regular order of 
 events. When the tidings of the massacre at 
 Kimball s house reached Fort Madison, Colonel 
 Carson sent a detachment of ten men to the spot, 
 and they at once carried the bodies of the dead 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD. 125 
 
 persons to Fort Sinqueficld for burial. On the 
 third of September the whole body of people in 
 Fort Sinquefield, with that inexplicable careless 
 ness which so often marked the conduct of the 
 v, hites at this time, left the fort, unarmed, and 
 went out to a valley some fifty yards away, to 
 attend the burial services over the bodies of their 
 friends. The wily prophet was awaiting pre 
 cisely such an opportunity as this, and while the 
 men were filling the grave, he charged over a 
 neighboring hill, and tried to put his force be- 
 
 
 
 tween the unarmed garrison and the gate of the 
 fort. Luckily he had somewhat further to run 
 than the fort people had, and so the men of the 
 place managed to gain the gate ; but, alas ! the 
 women and children were nearly all outside, and 
 Francis s warriors were between them and the 
 entrance to the fort. Their plight appeared to 
 be a hopeless one, and it would have been so but 
 for the courage and the presence of mind of one 
 young man, whose name is given by Mr. Pickett 
 as Isaac Heaton, but who is called Isaac Haden 
 by Mr. A. B- Meek, a very careful writer, and 
 one particularly well informed about this part of 
 the field. The latter name is adopted here, as pro 
 bably the correct one. This young man Haden 
 was fond of field sports, and kept a large pack 
 
126 RED EAGLE. 
 
 of hounds, trained to chase and seize any living 
 thing upon which their master might set them. 
 At the critical moment, young Haden, mounted 
 upon a good horse and accompanied by his sixty 
 dogs, arrived at the gate from a cattle driving ex 
 pedition. In an instant he saw the situation of 
 affairs, and with a promptitude which showed re 
 markable presence of mind, he resolved upon a 
 daring attempt to rescue the women and children. 
 With the whoop of the huntsman this gallant fel 
 low set spurs to his horse, and charged the In 
 dians with his trained pack of ferocious hounds. 
 The suddenness of the onset and the novelty of 
 the attack threw the savages into complete confu 
 sion. The fierce dogs seized the naked savages 
 and tore them furiously, and for several minutes 
 their attention was entirely absorbed in an effort 
 to beat the brutes off. Meanwhile the men of 
 the fort reinforced the dogs with all their might, 
 and thus a road was kept open for the retreat of 
 the women and children, every one of whom, ex 
 cept a Mrs. Phillips, who was killed and scalped, 
 escaped within the gates. Young Haden nar 
 rowly escaped death as the price of his heroism 
 for it was heroism of the highest sort. His 
 horse was killed under him, and when he was at 
 last safe within the fort, it was found that five 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD. I2/ 
 
 bullets had passed through his clothes, but the 
 brave fellow was not hurt. 
 
 Francis speedily recovered from his tempor 
 ary perplexity, and rallying his men he made a 
 furious assault upon the fort ; but the gates were 
 now shut, and the resolute men behind the pick 
 ets were skilled marksmen, who delivered their 
 fire with deadly precision. The savages were 
 repulsed and the fort s company for the time 
 saved, with the loss of but one man and one boy, 
 who, with Mrs. Phillips killed outside the gates, 
 made the total number of the slain in this assault 
 only three persons. 
 
 The wiser members of the fort s company per 
 ceived, however, that the place was not strong 
 enough to be successfully defended against a 
 really determined attack by an adequate force ; 
 and accordingly, after some discussion it was re 
 solved to evacuate the place and retire to Fort 
 Madison, before the second and more determined 
 attack, which Francis was sure to make, should 
 render it too late. That night the whole com 
 pany of Sinquefield silently withdrew^, and after 
 a perilous march of fifteen miles through a coun 
 try infested with savages, reached their destina 
 tion in safety. 
 
 About this time four men went from Fort Mad- 
 
128 RED EAGLE. 
 
 ison to some fields in the neighborhood for sup 
 plies of green vegetables, and while gathering 
 these they were attacked and two of them were 
 shot. Colonel Carson having satisfied himself 
 that the peninsula which he was set to guard was 
 full of Indians, and believing that Red Eagle 
 with the victors of Fort Minis would direct his 
 next blow at Fort Madison, resolved to call upon 
 General Claiborne, who was now at Fort Stod- 
 dard, for assistance. A particularly bold young 
 man, of whom we shall hear more after a while, 
 by name Jeremiah Austill or Jerry Austill, as 
 he was always called volunteered to undertake 
 the dangerous duty of carrying Colonel Carson s 
 despatch. Mounting his horse about nightfall, 
 he said good-by to friends who had little hope 
 of seeing him again, and rode away. After an 
 all night s journey the brave young fellow ar 
 rived at General Claiborne s head-quarters, and 
 told the general whence he had come, greatly to 
 the surprise and admiration of that officer, who 
 highly commended his courage and devotion to 
 the common cause. 
 
 General Claiborne w r as in great perplexity, 
 however. The Fort Minis massacre and the rap 
 idly following depredations in other directions 
 had produced a genuine panic among the set- 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD. I2Q 
 
 tiers who now poured into the forts, crowding 
 them to overflowing ; and in the state of alarm 
 which prevailed everywhere, the commanders of 
 all the forts were convinced that their fighting 
 forces were insufficient to defend the posts in 
 trusted to their charge, When young Austill 
 arrived, therefore, with Colonel Carson s appli 
 cation for reinforcements, it was only one of a 
 dozen or a score of similar demands, and with the 
 meagre force at his disposal General Claiborne 
 was wholly unable to satisfy the requirements of 
 his subordinates. In his perplexity he saw but 
 one method of solving the problem, and that was 
 to order the evacuation of some of the forts and 
 the concentration of the fighting men at fewer 
 points. To this course there was the serious ob 
 jection, that the stockade posts were already in 
 conveniently and unwholesomely overcrowded, 
 and a good deal of sickness existed as a conse 
 quence ; but there was no other way of meeting 
 the exigencies of the situation. General Clai 
 borne therefore sent young Austill back to Fort 
 Madison with a message which has been variously 
 represented in different accounts of the affair. 
 It appears, however, from General Claiborne s 
 manuscripts, that the message, as it was given to 
 Austill, was to the effect that as there were no 
 
130 RED EAGLE. 
 
 troops to spare for the reinforcement of Fort 
 Madison, and as St. Stephen s was strategically 
 a more important post, Colonel Carson should 
 evacuate Fort Madison and retire with his garri 
 son and the inmates of his fort to St. Stephen s, 
 if in his judgment that course was wisest in the 
 circumstances. In other words, General Clai- 
 borne wished Colonel Carson to use his discretion, 
 after learning that no troops could be sent to his 
 assistance ; but either because the message was 
 ambiguous in itself, or because young Austill 
 delivered it inaccurately, Colonel Carson under 
 stood that he was peremptorily ordered to evacu 
 ate his fort, and the order as thus understood 
 gave great dissatisfaction to everybody con 
 cerned. The people loudly complained that Gen 
 eral Claibornc was abandoning their part of the 
 country to its fate. Colonel Carson, of course, 
 had no choice but to obey the order as he under 
 stood it, but those of the settlers who were not 
 regularly enlisted soldiers were free to do as they 
 pleased, and under the lead of Captain Evan Au 
 still, the father of Jeremiah Austill, and himself 
 a very resolute man, fifty men of the neighbor 
 hood according to one account, eighty according 
 to another, with their families, determined to re 
 main at Fort Madison. All the rest of the peo- 
 
DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD. 13! 
 
 pie in the fort, about four hundred in number, 
 marched to St. Stephen s. The little band who 
 remained were very vigilant, and managed to pro 
 tect themselves effectually, until after a time Col 
 onel Carson was instructed to return and regarri- 
 son the fort. Colonel Carson had scarcely reached 
 St. Stephen s, indeed, before a second despatch 
 came from General Claiborne, speaking of the 
 former message as discretionary, and urging Car 
 son not to abandon the fort " unless it is clear 
 that you cannot hold it." Among the gallant 
 little company who remained at Fort Madison 
 was Sam Dale, who, it will be remembered, led 
 the advance at Burnt Corn, and whom we shall 
 see again. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 PUSHMATAHAW AND HIS WARRIORS. 
 
 THERE was great anxiety felt from the begin 
 ning of the war lest the Creeks should succeed 
 in drawing the Chickasaws and Choctaws into 
 the conflict as allies. At that stage of affairs at 
 which we have now arrived this fear had become 
 a very nightmare. The few troops at Claiborne s 
 command, together with the militia of the coun 
 try, were barely sufficient to hold the forts, and 
 even this inadequate force was liable at any time 
 to be reduced by the withdrawal of the soldiers 
 to assist in repelling an attack of the British, 
 whose fleet now constantly threatened the coast ; 
 and if the forces of the Choctaws and Chickasaws 
 should be added to Red Eagle s strength, the 
 plight of the whites would indeed be pitiable. 
 
 About this time a Choctaw chief of influence 
 with his people, by name Pushmatahaw, arrived 
 at St. Stephen s, and declared that he could in 
 duce a considerable number of the Choctaw 
 warriors to enlist in the American service, if per 
 mission were given to him to recruit among them. 
 
PUSHMATAIIAW AND HIS WARRIORS. 133 
 
 Eagerly grasping at this hope, Colonel George S. 
 Gaines* went with the chief to Mobile to secure 
 the desired authority from General Flournoy, 
 who was now in command of the South-western 
 Department. 
 
 That officer, for some reason which is not ap 
 parent, declined to accept the proffered services 
 of the Choctaws, and Colonel Gaines and his 
 companion returned with heavy hearts to St. 
 Stephen s, where the news they brought created 
 the profounclest dissatisfaction. Before the 
 friendly chief had taken his departure, however, 
 a courier from General Flournoy arrived, bring 
 ing; an order which directed Colonel Gaines to 
 
 o 
 
 accept the chief s offer of assistance, and to ac 
 company him to the Choctaw Nation to enlist the 
 men. 
 
 With a single white companion Colonel Gaines 
 went with Pushmatahaw to the nation, where, 
 gathering the Choctaws into a council, the chief 
 made them a speech, saying that Tecumseh, who 
 had suggested this war, was a bad man. He 
 added : 
 
 * Colonel Gaines was still living in the year 1866 at State Line, 
 Mississippi. The author met him in that year engaged, old and 
 feeble as h*e was, in a charitable work that involved cousiderable 
 labor. 
 
134 RED EAGLE. 
 
 "He came through our country, but did not 
 turn our heads. He went amo ig the Muscogees, 
 and got many of them to join him. You know 
 the Tensaw people. They were our friends. 
 They played ball with us. They sheltered and 
 fed us when we went to Pensacola. Where are 
 they now ? Their bodies are rotting at Sam 
 Mims s place. The people at St. Stephen s are 
 also our friends. The Muscogees intend to kill 
 them too. They want soldiers to defend them. 
 You can all do as you please. You are free men. 
 I dictate to none of you ; but I shall join the St. 
 Stephen s people. If you have a mind to follow 
 me, I will lead you to glory and to victory." 
 
 Pushmatahaw finished this speech with his 
 drawn sword in his- hand. When he paused, one 
 of the hitherto silent warriors stood up and, 
 striking his breast with his open palm, after the 
 manner of the Choctaws on specially solemn oc 
 casions, said, " I am a man ; I will follow you ;" 
 whereupon his fellows imitated his example, and 
 thus a considerable force of men, who might have 
 been added to Weatherford s strength but for the 
 friendliness of Pushmatahaw, became active 
 friends of the whites. 
 
 But a new factor of very much greater value 
 was now about to enter into the problem and 
 
PUSHMATAHAW AND HIS WARRIORS. 135 
 
 totally change its conditions. Andrew Jackson, 
 the sternest and most energetic of Indian fighters, 
 was coming with his Tennessee volunteers to 
 reverse the situation of affairs. The Creeks, who 
 were now hunting the whites like wild beasts, 
 were presently to become the hunted party, with 
 Andrew Jackson upon their track. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 
 
 BAD news travels rapidly, and the news of the 
 terrible massacre at Fort Mims was soon known 
 in all parts of the South and West. There were 
 neither railroads nor steamboats in those days, 
 and between the Tensaw settlement and the rest 
 of the country there were not even stage-coaches 
 running, or mail-riders on horseback. It took 
 more than a month for the swiftest messenger 
 from Southern Alabama to reach New York, and 
 nearly as long to reach Washington City ; but 
 when Red Eagle had shown of what mettle he 
 was made, General Claiborne, who in his double 
 capacity as Governor of Louisiana and general in 
 the field was doubly interested, became greatly 
 alarmed, and that with good reason. The British 
 were threatening the coast, and Weatherford 
 now appeared to threaten Mobile. The situa 
 tion was, indeed, an alarming one. It was pretty 
 clear that Weatherford was already acting in con 
 cert, more or less direct, with the enemy with 
 out ; and if he should take the town of Mobile, as 
 
JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 137 
 
 he was probably able to do, securing a base of 
 operations for a British force, he might easily 
 turn back and utterly destroy the settlements, 
 while the few troops within reach should be en 
 gaged with the British. 
 
 In this perilous situation of affairs it was use 
 less for General Claiborne, or his superior officer, 
 General Flournoy, to appeal to the government 
 at Washington for aid. Even if the troops of the 
 Government had not been fully occupied already 
 in other parts of the country, the distance was so 
 great that any assistance which the general gov 
 ernment might be able to render must of neces 
 sity come too late to be of any avail. It would 
 take a month for the messenger asking for help 
 to reach Washington, another month for a force 
 to be gathered, and perhaps two months more for 
 it to reach the exposed point. Three or four 
 months at least, and probably a greater time, must 
 pass before help could come from that quarter, 
 and it might as well have taken a hundred years, 
 so far as all practical purposes were concerned. 
 
 The only resource, therefore, was an appeal to 
 the people of the surrounding States. Messen 
 gers were sent in hot haste to South Carolina, 
 Georgia, and Tennessee, carrying despatches 
 which simply set forth the facts and the danger, 
 
I 3 3 RED EAGLE. 
 
 a;rl asked for help. The response was quick and 
 generous. Georgians and South Carolinians be 
 gan at once to organize forces, which soon after- 
 \vard invaded the Creek country. But the most 
 efficient aid was to come from Tennessee, a State 
 which had already shown itself quick to answer 
 to every demand made upon it. It had furnished 
 its full quotas of men to the national army ; and 
 less than a year before the time of which we now 
 write, it had sent a full division of volunteers 
 under Jackson to reinforce the army at New 
 Orleans. This division had been ordered to dis 
 band while at Natchez, when they were without 
 money or provisions with which to reach their 
 homes, but Jackson had resolutely disobeyed the 
 order, and instead of disbanding his division had 
 marched it back to Tennessee in a body. 
 
 There had been loud murmurs at the treatment 
 these volunteers had received, but when the news 
 came that the people of the Tensaw country 
 were suffering brutal butchery at the hands of 
 savages, and that Mobile was threatened, Ten 
 nessee hushed her murmurs, and promptly re 
 sponded to the call. 
 
 On the 1 8th day of September, the people of 
 Nashville assembled in a public meeting to con 
 sider the news which had just been received. 
 
JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 139 
 
 General Jackson lay upon his bed, weak, emaci- 
 Ated, and racked with pain from a wound re 
 ceived in a street fight ; but everybody felt that 
 his counsel ia matters of this kind was essential. 
 Indeed, it was known that upon the question of his 
 ability to lead the forces that were to be raised 
 their success in raising forces at all must in a 
 great measure depend. The meeting, therefore, 
 did no business on the first day, except to express 
 its members determination to render assistance 
 to their brethren in the South, and to appoint a 
 committee, headed by Colonel (afterward General) 
 Coffee, to consult with the Governor of the State 
 and with General Jackson, and to report the result. 
 
 This committee went to Jackson s chamber and 
 told him the story of Fort Minis, and of the need 
 there was for him to lead the Tennessee volun 
 teers. They assured him also that if they could 
 give his name to the people as the leader who 
 would head them, the volunteers would flock to 
 the standard of the State at once. 
 
 Jackson replied that he was recovering, al 
 though he was still confined to his bed, and that 
 he thought he should be well enough to mount 
 his horse by the time the troops could be got 
 r?aclv to march. In that event he promised to 
 t..l;2 command. 
 
140 RED EAGLE. 
 
 With this news the committee went to the cler 
 gyman who was chairman of the public meeting, 
 and that patriotic man, dismissing all thought of 
 his regular church services, called the meeting 
 together again the next morning, which happened 
 to be Sunday. The voice of the meeting and of 
 the people of the State was unanimous. Mr. 
 Parton, in his Life of Andrew Jackson, writes : 
 
 " The news of the massacre produced every 
 where in Tennessee the most profound impres 
 sion. Pity for the distressed Alabamians, fears 
 for the safety of their own borders, rage against 
 the Creeks, so long the recipients of the gover- 
 mental bounty, united to inflame the minds of 
 the people. But one feeling pervaded the state. 
 With one vow it was decreed that the entire re 
 sources and the whole available force of Tennessee 
 should be hurled upon the savage foe, to avenge 
 the massacre and deliver the southern country." 
 
 There was unfortunately no law of the State 
 under which anybody was authorized to call out 
 the needed men, and although Governor Blount 
 was ready to approve and actively to encourage 
 the gathering of Tennessee s strength and its use 
 in this way, he had no legal authority to promise 
 pay or support to the troops. This defect was 
 repaired by the Legislature within a week. That 
 
JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 14! 
 
 body passed a bill authorizing the Governor to 
 enlist three thousand five hundred men for this 
 service, voting three hundred thousand dollars 
 for expenses, and pledging the State to support 
 and pay the men, if the general government 
 should refuse or neglect to accept the force as a 
 part of its volunteer army. 
 
 Meantime, from his sick bed, and without wait 
 ing for the processes of law, General Jackson 
 called for volunteers. He published an address, 
 in which he said to his Tennesseeans : 
 
 The horrid butcheries perpetrating on our 
 defenceless fellow-citizens near Fort Stoddard 
 cannot fail to excite in every bosom a spirit of re 
 venge. The subjoined letter of our worthy Gov 
 ernor shows that the general government has de 
 posited no authority in this quarter to afford 
 aid to the unhappy sufferers. It is wished that 
 volunteers should go forward, relying on the jus 
 tice of the general government for ultimate re 
 muneration. It surely never would be said that 
 the brave Tennesseeans wanted other inducements 
 than patriotism and humanity to rush to the aid 
 of our bleeding neighbors, their friends and rela 
 tions. I feel confident that the dull calculations 
 of sneaking prudence will not prevent you from 
 immediately stepping forth on this occasion, so 
 
142 RED EAGLE. 
 
 worthy the arm of every brave soldier and good 
 citizen. I regret that indisposition, which from 
 present appearances is not likely to continue 
 long, may prevent me from leading the van ; but 
 indulge the grateful hope of sharing with you the 
 dangers and glory of prostrating these hell 
 hounds, who are capable of such barbarities." 
 
 Jackson was in a hurry. Every day at such a 
 time was precious, and hence he was determined 
 to waste no time coddling his worn and wounded 
 body. He issued his addresses and his orders 
 from his sick-bed ; concerted measures with 
 General John Cocke, who was to command the 
 troops from the eastern half of the State, and 
 made arrangements for provisions. On the 26th 
 day of September, just one week after the Sun 
 day when the public meeting had been held, he 
 sent Coffee forward with the advance of his army 
 a body of horsemen numbering somewhat more 
 than five hundred. Coffee received volunteers 
 at every cross-road, and by the time he arrived 
 at Fayetteville, Alabama, the appointed place of 
 rendezvous, his five hundred men had increased 
 to one thousand three hundred. 
 
 Jackson had to be helped on his horse when he 
 set out to join the army he had raised so speedily. 
 His arm was still encased in the surgeon s wrap- 
 
JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 143 
 
 pings, and carried in a sling. He could put but 
 one arm into his coat-sleeve, and he was so weak 
 that it was with difficulty that he could ride at 
 all ; but there was that in his composition which 
 had already gained for him his nickname, " Old 
 Hickory ;" it was the tough hickory of his nature 
 which supplied the place of physical strength, 
 and enabled him to march. Everywhere he is 
 sued his proclamations and addresses, couched in 
 strong, vigorous, though not always graceful, 
 English : a practice for which he has been laughed 
 at sometimes, but one which was wise, neverthe 
 less. He knew his Tennesseeans, and adapted his 
 measures to their character. They were an im 
 pulsive race of men, full of warm blood, which 
 was easily stirred by such appeals as Jackson 
 made to them, though they would not have been 
 moved by a colder species of address. 
 
 Having secured his men, Jackson s next care 
 was to convert them as rapidly as possible into 
 soldiers, and accordingly his next appeal was 
 directed to this end. Finding that he would not 
 be able to reach Fayetteville at the exact time 
 appointed for the rendezvous, he sent an officer 
 forward with the following address, which was 
 read to the troops : 
 
 We are about to furnish these savages a les- 
 
144 RED EAGLE. 
 
 son of admonition. We are about to teach them 
 that our long forbearance has not proceeded from 
 an insensibility to wrongs or an inability to re 
 dress them. They stand in need of such warn 
 ing. In proportion as we have borne with their 
 insults and submitted to their outrages, they 
 have multiplied in number and increased in atro 
 city. But the measure of their offences is at length 
 filled. The blood of our women and children 
 recently spilt at Fort Minis calls for our ven 
 geance ; it must not call in vain. Our borders 
 must no longer be disturbed by the war-whoop 
 of these savages and the cries of their suffering 
 victims. The torch that has been lighted up must 
 be made to blaze in the heart of their own coun 
 try. It is time they should be made to feel the 
 weight of a power which, because it was merci 
 ful, they believed to be impotent. But how shall 
 a war so long forborne, and so loudly called for 
 by retributive justice, be waged ? Shall we imi 
 tate the example of our enemies in the disorder 
 of their movements and the savageness of their 
 dispositions ? Is it worthy the character of 
 American soldiers, who take up arms to redfess 
 the wrongs of our injured country, to assume no 
 better models than those furnished them by bar 
 barians ? No, fellow-soldiers, great as are the 
 
JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE. 145 
 
 grievances that have called us from our homes, 
 we must not permit disorderly passions to tarnish 
 the reputation AVC shall carry along with us. We 
 must and will be victorious ; but we must con 
 quer as men who owe nothing to chance, and 
 who in the midst of victory can still be mindful 
 of what is due to humanity ! We will commence 
 the campaign by an inviolable attention to disci 
 pline and subordination. Without a strict observ 
 ance of these, victory must ever be uncertain, and 
 ought hardly to be exulted in even when gained. 
 To what but the entire disregard of order and 
 subordination are we to ascribe the disasters 
 which have attended our arms in the north dur 
 ing the present war ? How glorious will it be to 
 remove the blots which have tarnished the fair 
 character bequeathed us by the fathers of our 
 Revolution ! The bosom of your general is full 
 of hope. He knows the ardor which animates 
 you, and already exults in the triumph which 
 your strict observance of discipline and good 
 order will render certain." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE MARCH INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 
 
 COFFEE had pushed on with his cavalry bri 
 gade to Huntsville, Alabama, thirty-two miles 
 beyond Fayetteville, without waiting for Jackson. 
 At Fayetteville, Jackson found the army to whom 
 he had issued his proclamation, but their num 
 bers were much smaller than he had hoped not 
 exceeding- a thousand men ; and it would have 
 been necessary, probably, to wait for recruits to 
 come in, if there had been no other cause for 
 waiting. Every thing had to be clone, and day 
 and night Jackson was busy with details pertain 
 ing to the organization, the drilling, and the dis 
 ciplining of the troops ; for this volunteer general 
 knew, as few volunteers do, how greatly disci 
 pline and drill increase the strength of an armed 
 force. 
 
 Luckily he had time for this, somewhat unex- 
 pectedly. He had supposed that the victorious 
 Creeks would march upon Mobile, and his haste 
 was largely due to his anxiety to attack them in 
 rear, and thus save the important seaport and 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 147 
 
 prevent a junction of the Creeks with the British. 
 Soon after his arrival at Fayetteville, however, 
 which was on the 7th of October, Jackson received 
 a despatch from General Coffee, saying that in 
 stead of marching upon Mobile the Creeks were 
 moving northward in two columns, threatening 
 Georgia and Tennessee. 
 
 Why Red Eagle pursued this course was long 
 a puzzle to students of the campaign. He 
 was so manifestly a man of quick and accurate 
 perceptions in military matters, that he must have 
 seen how entirely Mobile was within his grasp, 
 and how great an advantage it would be to him 
 to capture or destroy the town ; and when he 
 neglected such in opportunity it was not easy to 
 guess why he did so. The mystery was solved 
 when a letter was found in his own house a 
 month or so later, dated September 29th, 1813, 
 fr >m Manxique, the Spanish Governor of Florida. 
 Tliis letter was addressed to the chiefs of the 
 Creek nation, and was in these words : 
 
 " GENTLEMEN : I received the letter that you 
 wrote me in the month of August, by which, and 
 with great satisfaction, I was informed of the ad 
 vantages which your brave warriors obtained over 
 your enemies. I represented, as I promised you, 
 
148 RED EAGLE. 
 
 to the Captain-General of the Havana, the request 
 which, the last time I took you by the hand, you 
 made me of arms and ammunitions ; but until now 
 I .cannot yet have an answer. But I am in 
 hopes that he will send me the effects which I 
 requested, and as soon as I receive them I 
 shall inform you. I am very thankful for your 
 generous offers to procure to me the provisions 
 and warriors necessary in order to retake the port 
 of Mobile, and you ask me at the same time if we 
 have given up Mobile to the Americans : to which 
 I answer, for the present I cannot profit of your 
 generous offer, not being at war with the Ameri 
 cans, who did not take Mobile by force, since they 
 purchased it from the miserable officer, destitute 
 of honor, who commanded there, and delivered it 
 without authority. By which reasons the sale 
 and delivery of that place is entirely void and 
 null, and I hope that the Americans will restore it 
 again to us, because nobody can dispose of thing 
 that is not his own property ; in consequence of 
 which the Spaniards have not lost their right to 
 it. And I hope you will not put in execution the 
 project you tell me of, to burn the town, since 
 these houses and properties do not belong to the 
 Americans, but to true Spaniards. To the bear 
 ers of your letter I have ordered some small pres- 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 149 
 
 ents to be given, and I remain forever your good 
 father and friend, MANXIQUE. " 
 
 It is a pleasure to reflect, that about a year 
 later, Jackson, acting on his own responsibility, 
 marched to Pensacola and humiliated the succes 
 sor of this especial rascal, who wrote about honor 
 in a letter in which he was encouraging and plan 
 ning to furnish arms and ammunition to savages 
 who were butchering the people of a nation with 
 whom his own country was at peace. 
 
 The letter explains Weatherford s course. He 
 was acting from the first in concert with this 
 Spanish governor, from whom he was drawing 
 his arms and ammunition ; and while he wanted 
 to burn Mobile, he knew that he must first ask 
 Manxique s permission. Accordingly, he must 
 have sent a letter to that ally on the very day of 
 the massacre at Fort Minis, or on the next day at 
 latest. That massacre began at noon and ended 
 at five o clock on the 3Oth day of August ; and 
 Manxique speaks of the letter reporting the victory 
 as " the letter that you wrote me in the month of 
 August." It is thus clear that Weatherford s 
 military instincts were neither asleep nor at fault 
 when he finished that bloody day s work ; that 
 he saw both the possibility and the advantage of 
 
150 RED EAGLE. 
 
 destroying Mobile, and at once asked permission 
 to do so. The letter denying that permission to 
 him was dated September 2Qth ; and, as he was 
 marching upon Tennessee and Georgia early in 
 October, it is apparent that he had only waited 
 for the arrival of the Spanish governor s reply, 
 before renewing his campaign. While he hoped 
 for permission to destroy the seaport town, he 
 waited ; the moment he knew that he must not 
 do that, he began his northward and eastward 
 march, to strike his enemies in another quarter. 
 His failure to march upon Mobile has been cited 
 by some writers to prove that Weatherford was 
 after all only an Indian, without real military 
 capacity ; in the light of all the facts, as they are 
 revealed by the letter quoted, his proceedings 
 prove precisely the reverse. We are indebted for 
 the sparing of Mobile, not to incompetency on 
 Weatherford s part, but to the greed of the Span 
 iard, who hesitated to permit the. destruction of 
 property which he hoped to get possession of by 
 other means. 
 
 When Coffee s report of the advance of the 
 Creeks came, the news greatly relieved Jackson 
 of anxiety. It freed him from apprehensio.n con 
 cerning Mobile ; it promised to save him from a 
 and wearying march through a wilderness, 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNNRY. 151 
 
 and to enable him to meet the enemy sooner than 
 would otherwise have been possible ; and his chief 
 desire now was to hurl his army with crushing 
 force against the Creeks, to make unceasing war 
 upon them, and to break their power as speedily 
 as possible. He was so elated at the prospect of 
 an early encounter with them, that he wrote in a 
 playful vein to Coffee, saying : " It is surely high 
 gratification to learn that the Creeks are so atten 
 tive to my situation as to save me the pain of 
 travelling. L must not be outdone in politeness, 
 and will therefore endeavor to meet them on mid 
 dle ground/ * 
 
 A good deal remained to be done, and arrange 
 ments were not yet complete for the procuring of 
 provisions. Coffee was at Huntsville, and was 
 watching for the enemy. On the i ith of October, 
 Coffee reported the Indian advance, and Jackson 
 marched on the instant, arriving at Huntsville 
 that evening. At Huntsville it was necessary to 
 await the arrival of provisions for the army. Sup 
 plies from East Tennessee had been sent down 
 the river, but a failure of water in the shallow 
 stream detained them on the way. Jackson 
 marched to Ditto s landing to await their coming ; 
 but they came not, and relief seemed to be impos 
 
 * Parton s " Life of Jackson." 
 
152 RED EAGLE. 
 
 sible. Jackson was in a sore strait. Me wanted 
 to advance, but was without provisions or an im 
 mediate prospect of getting any. He ordered 
 Coffee with his cavalry to scour the Indian coun 
 try for supplies, while with the main army he 
 made a toilsome march, over a mountainous coun 
 try, to Thompson s Creek, about twenty miles 
 higher up the river, for the double purpose of 
 meeting the expected provisions there, and of 
 putting himself in the way of marching the more 
 quickly to the relief of a body of friendly Indians 
 Avho occupied a fort at the Ten Islands, on the 
 Coosa River. 
 
 Meantime, Jackson sent messengers in every 
 direction, urging everybody in any sort of author 
 ity to hurry the supplies forward. At Thomp 
 son s Creek he built a fort, as a base of supplies 
 for the campaign. His plight was desperate, but 
 he would not stay where he was or fall back. 
 With food or without it, he meant to march into 
 the Indian country and dare starvation as he braved 
 the other perils of war. It is related of him that 
 at one time during the campaign, when the men 
 ^ r ere without provisions, one of them saw him 
 eating something, and mutinously demanded a 
 share of the food. 
 
 " Certainly," replied Jackson, thrusting his 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 153 
 
 hand into his pocket and offering the man some 
 acorns. He was literally living on acorns while 
 marching and fighting night and day. 
 
 The state of affairs when Jackson was about 
 leaving Fort Deposit, on Thompson s Creek, 
 where he tarried but a single day, may be inferred 
 from a letter written by Major John Reid, of the 
 general s staff, from which we copy some pas 
 sages. The whole letter is printed in Parton s 
 Life of Jackson. 
 
 " At this place we have remained a day for 
 the purpose of establishing a depot for provi 
 sions ; but where these provisions are to come 
 from God Almighty only knows. We had ex 
 pected supplies from East Tennessee, but they 
 have not arrived, and I am fearful never will. 
 I speak seriously when I declare I expect we 
 shall soon have to eat our horses, and perhaps 
 this is the best use we can put a great many of 
 them to. 
 
 The hostile Creeks, as we learnt yesterday 
 from the Path Killer, are assembling in great 
 numbers within fifteen miles from Turkey Town. 
 Chenully, who is posted with the friendly Creeks 
 in the neighborhood of that place, it is feared will 
 be destroyed before we can arrive to their relief. 
 In three days we shall probably have a fight. The 
 
154 RED EAGLE. 
 
 general swears he will neither sound a retreat nor 
 survive a defeat. . . . We shall leave this 
 place with less than two days provisions." 
 
 It seems almost incredible that a general should 
 venture to advance into an enemy s country, be 
 ginning the march with only provisions enough 
 to last his force for a day or two, and with no 
 assurance, scarcely even a hope, that provisions 
 were likely to follow him ; but this is what Jack 
 son did. 
 
 Coffee joined him on the march, bringing with 
 him a few hundreds of bushels of corn, and report 
 ing that he had destroyed some Indian towns, but 
 had encountered none of the Indians. The corn 
 was a mere handful among the men and horses of 
 the army, but cries for help were coming every 
 hour from the friendly Indians, whose situation 
 at the Ten Islands was desperate, and Jackson 
 marched forward, trusting to chance for supplies. 
 He meant to fight first and find something to eat 
 afterward. 
 
 As has been said, the army remained but one 
 day at Fort Deposit, and during that day con 
 structed a fortress ; but Jackson found time in 
 which to write an address to his men, whom he 
 was now about to lead upon a campaign in which 
 they would encounter famine and hardships of the 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 155 
 
 sorest kind, as well as the savage enemy. They 
 needed all the courage that enthusiasm in the 
 cause could give them, and the address was de 
 signed to key them up, so to speak, to the pitch 
 of their commander s temper. The address read 
 as follows : 
 
 " You have, fellow-soldiers, at length penetrat 
 ed the country of your enemies. It is not to be 
 believed that they will abandon the soil that em 
 bosoms the bones of their forefathers without 
 furnishing you an opportunity of signalizing your 
 valor. Wise men do not expect, brave men will 
 not desire it. It was not to travel unmolested 
 through a barren wilderness that you quitted 
 your families and homes, and submitted to so 
 many privations : it was to revenge the cruleties 
 committed upon your defenceless frontiers by the 
 inhuman Creeks, instigated by their no less inhu 
 man allies ; you shall not be disappointed. 
 
 " If the enemy flee before us we will overtake 
 and chastise him ; we will teach him how dread 
 ful, when once aroused, is the resentment of free 
 men. But it is not by boasting that punishment 
 is to be inflicted or victory obtained. The same 
 resolution that prompted us to take up arms must 
 inspire us in battle. Men thus animated and 
 thus resolved, barbarians can never conquer ; and 
 
156 RED EAGLE. 
 
 it is an enemy barbarous in the extreme that we 
 have now to face. Their reliance will be on the 
 damage they can do you while you are asleep and 
 unprepared for action ; their hopes shall fail them 
 in the hour of experiment. Soldiers who know 
 their duty and are ambitious to perform it are not 
 to be taken by surprise. Our sentinels will never 
 sleep, nor our soldiers be unprepared for action ; 
 yet while it is enjoined upon the sentinels vigi 
 lantly to watch the approach of the foe, they are 
 at the same time commanded not to fire at shad 
 ows. Imaginary dangers must not deprive them 
 of entire self-possession. Our soldiers will lie 
 with their arms in their hands ; and the moment 
 an alarm is given they will move to their respec 
 tive positions without noise and without confu 
 sion. They will thus be enabled to hear the orders 
 of their officers, and to obey them with prompti 
 tude. 
 
 " Great reliance will be placed by the enemy, 
 on the consternation they may be able to spread 
 through our ranks by the hideous yells with which 
 they commence their battles ; but brave men will 
 laugh at such efforts to alarm them. It is not by 
 bellowings and screams that the wounds of death 
 are inflicted. You will teach these noisy assail 
 ants how weak are their weapons of warfare, by 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 157 
 
 opposing them with the bayonet. What Indian 
 ever withstood its charge ? What army of any 
 nation ever withstood it long ? 
 
 " Yes, soldiers, the order for a charge will be 
 the signal for victory. In that moment your en 
 emy will be seen flying in every direction before 
 you. But in the moment of action coolness and 
 deliberation must be regarded ; your fire made 
 with precision and aim ; and w r hen ordered to 
 charge with the bayonet you must proceed to the 
 assault with a quick and firm step, without trepi 
 dation or alarm. Then shall you behold the com 
 pletion of your hopes, in the discomfiture of your 
 enemy. Your general, w r hose duty as well as in 
 clination is to watch over your safety, will not, to 
 gratify any .wishes of his own, rush you unneces 
 sarily into danger. He knows, however, that it 
 is not in assailing an enemy that men are de 
 stroyed ; it is when retreating and in confusion. 
 Aware of this, he will be prompted as much by 
 a regard for your lives as your honor. He la 
 ments that he has been compelled, even incident 
 ally, to hint at a retreat when speaking to freemen 
 and to soldiers. Never until you forget all that 
 is due to yourselves and your country will you 
 have any practical understanding of that Avord. 
 Shall an enemy wholly unacquainted with military 
 
158 RED EAGLE. 
 
 evolutions, and who rely more for victory on their 
 grim visages and hideous yells than upon their 
 bravery or their weapons shall such an enemy 
 ever drive before them the well-trained youths of 
 our country, whose bosoms pant for glory, and a 
 desire to avenge the wrongs they have received ? 
 Your general will not live to behold such a spec 
 tacle ; rather would he rush into the thickest of 
 the enemy and submit himself to their scalping- 
 knives. But he has no fears of such a result. He 
 knows the valor of the men he commands, and 
 how certainly that valor, regulated as it will be, 
 will lead to victory. With his soldiers he will 
 face all dangers, and with them participate in the 
 glory of conquest." 
 
 Nothing 1 could have been better fitted than this 
 
 o 
 
 address was to serve the end for which it was 
 designed. Jackson knew his Tennesseeans, both 
 in their temper and in their habits ; and he adroitly 
 managed to warn them against the consequences 
 of those faults which were most prominent in 
 their characters, while seeming merely to appeal 
 in a stimulating fashion to their pride of courage. 
 He knew, as they did not, how trying the hard 
 ships of a campaign in a wilderness with insuffici 
 ent supplies are ; he knew how prone raw troops 
 
INTO THE ENEMY S COUNTRY. 159 
 
 are to fall into confusion and panic in the excite 
 ment of a sudden attack ; and against all these 
 things he did what could be done to brace them 
 by an adroit appeal to their pride of race and of 
 personal courage. If some of his expressions 
 seem to suggest any thing like contempt of the 
 Creeks as foes, they were meant merely to arouse 
 the pride of his own men, and indicated no dispo 
 sition on his part not to " respect his enemy," as 
 Claiborne said. On the contrary, he showed the 
 profoundest respect for his enemy by his extreme 
 solicitude about the condition and the conduct of 
 his own men. 
 
 The marching was now as nearly continuous 
 as was possible in the circumstances. Frequent 
 pauses had to be made, in order that provisions 
 might be gathered from the surrounding country, 
 but as soon as there was food in camp the march 
 was resumed. 
 
 On the 28th of October, a detachment under 
 command of Colonel Dyer left the main body, 
 and the next day attacked the Indian village of 
 Littefutchee, surprising it before daylight in the 
 morning, destroying it, and bringing in twenty- 
 nine prisoners as the first-fruits of the campaign. 
 
 This was the beginning of a series of battles 
 
l6o RED EAGLE. 
 
 which followed each other in as rapid succession 
 as the starving condition of the army permitted. 
 Jackson was now in the enemy s country, * and 
 within striking- distance of his strategic points. 
 How vigorously and persistently he struck, we 
 shall see in the chapters which follow. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF TALLUSHATCHEE. 
 
 ON the second clay of November, Jackson 
 learned that a considerable force of the enemy 
 was gathered at Tallushatchee, an Indian town 
 about ten miles from the Ten Islands. He had 
 no sooner received this information than he or 
 dered Coffee with about nine hundred men to 
 attack the post. 
 
 Coffee marched on the moment, taking Avith 
 him a company of friendly Indians, mostly Che- 
 rokees, under Richard Brown. To prevent er 
 rors the Indians in the expedition wore white 
 feathers and deer-tails on their heads. 
 
 The expedition crossed the river a few miles 
 above the Ten Islands, and advanced during the 
 night, arriving in the immediate neighborhood of 
 the town about daybreak on the 3d of November. 
 The purpose was not merely to defeat but to de 
 stroy the Indian force, and therefore, instead of 
 dashing at once into the town, Coffee divided his 
 force in half, sending Colonel Allcorn with the 
 cavalry to the right, while he himself, in com- 
 
l62 RED EAGLE. 
 
 pany with Colonel Cannon, marched to the left 
 around the place, keeping at a sufficient distance 
 to avoid alarming the Indians. 
 
 When the heads of the two columns met, the 
 town was entirely surrounded. Notwithstanding 
 the caution with which this movement was exe 
 cuted, the Indians discovered the presence of the 
 enemy when the troops were half a mile distant. 
 They beat their drums and yelled in savage fash 
 ion, but remained on the defensive, awaiting the 
 attack. 
 
 About sunrise, every thing being in readiness, 
 General Coffee sent two companies forward into 
 the town, without breaking his circular align 
 ment, instructing the officers in command of them 
 to make an assault and bring on the action. The 
 manoeuvre was altogether successful. As soon 
 as the two companies made their attack, the In 
 dians, confident that this was the whole of the 
 assaulting column, rushed out of their houses and 
 other hiding-places; and charged their assailants 
 with great vigor. The companies of whites there 
 upon began falling back and the Creeks pursued 
 them hotly. When the main line was reached, it 
 delivered a volley into the midst of the advancing 
 savages, and immediately charged them, driving 
 them back in confusion to the shelter of their 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLUSIIATCIIEE. 163 
 
 houses. Here the Creeks fought with the utmost 
 desperation, refusing quarter, obstinately resisting 
 when resistance was manifestly in vain, and choos 
 ing to die where they stood, rather than yield 
 even to Coffee s overwhelming numbers. 
 
 General Coffee said in his report of the affair : 
 "The enemy retreated, firing, until they got 
 around and in their buildings, where they made 
 all the resistance that an overpowered soldier 
 could do. They fought as long as one existed ; 
 but their destruction was very soon completed. 
 Our men rushed up to the doors of the houses, 
 and in a few minutes killed the last warrior of 
 them. The enemy fought with savage fury, and 
 met death with all its horrors, without shrinking 
 or complaining ; not one asked to be spared, but 
 [they] fought as long as they could stand or sit. 
 In consequence of their flying to their houses and 
 mixing with their families, our men, in killing the 
 males, without intention killed and wounded a 
 few of the squaws and children, which was re 
 gretted by every officer and soldier of the detach 
 ment, but which could not be avoided." 
 
 Coffee counted one hundred and eighty-six dead 
 bodies of Indians, and, as many of them fell in the 
 grass and high weeds, where their bodies were 
 not easily found, he expressed the opinion in his 
 
164 RED EAGLE. 
 
 report that the number of killed did not fall short 
 of two hundred, while his own loss was five men 
 killed and forty-one wounded, most of the wounds 
 being slight and none of them mortal. For the 
 first time in the history of Indian warfare, the fight 
 ing force of the savages in this battle was utterly 
 destroyed, not a single warrior escaping alive. 
 
 There were eighty -four prisoners taken, all of 
 them being women and children. Not only Gen 
 eral Coffee, but his officers and men also, would 
 gladly have ended the fight as soon as victory 
 was theirs, sparing the warriors who had survived 
 the first onset, and they constantly offered quarter 
 not only to bodies of men who were fighting to 
 gether, but to single individuals who were mani 
 festly at their mercy, and to wounded warriors ; 
 but their offers of mercy were indignantly rejected 
 in every case, and they therefore had no choice 
 but to convert the battle into a massacre more com 
 plete than that which had occurred at Fort Mims, 
 except that the women and children were spared ; 
 but this time the butchery was forced upon the 
 victors against their will, while at Fort Mims the 
 triumphant savages had willingly indulged in in 
 discriminate slaughter. 
 
 Coffee at once took up his return march and 
 rejoined Jackson, who sent a brief despatch re- 
 
THE BATTLE OF TAI.LUSHATCHEE. 165 
 
 porting the affair to Governor Blount, praising 
 Coffee and his men in the strongest terms, and 
 ending with that plaintive plea for food for his 
 army, which was now constantly on his lips. " If 
 we had a sufficient supply of provisions," he 
 wrote, " we should in a very short time accom 
 plish the object of the expedition." 
 
 The most encouraging thing about this affair 
 was the good conduct of the men. They mani 
 fested so little of the spirit of raw and undiscip 
 lined troops ; they fought with so much coolness 
 and steadiness, and went through the battle show 
 ing so few signs of that excitement which com 
 monly impairs the efficiency of inexperienced 
 soldiers, that their commander felt a confidence 
 in them which justified him in attempting more 
 than he would otherwise have dared in the cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 Mr. Parton, in his Life of Andrew Jackson, 
 preserves a story which grew out of this battle, 
 and which so strongly illustrates the softer side 
 of a stern soldier s character, that we may be par 
 doned for breaking the narrative to copy it here. 
 
 " On the bloody field of Tallushatchee was 
 found a slain mother still embracing her living 
 infant. The child was brought into camp with 
 the other prisoners, and Jackson, anxious to save 
 
1 66 RED EAGLE. 
 
 it, endeavored to induce some of the Indian 
 women to give it nourishment. No, said they, 
 4 a l his relatives are dead; kill him too. This 
 reply appealed to the heart of the general. He 
 caused the child to be taken to his own hut, where 
 among the few remaining stores was found a little 
 brown sugar. This, mingled with water, served 
 to keep the child alive until it could be sent to 
 Huntsville, where it was nursed at Jackson s ex 
 pense until the end of the campaign, and then 
 taken to the Hermitage. Mrs. Jackson received 
 it cordially, and the boy grew up in the family, 
 treated by the general and his kind wife as a son 
 and a favorite. Lincoyer was the name given 
 him by the general. He grew to be a finely formed 
 and robust youth, and received the education 
 usually given to the planters sons in the neigh 
 borhood. Yet it appears he remained an Indian 
 to the last, delighting to roam the fields and 
 woods, and decorate his hair and clothes with 
 gay feathers, and given to strong yearnings for 
 his native wilds." 
 
 The boy did not live to reach manhood, how 
 ever. In his seventeenth year he fell a victim to 
 pulmonary consumption, and when he died his 
 benefactor mourned him as bitterly as if he had 
 been indeed his son. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA. 
 
 WHERE was General Cocke with the troops 
 from East Tennessee all this time ? It will be re 
 membered that he was to muster twenty-five hun 
 dred men in his half of the state, while Jackson 
 gathered a like number in the west, and marching 
 southward the two were to form a junction in the 
 Creek country. Meantime General Cocke had 
 undertaken to procure in East Tennessee supplies 
 for the whole force. The supplies, as we know, 
 had not come, and Jackson had marched without 
 them. Now he expected General Cocke daily, 
 with his force and his supplies; but they came 
 not, and Jackson was greatly disappointed. 
 
 The fact was that General Cocke had been de 
 layed by precisely the same lack of breadstuffs 
 that had embarrassed General Jackson. He had 
 collected supplies, indeed, and ordered them for 
 ward by way of the river, but for lack of water 
 they had not come, and at last, like Jackson, he 
 began his march without them. He started south 
 from Knoxville on the I3th of October, and after 
 
1 68 RED EAGLE. 
 
 a considerable delay on the route, abandoned all 
 hope of receiving the supplies, and depended 
 thereafter upon such aid as the friendly Cherokees 
 could give him in the way of furnishing provi 
 sions. General White had marched separately 
 with his brigade, and when he joined General 
 Cocke his men were in a starving condition. 
 
 While marching in a column separate from 
 Jackson s, General Cocke was an independent 
 commander. If he should join Jackson, whose 
 commission was older than his own, the East 
 Tennessee commander must become subordinate 
 to the authority of Jackson. The fact that he did 
 not form the contemplated union of forces, but 
 acted separately, and the additional fact that his 
 separate action led to a blunder which added 
 greatly to the horrors of the war, caused Jackson 
 great annoyance, and subjected General Cocke to 
 the severest criticism. He was accused of an un 
 due and culpable jealousy of Jackson, of self-seek 
 ing, and of perverse disobedience of orders. To 
 all of this we shall come presently. The matter is 
 mentioned now merely because it is necessary to 
 know this much about it in order that we may 
 properly understand the events to be immediately 
 narrated. 
 
 As soon as Coffee s command returned from 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA. 169 
 
 the Tallushatchee expedition, General Jackson 
 resumed his march over a mountainous country 
 toward the Ten Islands. Upon arriving at th.it 
 point on the Coosa River, he began the construc 
 tion of a fort as a centre of operations, and a de 
 fensive post at which his supplies whenever he 
 should happen to have any thing of that kind- 
 could be protected by a comparatively small 
 force. He adopted the usual method of fortify 
 ing against Indian assaults inclosing a large 
 space within a line of strong timber pickets, and 
 building block-houses, storehouses, and other 
 needed structures within. Here he was disposed 
 to await the arrival of General Cocke, hoping that 
 that officer would bring provisions of some sort 
 with him, as the force at Fort Strother that was 
 the name given to the works at the Ten Islands- 
 was now almost destitute of food and forage. 
 
 When Cocke was within three days march of 
 Fort Strother, his advance-guard, about one 
 thousand strong, under command of General 
 White, was within a very short distance, and 
 General White sent forward a courier from Tur 
 key Town reporting his arrival at that point, and 
 asking for orders. 
 
 About this time there came into Jackson s camp 
 a messenger, who brought news of a very impor- 
 
1 70 RED EAGLE. 
 
 tant nature. He came from a little fort thirty 
 miles away, at the Indian town of Talladega, on 
 the spot where the modern town of Talladega 
 stands. In that fort a handful of friendly Indians, 
 about one hundred and fifty in number, had gath 
 ered to escape butchery at the hands of their hos 
 tile brethren. Here they were closely besieged 
 by an Indian force one thousand strong, who, 
 contrary to their usual practice, made no assault, 
 but sought to starve out the little garrison. They 
 surrounded the fort and maintained an unbroken 
 siege line, confident that the plight and even the 
 existence of the beleaguered tort were unknown to 
 the whites, and confident, therefore, that no relief 
 could be sent to them. They knew, too, that the 
 supply of water, as well as of food, in the fort 
 was very scant, and hence they had only to await 
 the sure operation of starvation and thirst to do 
 their work for them. 
 
 The messenger who came to Jackson to pray 
 for the deliverance of the little band from their 
 pitiable situation is described by some writers 
 as an Indian, by others as a chief, and by still 
 another he is said to have been a Scotchman who 
 had lived for many years among the Indians as 
 one of themselves. The last-named writer has 
 evidently confused this case with another. Who- 
 
THE BATTLE CF TALLADEGA. I/I 
 
 ever and whatever he was, this man had escaped 
 from the fort by a characteristic Indian stratagem. 
 He had covered himself with a swine s skin, and 
 wandered about like a hog in search of roots. In 
 this way he managed to work his way at night 
 through the lines of the besiegers, and when once 
 beyond them he travelled as rapidly as possible 
 toward Jackson s camp, and reported the state of 
 affairs. 
 
 He arrived on the ;th of November, and Jack 
 son at once began casting about for ways and 
 means. He scarcely dared to march with his 
 scanty supplies of food, and he scarcely dared to 
 leave his post with an insufficient force to defend 
 it ; but he must rescue that band of friendly Indi 
 ans at all hazards and at any cost. Their hard 
 situation appealed to his pity ; the cruelty of their 
 foes appealed to the stronger stuff in his compo 
 sition, arousing his anger and his disposition to 
 v. reak a righteous vengeance. There were rea 
 sons of polity, too, to move him to activity in 
 their behalf. If they should be left to their fate, 
 the discouragement of the friendly Indians every 
 where would be great, and might be calamitous. 
 
 Jackson quickly considered all of these things 
 and formed his resolution. General White was 
 at Turkey Town at the head of about a thousand 
 
172 RED EAGLE. 
 
 men. Jackson resolved to order him to march 
 immediately upon Fort Strother, and to hold the 
 place while the main army should be absent. 
 There was great danger in leaving the post un 
 guarded even for a brief time, but the occasion 
 was so pressing that the resolute commander de 
 termined to take the risk, hoping that White 
 would arrive in time to prevent disaster at the fort. 
 
 Having sent his order to White, he began his 
 preparations for an immediate march with the 
 whole effective force at the post. 
 
 Between midnight and one o clock the next 
 morning, November 8th, the column began its 
 march, two thousand strong, eight hundred being 
 mounted men. The task of fording the Coosa 
 occupied the hours until the dawn of day, the 
 horses of the caval^men being used for the trans 
 portation oi the infantry across the stream. 
 
 A march ot twenty-lour miles consumed the 
 day, and not long before dark General Jackson 
 halted his men within six miles of the enemy, in 
 order that they might rest. It was his purpose 
 to resume the march after midnight, and attack 
 the enemy early in the morning. 
 
 Thus far all had gone well, but here something 
 like calamity overtook the commander in the 
 shape of extremely bad news. A courier arrived 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA. 173 
 
 bringing a despatch from General White, in which 
 that officer informed Jackson that he could not 
 obey the order given him to advance and protect 
 Fort Strother, because of positive orders from 
 his immediate superior, General Cocke, com 
 manding him to return and rejoin the East Ten 
 nessee division of the army. 
 
 The state of facts which no\v confronted Jack 
 son was most appalling. He was a. long day s 
 march from his fortified camp, with an impending 
 battle on his hands ; while his camp, to which alone 
 he could retire when his present task should be 
 done, was lying open and helpless, at the mercy 
 of any band of Indians which might choose to 
 attack it ! Worse still, Jackson knew that the 
 food supplies at the camp were exhausted, and as 
 General White was not to come up with the pro 
 visions which he had promised to bring with him, 
 Jackson saw that after fighting the Indians in his 
 front he should be obliged to march his exhausted 
 and hungry army back to a post where there was 
 nothing for them to eat. His was a terrible 
 dilemma, neither horn of which offered him hope. 
 He expressed his anger with General Cocke and 
 General White in forcible terms ; but that did him 
 no good, and the offending officers were not pres 
 ent to profit by the rebuke. 
 
174 RED EAGLE. 
 
 The Indians in his front probably had some 
 provisions, enough at least for a meal, and Jackson 
 determined to secure these at any rate, and at the 
 same time to accomplish the purpose of his expe 
 dition. 
 
 Putting 1 his army in motion very early in the 
 morning he approached the Talladega town. 
 When within half a mile of the foe he formed his 
 line of battle, dividing the cavalry and placing 
 half of it upon each wing. The advance was 
 made slowly in the centre, so that the wings 
 might gradually encircle the enemy, a movement 
 much more difficult here than it had been at 
 Tallushatchee, because of the greater numbers of 
 the enemy, and because of their distribution over 
 a wider area. For these reasons the plan of battle 
 was less perfectly carried out on this occasion 
 than on the former one, but it proved effective 
 notwithstanding the difficulties which prevented 
 its perfect execution. 
 
 At the proper moment a small body of troops 
 was thrown forward from the centre to bring on 
 the action. This force made a spirited attack, 
 firing several successive volleys into the ranks of 
 the surprised Indians, before a determined resist 
 ance was made to their attack. Then the Creeks 
 charged upon them in force, and in accordance 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA. 1/5 
 
 with the instructions they had received, the offi 
 cers commanding the advance withdrew toward 
 the main line, falling back in good order and at a 
 moderate speed. We cannot do better than let 
 General Jackson tell the rest of the story. In his 
 report of the affair he said : 
 
 The enemy pursued, and the front line was 
 now ordered to advance and meet him ; but, 
 owing to some misunderstanding, a few compa 
 nies of militia, who composed part of it, com 
 menced a retreat. At this moment a corps of 
 cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Dyer, 
 which I had kept as a reserve, was ordered to 
 dismount and fill up the vacancy occasioned by 
 the retreat. This order was executed with a 
 great deal of promptitude and effect. The militia 
 seeing this, speedily rallied ; and the fire became 
 general along the front line, and on that part of 
 the wings which was contiguous. The enemy, 
 unable to stand it, began to retreat, but were met 
 at every turn and repulsed in every direction. 
 The right wing chased them, with a most destruc 
 tive fire, to the mountains, a distance of about 
 three miles, and, had I not been compelled, by 
 tilt faux pas ol the militia in the outset of the bat 
 tle, to dismount my reserve, I believe not a man 
 of them would have escaped. The victory, how- 
 
176 RED EAGLE. 
 
 ever, was very decisive : two hundred and ninety 
 of the enemy were left dead, and there can be no 
 doubt but many more were killed who were not 
 found. Wherever they ran they left behind 
 traces of blood, and it is believed that very few 
 will return to their villages in as sound a condi 
 tion as they left them. 
 
 In the engagement we lost fifteen killed and 
 eighty-five wounded ; two of them have since 
 died. All the officers acted with the utmost 
 bravery, and so did all the privates, except that 
 part of the militia who retreated at the commence 
 ment of the battle ; and they hastened to atone 
 for their error. Taking the whole together, they 
 have realized the high expectations I had formed 
 of them, and have fairly entitled themselves to the 
 gratitude of their country." 
 
 Jackson s loss in wounded included General 
 Pillow, Colonel Lauderdale, Major Boyd, and 
 Lieutenant Barton ; but of these only Lieutenant 
 Barton died of his wounds. The friendly Indians 
 rescued numbered one hundred and sixty men, 
 with their women and children. 
 
 In writing that two hundred and ninety of the 
 enemy were found dead, General Jackson dealt 
 in round numbers. General Coffee, who seemed 
 always to have an exacting curiosity in such mat- 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA, 177 
 
 ters, said in a letter which was written soon after 
 the battle : " We have counted two hundred and 
 ninety-nine Indians dead on the ground, and it is 
 believed that many have not been found that 
 were killed dead ; but the battle-ground was so 
 very large we had not time to hunt them up. It 
 is believed that very few got clear without a 
 wound." 
 
 General Coffee said also in this letter, which 
 is preserved in the archives of the Tennessee His 
 torical Society, that \ the force of the enemy 
 was a little upwards of one thousand warriors, 
 picked men, sent forward to destroy our army." 
 By dint of adding to the numbers of Indians 
 known to have been killed in the two battles thus 
 far fought as many more as he believed to have 
 been killed, and assuming that the wounded equal 
 led the killed in numbers, General Coffee arrived 
 at the conclusion that the battles of Tallushatchee 
 and Talladega had left the fighting force of the 
 Creeks " a thousand men weaker" than when the 
 campaign began. The calculation was scarcely 
 a fair one, however ; assumptions respecting dead 
 men not found are necessarily unsafe, and as there 
 were no wounded men at all left alive at Tallus 
 hatchee, the calculation respecting \vounded 
 men was of course founded upon an erroneous 
 
1/8 RED EAGLE. 
 
 assumption, to say nothing of the fact that the 
 only men wounded and not killed at Talladega 
 were so slightly wound jd that they succeeded in 
 getting away, and hence could scarcely be ac 
 counted lost to the Creeks. 
 
 It is easy to pardon the enthusiastic general 
 his slight overestimate of the damage inflicted 
 upon the enemy, whom he was so earnestly anx 
 ious to defeat. The damage was great, certainly, 
 and the success thus far attained had been secured 
 at small cost in the matter of the lives of the 
 white troops. 
 
 The object for which Jackson had marched 
 from Fort Strother to Talladega was fully accom 
 plished. The hostile Creeks in that quarter had 
 been routed with heavy loss, and the little band 
 of beleaguered friendly Indians were released from 
 their dangerous and trying situation ; but Jack 
 son s army was hungry, and there was a pros 
 pect that actual starvation would presently 
 overtake it. The little food that was found at 
 Talladega was distributed among the men, suffic 
 ing to satisfy their immediate needs. 
 
 The pressing necessity of the hour now was to 
 return with all possible haste to Fort Strother, 
 which must not be left in its defenceless state a mo 
 ment longer than was absolutely necessary ; but 
 
THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA. 1/9 
 
 an instantaneous beginning of the return march 
 was wholly out of the question. The men had 
 begun their toilsome journey at midnight between 
 the 7th and 8th of November, had marched all 
 day on the 8th, and, after a few hours rest, had 
 begun to march again a little after midnight, to 
 go into battle early on the morning of the gth. 
 Now that the battle was done, they were utterly 
 worn out, and must rest. Accordingly, the army 
 went into camp for the night, after they had bui% 
 ied their dead comrades. The next day the 
 return march was begun, and on the nth of 
 November the weary army arrived at their en 
 campment. 
 
 The fort was unharmed, but it was destitute of 
 provisions, and for a time it was with great diffi 
 culty that Jackson prevented a mutiny among the 
 troops, whose only food was the meagre supply 
 gleaned from the surrounding wilderness. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 GENERAL COCKE S CONDUCT AND ITS CON 
 SEQUENCES. 
 
 IT is necessary now to explain the circumstan 
 ces which left. Fort Strother without the garrison 
 under General White, which General Jackson 
 had provided for its defence during his absence, 
 and to show to what consequences this failure of 
 the East Tennessee commander to co-operate with 
 General Jackson presently led. The writers up 
 on these historical events differ very widely in 
 their judgment of the case, and most of them se 
 verely censure General Cocke, attributing his con 
 duct to an unworthy jealousy. His rank was the 
 same as that of General Jackson ; but, as was said 
 in a former chapter, Jackson s commission was 
 the older one, and hence if Cocke had joined his 
 "ranking officer," Jackson would have been in 
 command of the whole force. It was alleged at 
 the time and afterward that both the East Ten 
 nessee troops and their commander were jealous 
 of Jackson and his army, and envious of that 
 army s success. To this unworthy motive Gene- 
 
GENERAL COCKE S CONDUCT. l8l 
 
 ralCocke s conduct has generally been attributed. 
 Mr. Pickett, in his History of Alabama, gives an 
 account of the matter, which is substantially the 
 same as those given by Drake in his Book of 
 the Indians, and by most other writers. 
 
 In that account he says, without doubt or quali 
 fication, that the want of concert between the 
 two divisions of the army grew " out of a jealousy 
 of the former [the East Tennessee division], and 
 a strong desire to share some of the glory which 
 the latter had already acquired in the few battles 
 they had fought." 
 
 Mr. Parton, in his Life of Andrew Jackson, 
 gives a different version of the affair, attributing 
 General Cocke s course to his earnestness in the 
 cause, and his knowledge of certain facts which 
 were unknown to General Jackson. To that we 
 shall come presently ; but while General Cocke s 
 statement, upon which Mr. Parton founds his opi 
 nion, is certainly entitled to consideration, it must 
 not be forgotten that General Cocke was under at 
 least implied orders to join Jackson orders which 
 he was bound as a soldier to obey, whatever his 
 judgment may have dictated ; that whatever he 
 may have known, there were two or three things 
 which he did not know ; that one of these things 
 unknown to him namely, the departure of Jack- 
 
1 82 RED EAGLE. 
 
 son from Fort Strother made his obedience to 
 orders very necessary to the si ccessful execution 
 of Jackson s plans ; and that his want of knowl 
 edge of another fact led to the perpetration of a 
 fearful outrage the driving of Indians who were 
 disposed to become peaceful into fierce hostility, 
 and the increase of the ferocity of the war. It 
 was General Cocke s business to obey his orders, 
 expressed or necessarily implied. For reasons 
 which he thought good, he neglected to do so, 
 and great evil resulted. 
 
 . On the march southward Cocke s army had 
 destroyed two or three deserted Indian villages, 
 but had had no encounter \vith the enemy. When 
 General Cocke arrived within a few days march of 
 Fort Strother he detached General White and sent 
 him to Turkey Town. Thence White marched 
 to Tallushatchee, intending to attack the place, 
 but he arrived there after Coffee had destroyed 
 the force gathered at that point, although his 
 visit was on the same day. As he was marching 
 to join Jackson, it does not very clearly appear 
 why General White did not follow Coffee to the 
 camp of the main body. He returned to Turkey 
 Town instead, and from that point reported to 
 Jackson, as v/e have seen, just as the army was 
 about to march upon Talladega. He was at once 
 
GENERAL COCKE s CONDUCT. 183 
 
 ordered to advance and replace Jackson s force 
 at the fort, but before he could execute the order 
 he received the instructions from General Cocke 
 already referred to, directing him to turn back 
 and join the East Tennessee division at the mouth 
 of the Chattooga River. Believing that in a case 
 
 o o 
 
 of conflicting orders it was his duty to obey that 
 which came from his immediate superior, Gene 
 ral White obeyed Cocke rather than Jackson. 
 
 Cocke had determined upon a separate opera 
 tion against the Hillabees, and sending White to 
 one of the Hillabee towns, that officer surprised 
 and destroyed it on the iSth of November, killing 
 sixty of the Hillabees and taking two hundred and 
 fifty prisoners, mostly women and children. Pick- 
 ett says, " The Hillabees, it is asserted, made not 
 the slightest resistance. At all events, not a drop 
 of Tennessee blood was spilt." 
 
 The unfortunate feature of this affair was that 
 to the Indians it wore the appearance of the basest 
 and crudest treachery. These Hillabees had 
 been great sufferers at Jackson s hands in the bat 
 tle of Talladega, and becoming convinced by the 
 result of that battle that resistance was useless, 
 they determined to surrender and make peace. 
 They sent Robert Grayson, an old Scotchman 
 who had lived among them for many years, to 
 
1 84 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Jackson s camp to sue for peace, proposing 1 to 
 lay down their arms, and to comply with what 
 ever terms Jackson might impose upon them. As 
 the object of the war was not to kill the Creeks 
 in wantonness, but to secure peace and good con 
 duct at their hands, Jackson properly regarded 
 the proposed surrender of the Hillabee tribe as 
 the richest fruit of the campaign. Accordingly, 
 he sent Grayson back to them with a lecture, and 
 an acceptance of their capitulation. He said to 
 them : " Upon those who are disposed to become 
 friendly, I neither wish nor intend to make war ; 
 but they must afford evidences of the sincerity of 
 their professions. The prisoners and property 
 they have taken from us and the friendly Creeks 
 must be restored. The instigators of the war and 
 the murderers of our citizens must be surren 
 dered." 
 
 While Jackson was yet rejoicing in the belief 
 that his hard-fought battle at Talladega and the 
 hardships endured upon that expedition had ac 
 complished so much more than the mere defeat 
 of the enemy there, his work was utterly undone 
 by the ill-timed and unfortunate expedition of 
 White against the Hillabees. These people knew 
 nothing of the divided councils of the Tennessee 
 army, and when White came down upon one of 
 
GENERAL COCKE S CONDUCT. 185 
 
 their towns, while their messenger was still ab 
 sent upon his errand of peace, they naturally sup 
 posed that their assailants were Jackson s men, 
 and that he had sent them as his relentless mes 
 sengers to answer the Hillabee prayer for peace 
 with the merciless stroke of the sword. Con 
 vinced that Jackson was implacable, and that no 
 hope remained to them, the Hillabees fled from 
 all their towns and joined the hostile forces, 
 wherever bodies of them could be found. Drake 
 says, in the Book of the Indians : 
 
 The Indians thought they had been attacked 
 by General Jackson s army, and that therefore 
 they were now to expect nothing but extermina 
 tion ; and this was thought to be the reason why 
 they fought with such desperation afterwards. 
 And truly they had reason for their fears ; they 
 knew none but Jackson, and supposed now that 
 nothing short of their total destruction would sat 
 isfy him, as their conduct exemplified on every 
 occasion. They knew they had asked peace on 
 any terms, and their immediate answer was the 
 sword and bayonet. 
 
 In acting as he did, without first consulting with 
 General Jackson and learning both the exact situ 
 ation of affairs and the nature of his superior offi 
 cer s purposes, General Cocke did wrong in a 
 
186 RED EAGLE. 
 
 military sense. Of this there seems to be no 
 room whatever for doubt or question, and as 
 his wrong-doing led to disastrous results, it was 
 altogether natural that both General Jackson 
 and the historians should severely censure the 
 offending officer, as they did ; General Jackson 
 being violently exasperated, as well he might be, 
 when he learned the full results of the blunder. 
 
 In saying as we do, that General Cocke was 
 clearly culpable for acting as he did, we do not ne 
 cessarily imply that his course was dictated by the 
 jealousy and envy to which it has been attributed, 
 or indeed by unworthy motives of any kind. 
 His motives may, perhaps, have been perfectly 
 unselfish ; his conduct the result merely of bad 
 judgment, or of inaccurate notions of military 
 duty ; but to establish these facts is only to palli 
 ate, not to excuse his offence. It is unjust, how 
 ever, in any discussion of these matters, to neglect 
 the defence which General Cocke made of his 
 conduct. 
 
 That defence was made in the autumn of the 
 year 1852, in a letter published in the National 
 Intelligencer, and was prompted by the publication 
 of certain criticisms upon General Cocke s con 
 duct. In the letter he says : 
 
 " About the ist of October I rendezvoused my 
 
GENERAL COCKE S CONDUCT. 1 87 
 
 troops at Knoxville, and they mustered into ser 
 vice ; and on the twelfth day after, I took up the 
 line of march. I encamped with my command 
 on the banks of the Coosa, which was the dividing 
 line between the Cherokee and Creek Indians, 
 where I was compelled to halt for want of provi 
 sions for my own command ; and at no time after I 
 left Knoxville had I more than five days rations 
 for my army. At this point I waited for supplies 
 from the contractor, but owing to the low water 
 they did not arrive, and I was compelled to pro 
 cure supplies from the Cherokees as best I could. 
 General White joined me with his brigade in a 
 starving condition upon the second day after my 
 arrival on the Coosa." 
 
 Mr. Parton offers the following comment upon 
 this part of the letter and upon the situation : 
 
 " It thus appears that while General Jackson 
 was anxiously looking for supplies from General 
 Cocke, General Cocke himself was as destitute as 
 General Jackson. A junction of the two armies 
 would have had the sole effect of doubling Jack 
 son s embarrassments, inasmuch as he would have 
 had five thousand men to feed in the wilderness 
 instead of twenty-five hundred, and would have 
 required twenty wagon-loads of provisions daily 
 instead of ten. General Cocke knew this ; knew 
 
1 88 RED EAGLE. 
 
 that Jackson s anxiety for a junction had arisen 
 from an expectation that the East Tennesseeans 
 would bring supplies with them ; did not know 
 that Jackson s dash at Talladega had left Fort 
 Strother unprotected did not know any thing 
 about the Hillabees suing for peace, and Jack 
 son s favorable reply to them." 
 
 This, we say, is at most only a palliation of the 
 offence. General Cocke did not know, as Mr. Par- 
 ton says, that Jackson s anxiety for a union of the 
 two armies was clue to his expectation that the 
 East Tennesseeans would bring supplies with 
 them, because that was not the fact. He did expect 
 them to bring provisions, but his anxiety for a 
 junction was not altogether on that account. He 
 wanted White s men for a garrison for Fort Stro 
 ther, and hence General Cocke only believed that 
 which Mr. Parton assumes that he knew. Again, 
 if the junction had been made, and the doubling 
 of the number of men had embarrassed Jackson, 
 it would have been easy for him to separate the 
 forces again. Moreover, after the Hillabee expe 
 dition was ended, General Cocke was ready and 
 willing to join Jackson, while the scarcity of pro 
 visions remained ; if his reason for not forming 
 the junction was good in the one case, it was good 
 also in the other. Indeed, General Cocke has 
 
GENERAL COCKE S CONDUCT. 189 
 
 himself contradicted the plea which Mr. Parton 
 makes in his behalf. While General White was 
 still absent on the Hillabee expedition. General 
 Cocke wrote a letter to Jackson, in which he said : 
 
 I entertain the opinion that to make the pres 
 ent campaign as successful as it ought to be, it is 
 essential that the whole force from Tennessee 
 should act in concert. I have despatched all my 
 mounted men, whose horses were fit for duty, on 
 the Hillabee towns, to destroy them. I expect 
 their return in a few days. I send the bearer to 
 you for the sake of intelligence as to your intended 
 operations, and for the sake of assuring you that 
 I will most heartily agree to any plan that will be 
 productive of the most good." 
 
 From the fact that he thus arranged to put him 
 self within the range of Jackson s authority as 
 soon as his Hillabee campaign should be ended, 
 the inference is inevitable that General Cocke ne 
 glected to make the contemplated earlier junction 
 in order that he might carry out this little scheme 
 of his own. Inasmuch as a court-martial, com 
 posed of officers who, General Cocke says, were 
 his bitterest enemies and Jackson s closest friends, 
 fully acquitted the accused officer of guilt, it is 
 only fair to the memory ot a. brave and conscien 
 tious soldier to believe that, he acted for the good 
 
RED EAGLE. 
 
 of the cause ; that his anxiety to deal a blow at the 
 Hillabees was prompted by a desire to serve the 
 ends of the campaign, not by unworthy jealousy 
 of Jackson ; but beyond this it does not appear to 
 be possible to go. We may properly acquit Gen 
 eral Cocke of petty envy, and of conscious insub 
 ordination, but it is impossible not to see that 
 nis course was ill-judged as well as calamitous in 
 its results, and it is impossible also to blame Jack 
 son for his displeasure with his subordinate. The 
 most that General Cocke establishes in his de 
 fence, which is elaborate, is that he acted in ac 
 cordance with the unanimous opinion of his field 
 officers ; that he conscientiously believed that his 
 course was the best one to be pursued in the cir 
 cumstances, and that it was dictated solely by his 
 earnest desire to serve the cause. The most that 
 is proved against him appears to be, that he acted 
 with smaller regard to strict military rules than 
 an officer of his rank should have done. He was 
 guilty of a blunder, not of a crime. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE CANOE FIGHT. 
 
 WITH the affairs already described, Jackson s 
 campaign came to a halt by reason of his want of 
 supplies, and on account of mutinous conduct 
 upon the part of his men. For many weeks the 
 Tennessee army did nothing, but remained at Fort 
 Strother, while the war went on in other parts 
 of the field. For the present, therefore, we leave 
 Jackson, to follow the course of affairs elsewhere. 
 
 The autumn having brought with it the neces 
 sity of gathering what remained of the crops in 
 that part of the country which lies on the Ala 
 bama and Tombigbee rivers, the settlers there 
 did what they could to clear the country of prowl 
 ing bands of Indians. They sent out bodies of 
 armed men in different directions, and under 
 protection of such forces as they could muster, 
 began gathering the ripened corn. 
 
 The danger of famine, if the corn should be al 
 lowed to perish in the fields, seems also to have 
 aroused General Flournoy from his dream of strict 
 adherence to law and treatv in his treatment of 
 
IQ2 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the Creeks. His predecessor, General Floyd, 
 had refused, it will be remembered, to permit 
 General Claiborne to invade the Creek Nation 
 early in the war, when that officer confidently 
 believed that he could speedily conquer a peace 
 by pursuing that course. Flournoy now re 
 ceded from the position then taken, so far at 
 least as to order Claiborne to advance with his 
 army and protect the citizens while they should 
 gather their crops. He still ordered no resolute 
 invasion of the Creek territory, for the purpose 
 of transferring the seat of war to the soil of the 
 enemy, and putting an end to the strife ; but he 
 ordered Claiborne to drive the Indians from tho 
 frontier, and even to follow them so far as the 
 towns which lay near the border, instructing him 
 to "kill, burn, and destroy all their negroes, 
 horses, cattle, and other property, that cannot 
 conveniently be brought to the depots." 
 
 General Flournoy, like General Floyd, appears 
 to have been somewhat too highly civilized for the 
 business in which he was engaged. Knowing, as he 
 did, that Claiborne was fighting savages who had 
 violated every usage and principle of civilized war 
 fare, who were prowling about in the white settle 
 ments murdering every white man, woman, and 
 child whom they could find, and who had com- 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. IQ3 
 
 mitted the most horrible wholesale butchery at 
 Fort Mims ; knowing all this, and knowing too that 
 an army from Tennessee was already invading t /ie 
 Creek country from the north, General Flcrarnoy 
 appears to have given Claiborne this half-hearted 
 and closely -limited permission to fight the Creeks 
 upon their own terms and their o\^i soil with great 
 reluctance and with apologetic misgivings. He 
 set forth his conviction that even the little which 
 he was now permitting Claiborne to do toward 
 making the war real on the white side was not 
 in accordance with the usages of civilized nations 
 at war ; but excused himself for his departure from 
 those usages by citing the conduct of the enemy 
 in justification of it. A stronger man than Gene 
 ral Flournoy would have seen that the Creeks 
 had turned complete savages, that they had begun 
 a savage warfare for the extermination of the 
 whites, and that such a war could be brought to 
 an end only by the destruction of the white 
 people whom he was set to protect, or by the 
 prompt, resolute, and complete subjugation of 
 the Creeks. Seeing this, such an officer would 
 have seen that the Creeks could be conquered 
 only by the invasion of their territory with fire 
 and sword, and with no respect whatever for 
 those rights which were theirs in peace, but which 
 
IQ4 RED EAGLE. 
 
 had been forfeited in the war. It seems incredi 
 ble that General Flournoy, in such circumstances 
 and with such an enemy to contend with, should 
 have muddled his head and embarrassed his army 
 with nice questions of the rights, duties, and us 
 ages of civilized warfare. This was so clearly not 
 a civilized, but a^i especially savage war, that his 
 hesitation, and the misgivings upon Avhich that 
 hesitation was founded, are wholly inexplicable. 
 
 Claiborne was quick to use the small liberty 
 given him to fight the Creeks, while the settlers, 
 from their positions in the stockade forts, were 
 already making frequent expeditions against vul 
 nerable points. 
 
 Early in October, a body of twenty-five men, 
 under Colonel William McGrew, went in pursuit 
 of an Indian force, and attacked them resolutely 
 on a little stream called Barshi Creek. The In 
 dians were in considerable force, and despite the 
 courage and determination of the whites the 
 Creeks got the best of the affair, killing Colonel 
 McGrew and three of his men, and putting the 
 rest of the force to flight. 
 
 Much better success attended another expedi 
 tion, which was undertaken about this time, and 
 which resulted in one of the most remarkable in 
 cidents of the war, a sort of naval battle on a 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. 19$ 
 
 very small scale, but one that was contested as 
 heroically as the battle of the Nile itself. This 
 was Captain Sam Dale s celebrated canoe fight, 
 of which a w r riter has said : 
 
 There has seldom occurred in border war 
 fare a more romantic incident. . . . History 
 has almost overlooked it, as too minute in its de 
 tails for her stately philosophy. Yet for singu 
 larity of event, novelty of position, boldness of 
 design, and effective personal fortitude and prow 
 ess, it is unsurpassed, if equalled, by any thing in 
 backwoods chronicles, however replete these may 
 be with the adventures of pioneers, the sufferings 
 of settlers, and the achievements of that class who 
 seem almost to have combined the life and man 
 ners of the freebooter with the better virtues of 
 social man." 
 
 When Colonel McGrew s men returned after 
 tluir unsuccessful conflict with the Creeks, the 
 n j\vs they brought greatly incensed the people of 
 Fort Madison, whose friends had fallen in that 
 unlucky action. Believing that the main body of 
 the Creeks was now south of the Alabama River, 
 and fearing that they would destroy the buildings 
 and the crops there, Captain Sam Dale, who had 
 now nearly recovered from his severe wound re 
 ceived at the battle of Burnt Corn, organized an 
 
196 RED EAGLE. 
 
 expedition for the purpose of clearing the lower 
 country, if possible, of the hostile bands. The 
 force which volunteered for this service consisted 
 of seventy-two men. Thirty of them constituted 
 Captain Richard Jones s company of Mississippi 
 yauger men. The remainder were men of the 
 neighborhood, who volunteered for the expedi 
 tion. 
 
 Amon these volunteers were three whose 
 
 o 
 
 participation in the canoe fight makes it neces 
 sary to introduce them particularly to the reader. 
 One of them was a negro, whose name, Csesar, 
 together with his good and gallant conduct on 
 this occasion, are all that history has preserved 
 with respect to him. Another was young Jere 
 miah Austill, the youth who carried despatches, 
 as already related, between Colonel Carson and 
 General Claiborne, when that service was most 
 dangerous, The third was James Smith. We 
 may best tell what is known of young Smith in 
 the words of Mr. A. B. Meek, wiiose volume of 
 sketches, from which we shall quote here, is un 
 fortunately out of print. Mr. Meek writes thus : 
 14 In Dale s command was a private soldier who 
 already had a high reputation as an expert, dar 
 ing and powerful Indian fighter. Born in Geor 
 gia in 1787, this scion of the universal Smith 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. 197 
 
 family was now a very stout, finely-proportioned 
 man, five feet eight inches high, weighing one 
 hundred and sixty pounds. Residing near Fort 
 Madison, he took refuge there at the outbreak of 
 the war. His fearless and adventurous character 
 may be indicated by an incident. One day he 
 determined to visit his farm, about eight miles 
 distant, to see what injury the Indians had done. 
 Proceeding cautiously, he came to a house in 
 which he heard a noise, and, stealing up to the 
 door, he found two Indians engaged in bundling 
 up tools and other articles to carry them off. Lev 
 elling his gun at them he made them come out of 
 the house and march before him toward the fort. 
 In a thicket of woods the Indians suddenly sepa 
 rated, one on each hand, and ran. Smith fired at 
 one of them and killed him, and, dropping his 
 rifle, pursued the other, and, catching him, 
 knocked him down with a light- wood * knot and 
 beat out his brains. . . . This, and similar 
 deeds of daring and prowess, gave to James 
 Smith a high position acnong his frontier friends 
 and neighbors." 
 
 Mr. Meek writes more fully of young Austill. 
 
 " Light- wood " is a term used in the South to signify richly 
 resinous pine, of the kind sometimes called " pitch-pine" in other 
 parts of the country. 
 
EAGLE, 
 
 He describes him as a youth nineteen years of 
 age, dark, tall, sinewy, and full of youthful dar 
 ing. The stories of his courageous performances 
 were many, and during the war he won the spec 
 ial commendation of his superiors on many occa 
 sions for his bravery and his devotion to duty. 
 
 Dale marched from Fort Madison on the nth 
 of November, with Tandy Walker, a noted fron 
 tiersman, for his guide. Marching to the south 
 east, the column crossed the Alabama River at a 
 point about thirty miles above Mims s ferry, and 
 about twenty miles below the site of the present 
 town of Claiborne. 
 
 Dale was thoroughly well acquainted with the 
 habits of the Indians, among whom indeed he had 
 lived frequently for long periods. He was there 
 fore keenly alive to the necessity of unremitting 
 vigilance, and, determined to suffer no surprise, 
 he refused to permit any of his men to sleep dur 
 ing the night after his passage to the south-east 
 bank of the river. During the next day he ad 
 vanced up the river very cautiously, sending Au- 
 still, with six men, in two canoes which he had 
 found, while the rest of the force marched through 
 the woods on the bank. 
 
 At a place called Peggy Bailey s bluff the first 
 signs of the presence of Indians were discovered. 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. IQ9 
 
 Following the trail well in advance of his men, 
 Dale discovered ten Indians at breakfast. The 
 first intimation these Indians had of the presence 
 of white men on that side of the river came to 
 them in the shape of a bullet from Dale s rifle, 
 which killed one of the party, and caused the rest 
 of them to abandon their provision pack, and 
 flee precipitately through the woods. 
 
 Securing the abandoned provisions, Dale 
 marched on a mile or two, but finding no further 
 traces of Indians, he determined to recross the 
 river and scour the country on the other side. 
 
 The work of crossing was necessarily slow. 
 Only two canoes were to be had, and the river 
 was nearly a fourth of a mile wide, but little by 
 little the force was paddled across, until only 
 about a dozen of the men remained with Dale on 
 the eastern bank. These men were at breakfast 
 when suddenly they were startled by a volley 
 from the rifles of an Indian force. This force, as 
 was afterward learned, was the advance party ol 
 about three hundred warriors. Dale and his 
 handful of men protected themselves as well as 
 they could among the trees, and returned the fire. 
 Had the savages known the weakness of their 
 force, they might easily have destroyed the little 
 party by making a determined dash ; but Dale and 
 
200 RED EAGLE. 
 
 his men were so well concealed among the trees 
 and in the bushes, that their enemies, in ignorance 
 of their numbers, did not dare charge them. The 
 nature ol the ground served also to favor Dale. 
 The river here had what is called a double bank 
 that is to say, there were two plateaus, one 
 above the other, each breaking rather suddenly 
 at its edge. These banks, covered with dense 
 undergrowth, served the purpose of rude natural 
 breastworks. 
 
 The first assault was made by about twenty- 
 five or thirty of the savages, who were speedily 
 joined by others, and Dale quickly saw that his 
 position was an extremely critical one. The In 
 dians must soon discover from the infrequency of 
 the fire from the bank that the force there was 
 small, and it was certain that they would make a 
 charge as soon as this should be discovered a 
 charge which the dozen men there could not 
 possibly withstand. Dale s first thought was of 
 escape across the river to the main body of his 
 little company ; but this was clearly out of the 
 question. There was but one canoe on his side 
 of the river, so that to cross at all the little com 
 pany on the bank must separate, half of it going 
 over at one trip and half at another. If half of 
 them should embark, the Indians, seeing the 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. 201 
 
 canoe in the river with its cargo of fugitives 
 would know at once that the band on the bank 
 was unable to resist them, and hence would de 
 stroy the men left behind before the canoe could 
 return to bring them away. 
 
 Dale called to his men on the other side of the 
 river to recross and render him assistance, but 
 they seemed to be for the time fairly panic- 
 stricken, so that none of them moved to answer 
 the call. After a time their courage appeared 
 to return, and eight of them manned a canoe and 
 began the passage. When the man who led this 
 detachment saw the great superiority of the In 
 dian force, he became panic-stricken again and 
 ordered a retreat, so that even this little attempt 
 to reinforce Dale s tremendously overmatched 
 company failed to bring relief. 
 
 Meantime a new danger appeared, coming this 
 time upon the rear. A large canoe holding 
 eleven Indian warriors shot out from the bank a 
 little way up the river and paddled down to 
 Dale s position. Here an attempt was made to 
 land. Should this be accomplished, the fight 
 must end at once in the destruction of the whole 
 detachment on the river bank. To ward off this 
 danger Dale was compelled to fight both ways 
 to the rear and to the front. He himself, with all 
 
202 RED EAGLE, 
 
 of his men but three, kept up not a brisk, but a 
 very destructive, fire in front, picking their men 
 and shooting with all the precision of skilled 
 marksmen ; while Smith, Austill, and one other 
 man devoted their attention to the warriors in 
 the canoe, preventing them from approaching the 
 shore. 
 
 Being kept thus at a distance, two of the most 
 daring of the Indians in the canoe resolved to risk 
 an attempt to swim ashore. Leaping overboard 
 only their heads were exposed, mi course ; but 
 Smit % h succeeded in sending a bullet into even 
 that small target, killing one of the swimmers in 
 stantly. The other reached the bank, where he 
 was met by Austill, who unluckily tripped and 
 fell into the water, and before he could regain 
 his footing the savage had escaped. 
 
 His escape brought matters to a head. Dale 
 knew that this Indian had seen how small his 
 force was, and that he would report its weakness, 
 thereby making an immediate charge certain. 
 He therefore resolved upon a desperate attempt. 
 He called to his men, declaring his purpose to 
 man the little canoe that remained with him, and 
 attack the Indian canoe party. For this perilous 
 service he asked who would volunteer. Smith, 
 Austill, and the negro man Csesar at once offered 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. 203 
 
 themselves ; and with this little force Dale speed 
 ily put his plan into execution. Caesar took the 
 stern of the canoe as steersman, and the three 
 white men grasped their paddles. 
 
 The Indians had fired all their ammunition 
 away, else it would have gone hard with Dale 
 when his own and his comrades guns failed to 
 fire as they did, because the powder in their pans 
 had become wet. When this fact was discovered 
 the two canoes were near each other, and Dale 
 had no thought of flinching from the hand-to- 
 hand conflict which must ensue between himself 
 and his three companions on the one hand, and 
 the nine remaining Indians on the other. He 
 ordered Caesar to bring the canoe alongside the 
 enemy s boat, and to hold it firmly there. As this 
 was done the Indians leaped to their feet, with 
 their war-clubs and knives, ready for the combat. 
 When the boats touched, Dale instantly leaped 
 into that of his enemy, for the double purpose of 
 crowding the enemy close together and giving 
 his own companions abundant room in which to 
 swing their clubbed guns. It was a mere question 
 of brute strength between men determined to club 
 each other to death. Austill was knocked down 
 with a war-club once, but recovered himself. 
 Dale advanced in the boat, knocking over one 
 
2O4 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Indian after another with his rapid blows. A 
 few minutes sufficed to bring the action to a close. 
 
 It is said that the last of the Indians was a 
 young warrior with whom Dale had lived and 
 hunted as a friend before the outbreak of the war. 
 This young Indian and his former friend now 
 confronted each other in the boat. Dale recog 
 nized the man with whom he had sat at the camp- 
 fire and passed long days in the hunt ; he hesi 
 tated, and was about to lower his raised weapon 
 when the young savage, calling him by the name 
 he had borne among the Indians, which meant 
 " Big Sam," cried, " Sam Thlucco, you are a 
 man, I am another now for it !" He spoke in 
 the Muscogee tongue, with which Dale was fa 
 miliar, and as he spoke he attempted to grapple 
 with Dale, but the active white man was too quick 
 of movement for him. Stepping back suddenly, 
 he brained his Indian antagonist with a single 
 blow, and the canoe-fight was ended. The nine 
 Indians were corpses, and Dale had not lost a 
 single man, although Austill was severely 
 wounded in the head. 
 
 There was perilous work yet to do, however. 
 The brave men in the boat had no thought ot 
 abandoning their friends on the bank. Their own 
 guns were broken, and they were under a severo 
 
THE CANOE FIGHT. CO", 
 
 fire from the savages on shore, but in spite of 
 this they cleared the large canoe by throwing 
 the dead Indians overboard, and, with the two 
 boats, paddled back to the bank under a galling 
 fire, and brought off the remainder of the party 
 in safety. If they had not conquered, they had 
 at least baffled the Indians, inflicting considerable 
 loss upon them without suffering any loss in their 
 turn. That night the expedition returned to Fort 
 Madison. 
 
 Dale was so typical a frontiersman, so perfect a 
 model of the daring and wily warrior of the bor 
 der, that as long as he lived he was a man about 
 whom the interest of curiosity hung. A writer 
 who knew him well wrote of him thus * 
 
 " In person General Dale was tall, erect, raw- 
 boned, and muscular. In many respects, physical 
 and moral, he resembled his antagonists of the 
 woods. He had the square forehead, the high 
 cheek-bones, the compressed lips, and in fact the 
 physiognomy of an Indian, relieved, however, 
 by a firm, benevolent, Saxon eye. Like the red 
 man, too, his foot fell lightly upon the ground 
 and turned neither to the right nor left. He was 
 habitually taciturn ; his face grave ; he spoke 
 slowly and in low tones, and he seldom laughed. 
 I observed of him what I have often noted as 
 
206 RED EAGLE. 
 
 peculiar to border men of high attributes he 
 entertained the strongest attachment for the In 
 dians, extolled their courage, their love of coun 
 try, and many of their domestic qualities ; and I 
 have often seen the wretched remnant of the 
 Choctaws camped around his plantation and sub 
 sisting on his crops. In peace they felt for him 
 the strongest veneration ; he had been the friend 
 both of Tecumseh and Weatherford ; and in war 
 the name of Big Sam fell on the ear of the 
 Seminole like that of Marius on the hordes of the 
 Cimbri." * 
 
 * From a sketch by General John H. F. Claiborne, published 
 in the Natchez (Miss.) Free-Trader, on the occasion of Dale s 
 death in the year 1841. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS THE 
 BATTLE OF AUTOSSE. 
 
 WHEN the call was made by General Claiborne 
 upon Tennessee for assistance, a similarly earnest 
 appeal was sent to Georgia, and the response 
 from that State was equally prompt. The troops 
 raised .there were under command of General 
 Floyd, who had been superseded in the command 
 of the Department of the South-west by General 
 Flournoy some months earlier. General Floyd 
 was an energetic soldier, and he quickly found 
 work to do. 
 
 It will be remembered that as soon as Red 
 Eagle learned that he would not be permitted to 
 attack and burn Mobile he turned his attention 
 to the country north and east of the Creek Na 
 tion, and sent two bodies of his warriors to ha 
 rass the borders, one force threatening Tennes 
 see and the other seeking to find some vulner 
 able point on the Georgia frontier. Jackson s 
 advance with an overwhelming force and his vig 
 orous blows at Tallushatchee and Talladega com- 
 
208 RED EAGLE. 
 
 pelled the Creeks to abandon their designs upon 
 Tennessee and stand upon the defensive. They 
 saw the full significance of his advance, and knew 
 that he had come not merely to garrison forts 
 and protect settlers, but to carry the war to the 
 heart of the Creek Nation, and to throttle the 
 Creek power in its stronghold. This was what 
 Claiborne wanted to do by a resolute movement 
 from the south, and there can be little doubt that 
 if he could have had permission to do so he 
 would have saved the Tensaw and Tombigbee 
 settlements from the worst of their sufferings, by 
 making the Creeks the hunted rather than the 
 hunters, precisely as Jackson saved the people of 
 Tennessee by an aggressive policy. The other 
 column, which threatened Georgia, was met in like 
 manner by General Floyd, and with like results. 
 
 Floyd s army consisted of nine hundred and 
 fifty militiamen and four hundred friendly In 
 dians, part of them being Cowetas under com 
 mand of Major Mclntosh, one of the half-breeds 
 whom High Head Jim had planned to kill as a 
 preparation for the war, and the rest Tookabat- 
 chas under Mad Dragon s Son. Floyd was bet 
 ter equipped than Jackson had been in his first 
 battles, having some small pieces of artillery 
 with him. 
 
THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS. 2OQ 
 
 Having learned that a large force of the Creeks 
 was at High Head Jim s town, Autosse, on the 
 south-east side of the Tallapoosa River, about 
 t \venty miles above the point at which that 
 stream unites with the Coosa, General Floyd 
 marched against them in the latter part of No 
 vember. McAfee, who is usually a very careful 
 historian, gives the 28th of September as the 
 date, but this is clearly wrong. Crossing the 
 Ockmulgee, Flint, and Coosa rivers under the 
 guidance of a Jewish trader named Abram Mor- 
 decai, Floyd arrived in the neighborhood of Au 
 tosse early in the morning on the 2Qth of Novem 
 ber. 
 
 His plan of battle was precisely the same as 
 that which Coffee had adopted at Tallushatchee, 
 and Jackson at Talladega that is to say, he 
 planned to surround the town and destroy the 
 fighting force within ; but in this case the scheme 
 miscarried. In the first place, Mclntosh and Mad 
 Dragon s Son were ordered to cross the river 
 and cut off retreat to the opposite shore, and they 
 failed to do what was required of them. Whether 
 this was due to the unforeseen difficulties of 
 crossing, as the Indians alleged ; or to the reluc 
 tance of the Indians to swim the river on a cold, 
 frosty morning, as some historians say; or to a 
 
210 RED EAGLE. 
 
 failure of their courage, as was charged at the time 
 there are now no means of determining, and it 
 is not important. It is enough to know that they 
 did not cross the river as ordered, and hence 
 when the attack was made the bank of tLe stream 
 opposite the town was unguarded. 
 
 This was not the only way, however, in which 
 the original plan of attack was prevented. The 
 real position and strength of the Indian force had 
 been misapprehended, and when, early in the ac 
 tion, this was discovered, General Floyd was 
 obliged to alter his disposition of troops accord 
 ingly. The advance was made as soon as there 
 was sufficient light, on the morning of the 2Qth 
 of November, with Booth s battalion on the 
 right, Watson s on the left. The flanks were 
 guarded by riflemen, and Thomas with his artil 
 lery accompanied Booth s battalion. Booth was 
 instructed to march until he could rest the head 
 of his column upon the little creek at the mouth 
 of which the town stood, while Watson was to 
 stretch his column around to the left in a curve, 
 resting its left flank upon the river just below the 
 town. If this could have been done as intended, 
 and the friendly Indians had occupied the oppo 
 site side of the river, the encircling of the place 
 would have been complete ; but besides the fail- 
 
THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS. 211 
 
 lire of the Indians another difficulty stood in the 
 \vay. Instead of one town there were two, the 
 second lying about a quarter of a mile further 
 clown the river, immediately in rear of the posi 
 tion to which Watson had been ordered. 
 
 To avoid the clanger of an attack in the rear of 
 his left flank, which might have resulted disas 
 trously, General Floyd sent Lieutenant Hendon 
 with Merriweather s riflemen, three companies 
 of infantry and two of dragoons to attack the 
 lower town, while he threw the remainder of the 
 army, now reinforced by the friendly Indians 
 under Mad Dragon s Son and Mclntosh, against 
 the larger upper town. 
 
 The fighting began about sunrise, and speedily 
 became extremely severe. The prophets had 
 enchanted the place, making it sacred ground, 
 and they had assured the warriors that any 
 white force which should attack them would be 
 utterly exterminated. 9 In this belief the savages 
 resisted the attack with terrible determination, 
 contesting every inch of the ground which they 
 believed to be sacred. 
 
 Soon after the battle began, the artillery an 
 arm which was particularly dreaded by the 
 Creeks with something- of superstitious horror 
 was brought forward and unlimbered. Its rapid 
 
212 RED EAGLE. 
 
 discharges soon turned the tide of battle, which 
 until now had not gone against the Indians. 
 When the Indians began to waver before the 
 cannon-shot, Major Freeman with his squadron 
 of cavalry charged and broke their lines. They 
 Avere closely pressed by the infantry, while the 
 friendly Indians who had now crossed the creek 
 cut off retreat up the river, leaving the broken 
 and flying Creeks no road of escape except across 
 the river. At nine o clock both towns were in 
 flames, and there was no army in Floyd s front. 
 He was victor in the action, and his success in 
 attacking a sacred stronghold was certain to 
 work great demoralization among the supersti 
 tious Creeks ; but prudence dictated a retreat 
 nevertheless. The country round about was 
 populous with Indians, and the force which 
 fought at Autosse although broken was not de 
 stroyed. It was certain that if the army should 
 remain in the neighborhood it would be con 
 stantly harassed, and perhaps beaten by the su 
 perior force which the Creeks could speedily 
 muster. 
 
 Besides all this, Floyd had only a scanty sup 
 ply of provisions, and his base of supplies was 
 sixty miles away, on the Chattahoochie River. 
 He determined, therefore, to begin his return 
 
THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS. 213 
 
 march as soon as he could bury his dead and ar 
 range for the care of his wounded, of whom he 
 was himself one. 
 
 The return march was perhaps hastened by the 
 determination and spirit of the Indians, who, 
 notwithstanding their defeat, attacked Floyd s 
 rear within a mile of their burned town on the 
 day of the battle. The attack was made with 
 spirit, but the numbers of the Indians were not 
 sufficient to enable them to maintain it long. 
 
 In this battle of Autosse Floyd lost eleven 
 white men killed and fifty-four wounded, besides 
 some losses among his friendly Indians. Coffee 
 not being there to count the dead Creeks, the 
 exact number of the slain \varriors of the enemy 
 was not ascertained, but it was estimated at about 
 two hundred. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS 
 THE BATTLE OF THE HOLY GROUND- 
 RED EAGLE S FAMOUS LEAP. 
 
 GENERAL CLAIBORNE construed as liberally 
 as he dared the order from General Flournoy 
 which permitted him to drive the Creeks across 
 the border, and to pursue them as far as the 
 neighboring towns. He adopted the frontier 
 notion of nearness when deciding whether or not 
 a particular town that he wanted to strike was 
 sufficiently near the dividing line between the 
 white settlements and the Creek Nation. 
 
 His orders were to establish a fort at Weather- 
 ford s Bluff, and to remain in that neighborhood 
 until he should be joined by Jackson s army and 
 the Georgia troops, who were now advancing 
 under command of General Floyd. 
 
 The force with which he advanced to execute 
 this order was a rnotley one. There were three 
 hundred volunteers, who were the main reliance 
 of the commander. There was a small dragoon 
 force, composed of good men. Pushmatahavv, 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 215 
 
 the Choctaw warrior, with his followers accom 
 panied the expedition, and a small force of militia 
 men completed the little army. 
 
 Arriving at Weatherford s Bluff on the i/th 
 of November, Claiborne proceeded without delay 
 to build a stockade fort inclosing nearly an acre 
 of ground, within which he built three block 
 houses, while for defence against an assault from 
 the river side of the encampment he established 
 a battery on the bank. The work, when finished, 
 was christened Fort Claiborne, and from it the 
 present town of Claiborne on the same spot in 
 herited the commander s name. 
 
 Here, on the 28th of November, Claiborne 
 was reinforced by the Third Regiment of United 
 States Infantry, under command of Colonel Rus 
 sell, and in order that concert of action might be 
 secured, he wrote hence to General Jackson at 
 the Ten Islands, reporting the situation of affairs 
 c:i the southern side of the field, and informing 
 tlie Tennessee commander, of whose starvation he 
 had heard, that abundant supplies of food awaited 
 his coming. 
 
 His activity knew no bounds. He sent trust 
 worthy messengers to Pensacola to learn the sit 
 uation of affairs there, and ascertained through 
 them that the British were there with a consid- 
 
2l6 RED EAGLE. 
 
 erable fleet and abundant supplies both for the 
 Indians and for their own troops, whose presence 
 there threatened a descent upon Mobile or New 
 Orleans. He wrote at once to Governor Blount, 
 of Tennessee, informing him of these facts. He 
 sent messengers also to Mount Vernon, instruct 
 ing Colonel Nixon, who commanded there, to 
 garrison Fort Pierce, a little post a few miles 
 from the ruins of Fort Mims, and suppress a 
 recently awakened activity among the Indians 
 in that quarter. 
 
 The alertness of Claiborne s intelligence and 
 his unwearied devotion to duty made him an es 
 pecially fit man for the important charge that was 
 laid upon him. A close study of his career shows 
 him to have been indeed so capable a man in mili 
 tary affairs, that we may fairly regret that his field 
 of operations was too small and too remote from 
 the centres of American life to permit him to se 
 cure the fame which he fairly earned. 
 
 General Claiborne was not thinking of fame, 
 however, but of making fierce war upon the 
 Creeks and reducing them to subjection. He 
 knew that Red Eagle with a strong force was at 
 Econachaca, or the Holy Ground, and he deter 
 mined to attack him there. The Holy Ground 
 was one hundred and ten miles from Fort Clai- 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 2I/ 
 
 borne, and it could not be, with any strictness of 
 construction, considered a M neighboring" town ; 
 but the order whicl restricted Claiborne s excur 
 sions into the Creek Nation to the neighboring 
 towns was couched in terms which did not admit 
 of precise definition, and as he really wanted to 
 march to the Holy Ground, the gallant general 
 determined to regard it as a place within his 
 immediate neighborhood. He did not know, in 
 truth, precisely where it was, and there were 
 neither roads nor paths through the woods to 
 guide him to it, but he believed, with Suwarrow, 
 the Russian commander, that a general can al 
 ways find his enemy when he really wants to do 
 so, and in this case Claiborne very earnestly 
 wished to find and to fight Weatherford. 
 
 Accordingly he prepared to march. He was 
 in poor condition for such an undertaking cer 
 tainly, his force being weak in numbers, ill as 
 sorted, and in fact rather unwilling to go. Nine 
 of his captains, eight lieutenants, and five ensigns 
 sent him a written remonstrance against what 
 they believed to be the mad undertaking. These 
 officers directed their commander s attention to 
 several ugly facts with respect to his situation. 
 They reminded him that the weather was cold 
 and inclement ; that the troops were badly shod 
 
2l8 RED EAGLE. 
 
 and insufficiently supplied with clothing ; that 
 there was scarcely a possibility of feeding them 
 regularly upon so long a march into the literally 
 pathless forest ; and finally that the term of ser 
 vice for which many of the men had enlisted 
 would soon come^to an end. 
 
 The remonstrance was earnest, but perfectly 
 respectful. The officers who signed it assured 
 General Claiborne that if he should adhere to his 
 determination they would go with him without 
 murmuring, and do their duty. As there was 
 nothing set forth in the remonstrance which 
 Claiborne did not know or had not duly consid 
 ered already, it made no change in his mind. He 
 set his motley army in motion, determined to take 
 all responsibility, dare all clangers, and endure 
 all hardships for the sake of accomplishing the 
 purpose which he had so long cherished, of carry 
 ing the war into the centre of the Creek Nation. 
 How heavy the load of responsibility which he 
 thus took upon himself was, and how firm his 
 courage in assuming it must have been, we may 
 understand when we reflect that defeat in his at 
 tempt would certainly have subjected him to a 
 charge of criminal and reckless disobedience of 
 orders in undertaking such an expedition at all. 
 No such charge was ever preferred, because offi- 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 2IQ 
 
 cers are not usually haled before a court-martial 
 for winning battles. 
 
 The force with which he set out consisted of 
 the Third Regiment of United States troops, un 
 der Colonel Russell ; a squadron of cavalry, com 
 manded by Major Cassels ; one battalion of mili 
 tia, led by Major Smoot, whom the reader will 
 remember as one of the leaders at the battle of 
 Burnt Corn ; Colonel Carson s Mississippi volun 
 teers, and Pushmatahaw s Choctaws, to the num 
 ber of one hundred and fifty, making- a total of 
 about one thousand men. Dale was a captain 
 now in Smoot s command, and accompanied the 
 expedition in that capacitv. 
 
 The march was begun early in December, 
 through a country without roads, infested with 
 Indians whose force could never be guessed, and 
 in weather which was extremely unfavorable. 
 Toilsomely the column advanced north-eastward - 
 ly, or nearly so, to a point eighty miles from 
 Fv)rt Claiborne, in what is now Butler County, 
 Alabama. There Claiborne took the precaution 
 to build a stockade fort, which he named Fort 
 Deposit, and placed within it his baggage, his ar 
 tillery, his supply wagons, and his sick men. 
 
 Leaving this fort with a garrison of one hun 
 dred men, Claiborne marched on toward the 
 
220 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Holy Ground, which lay some thirty miles away. 
 His men speedily consumed the three days ra 
 tions of flour which they had drawn before begin 
 ning the march from Fort Deposit, and when the 
 army arrived at the Indian stronghold its supply 
 of pork, the only remaining article of food, was 
 nearly exhausted. Whatever was to be done must 
 be done quickly, in order that the troops might 
 not starve before reaching Fort Deposit on the 
 return march. 
 
 The Holy Ground was a newly-established 
 town, upon a spot chosen by Red Eagle because 
 of its natural strength as a defensive position. 
 It lay upon the eastern bank of the Alabama 
 River, just below what is now Powell s Ferry, 
 in the present Lowndes County, Alabama. The 
 site of the town was a high bluff overlooking the 
 river, and protected on [the land side by marshes 
 and deep ravines. 
 
 Here Red Eagle had gathered his forces in 
 considerable strength, and hither had fled the 
 remnants of various defeated bodies of Creeks, 
 with their women and children. The prophets 
 Sinquista and Josiah Francis, who were present, 
 declared the soil to be sacred, and assured their 
 comrades that no white troops would be permit- 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 221 
 
 ted by the Great Spirit to cross the swamps and 
 ravines which surrounded it. 
 
 Red Eagle, having more faith in defensive 
 works than in supernatural interferences at the 
 behest of his prophets, whose characters he prob 
 ably understood pretty accurately, added to the 
 natural strength of the place by picket and log 
 fortifications, making it as difficult to assault suc 
 cessfully as he could. 
 
 In this central camp of refuge there were as 
 many as two hundred houses, and during the two 
 or three months which had elapsed since the 
 town was established many of the prisoners taken 
 by the Indians in battle had been brought hither 
 and murdered. When Claiborne advanced to 
 attack the place, preparations were making in the 
 public square for the burning of a number of un 
 fortunate captives, among whom were one white 
 woman, Mrs. Sophia Durant, and several half- 
 breeds. 
 
 Claiborne arrived on the 23d of December, and 
 made his dispositions for the assault without de 
 lay. He advanced in three columns, leading the 
 centre in person. The Indians, as soon as they 
 learned of Claiborne s approach, made prepara 
 tions for defence. They carried their women and 
 
RED EAGLE. 
 
 children across the river and concealed them in 
 the thick woods on the other side. 
 
 The savages made the first attack, falling vio 
 lently upon the right column of Claiborne s force 
 under Colonel Carson. The onset was repulsed 
 after a brief engagement, the Indians becoming 
 panic-stricken for some reason never explained, 
 and retreating. Weatherford led the attack, and 
 for a time contested the field very stubbornly ; 
 but his men failing in courage in spite of all that 
 he could do, he was powerless to maintain his 
 ground. 
 
 Major Cassels, who with his squadron of cav 
 alry had been ordered to occupy the river bank, 
 failed to do so, and fell back instead upon Car 
 son s regiment ; and that gallant officer, seeing the 
 gap thus produced, advanced his line and occu 
 pied the ground. Meantime, however, the mis 
 chief had been done. Casscls s failure had left a 
 road of escape open to the Indians at the critical 
 moment, and hundreds of them fled and swam 
 the river to the thick woods on the other side. 
 
 When the Indian line broke and the retreat be- 
 p;an, the nature of the ground, crossed as it was 
 by ravines and dotted with marshes, made any 
 thing like vigorous and systematic pursuit impos 
 sible. Perhaps their consciousness that escape by 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 223 
 
 flight was easy helped to induce the Indians to 
 abandon the struggle when they did. However 
 that may be, they fled, and Weatherford could 
 not rally them. Seeing himself left alone, with no 
 followers to maintain the struggle, he was forced 
 to choose between flight and capture. Flight, how 
 ever, was not now by any means easy. He was 
 mounted upon a superb gray horse which carried 
 him in his flight with the speed of the wind, but 
 he was not long in discovering that Carson had 
 closed the gap through which he had hoped to 
 escape. His enemies were on every side of him 
 but one, and on that side was the high bluff. 
 
 O 
 
 The story of what he did, as it is commonly 
 told, is a very marvellous one. A bluff about one 
 hundred feet high at the Holy Ground is shown 
 to travellers, who are told that Red Eagle, see 
 ing no other way of escape, boldly dashed spurs 
 into his horse and forced him to make the fearful 
 leap to the river below ! As the story is usually 
 told in print it is somewhat less marvellous, but is 
 still sufficiently so to serve the purposes of a pop 
 ular legend. It is that a ravine passed through 
 the upper part of the bluff, reducing its height to 
 about fifty feet, and that Red Eagle made a leap 
 on his horse from that height. This version of 
 the story is so gravely told in books that are not 
 
224 RED EAGLE. 
 
 romances, that the author of the present volume 
 once cited it in print in justification of an incident 
 in a work of fiction, believing at the time that the 
 legend was well authenticated. In examining 
 authorities more carefully, as he was bound to do 
 before writing of the incident in a serious work 
 of this kind, he finds that the leap was much less 
 wonderful than has been represented. Mr. Pick- 
 ett, in his History of Alabama, gives us the fol 
 lowing account, which he assures us he had from 
 Red Eagle s own lips : 
 
 " Coursing with great rapidity along the banks 
 of the Alabama, below the town, on a gray steed 
 of unsurpassed strength and fleetness, which he 
 had purchased a short time before the commence 
 ment of hostilities of Benjamin Baldwin, late of 
 Macon County, [he] came at length to the ter 
 mination of a kind of ravine, where there was a 
 perpendicular bluff ten or fifteen feet above the 
 surface of the river. Over this with a mighty 
 bound the horse pitched with the gallant chief, 
 and both went out of sight beneath the waves. 
 Presently they rose again, the rider having hold 
 of the mane with one hand and his rifle firmly 
 grasped in the other. Regaining his saddle, the 
 noble animal swam with him to the Autauga 
 side." 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 225 
 
 The battle over, Claiborne found his loss to be 
 one man killed and six others wounded. Thirty 
 Indians were found dead on the ground. The 
 number of their wounded is not known. Clai 
 borne destroyed the town, with every thing in it. 
 
 The army was now reduced almost to starva 
 tion, their only food being a little corn, which they 
 parched and ate as they could. An alarm having 
 been given by a party of men who were sent 
 up the river in pursuit of fugitives, however, 
 Claiborne marched in that direction during the 
 night of December 24th, and pitched his tent 
 on Weatherford s plantation, where he ate his 
 Christmas breakfast of parched corn. Having de 
 stroyed all the buildings in the neighborhood, 
 Claiborne s work in this region was done, and he 
 hastened back to Fort Deposit, where he fed his 
 troops before beginning his return march to Fort 
 Claiborne. The army had been nine days with 
 out meat. 
 
 The term of service for which Carson s volun 
 teers had enlisted had now expired, and as soon 
 as the column arrived at Fort Claiborne the men 
 were mustered out. In a letter to the Secre 
 tary of War, Claiborne reported that these men 
 went home nearly naked, without shoes, and with 
 their pay eight months in arrears. Their devo- 
 
226 RED EAGLE. 
 
 tion to the cause, as it was shown in their cheer 
 fulness and good conduct during their toilsome 
 march, was, in view of all the circumstances, 
 highly honorable to them. 
 
 Leaving Colonel Russell in command of Fort 
 Claiborne, General Claiborne returned to Mount 
 Vernon, partly because he had fully accomplished 
 all that his orders from Flournoy permitted him to 
 do, and partly because the discharge of his Mis 
 sissippi volunteers had reduced his army to sixty 
 men, and even these had but a month longer to 
 serve ! 
 
 Colonel Russell was no sooner left in command 
 at Fort Claiborne than he instituted proceedings 
 designed to fix the responsibility for the suffer 
 ings of the men during the campaign and for the 
 blunder at the Holy Ground where it belonged. 
 He ordered a court of inquiry in each case, but 
 Major Cassels was permitted to escape censure 
 on the ground that his guide had misled him. 
 For the failure of the food supply the contractor 
 was held responsible, as it was shown that Gen 
 eral Claiborne had given him strict orders to pro 
 vide abundant supplies for the expedition. 
 
 In order that the story of the Fort Claiborne 
 army may be finished here before returning to 
 the Ten Islands and following Jackson through 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 227 
 
 his more important part of the campaign, we may 
 depart for the moment from the chronological 
 order of events to tell the story of an unsuccess 
 ful attempt which Colonel Russell made to in 
 vade the Creek Nation from Fort Claibornc, in 
 the February following the events already de 
 scribed. 
 
 It was Colonel Russell s purpose to march 
 to the Old Towns on the Cahawba River, and 
 thence to attack the Indians wherever he could 
 find them, establishing his base of supplies at that 
 point. He provided a barge, loaded it with food 
 for the troops, and putting Captain Denkins in 
 command of it, with a piece of artillery as his 
 armament, he directed that officer to ascend the 
 Alabama River to the mouth of the Cahawba 
 River, and thence to make his way up the Cahaw 
 ba to Old Towns, where the army would meet 
 him. Then, with his regiment reinforced by an 
 infantry company from the neighborhood of Fort 
 Madison under command of Captain Evan Au- 
 still, and a cavalry company commanded by Cap 
 tain Foster the two forming a battalion under 
 the lead of Sam Dale, who was now a Major- 
 Colonel Russell marched to the appointed place 
 of rendezvous. 
 
 There he learned that the barge had not ar- 
 
228 RED EAGLE. 
 
 rived, and as he had marched with but six days 
 provisions his situation was a critical one. To 
 hasten the coming of the barge he despatched a 
 canoe manned by Lieutenant Wilcox and five 
 men in search of Captain Denkins. This party, 
 while making its way down the river, travelling 
 at night and hiding in the cane on the banks by 
 day, was attacked by Indians. Lieutenant Wil 
 cox and three of his companions were made pris 
 oners, the other two escaping and making their 
 way through many hardships to the settlements, 
 where they arrived in a famished condition. 
 
 Captain Denkins had passed the mouth of the 
 Cahawba River by mistake, and had gone a con 
 siderable distance up the Alabama River before 
 discovering his error. When he did discover it, 
 he knew that it was now too late for him to think 
 of carrying out his original instructions. He 
 knew that before he could possibly reach the Old 
 Towns, the army would be starved out and com 
 pelled to retreat. 
 
 He therefore determined to return to Fort 
 Claiborne. On his way down the river he dis 
 covered the canoe, and found in it Wilcox 
 scalped and dying, and his two companions al 
 ready dead. 
 
 Meantime Colonel Russell had waited two days 
 
HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS. 1 
 
 at the Old Towns for the coming of the barge, 
 and then, being wholly without provisions, be 
 gan his return march, saving his army from 
 starvation by killing and eating his horses on the 
 route. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 
 
 WE now return to General Jackson s camp at 
 Fort Strother, near the Ten Islands. The situa 
 tion there was bad from the time of the Talla- 
 dega expedition, and it grew steadily worse. The 
 army was nearly starved, and Jackson was shar 
 ing their hunger with them. When a few lean 
 kine were secured, seeing that the supply was 
 sufficient only to give to- each man a very scant 
 portion, Jackson declined to take any part of the 
 beef for his own table, and took some of the en 
 trails instead, saying with cheerfulness that he 
 had always heard that tripe was nutritious and 
 savory food. He lost no opportunity to secure 
 such provisions as could be had from the sur 
 rounding country, but these were barely suffi 
 cient to keep famine at bay from day to day, and 
 Jackson busied himself with the writing of let 
 ters to everybody who could in any way contrib 
 ute to hasten forward adequate supplies. He 
 wrote to one contractor, saying : 
 
 11 1 have been compelled to return here for the 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 231 
 
 want of supplies when T could have completed the 
 destruction of the enemy in ten days ; and on my 
 arrival I find those 1 had left behind in the same 
 starving condition with those who accompanied 
 me. For God s sake send me with all despatch 
 plentiful supplies of bread and meat. We have 
 been starving for several days, and it will not do 
 to continue so much longer. Hire wagons and 
 purchase supplies at any price rather than defeat 
 the expedition. General White, instead of form 
 ing a junction with me, as he assured me he 
 would, has taken the retrograde motion, after 
 having amused himself with consuming provi 
 sions for three weeks in the Cherokee Nation, 
 and left me to rely on my own strength." * 
 
 Nothing that the perplexed commander could 
 do or say or write, however, could help him. 
 Day by day food became scarcer, poorer, and 
 more difficult to get, and the men were becoming 
 mutinous, as volunteers are sure to do when left 
 to starve in inaction. If the enemy had appeared 
 in his immediate neighborhood, Jackson would 
 certainly have cured all the disorders of the camp 
 and removed its discontent by giving the men 
 constant occupation for their minds in conflicts 
 with the foe. As it was, there was neither food 
 
 * Parton s Life of Andrew Jackson. 
 
232 RED EAGLE. 
 
 nor fighting to be had at Fort Strother, and 
 
 
 
 General Jackson did not dare to attempt a march 
 upon the nearest Indian stronghold, about sixty 
 miles away, without supplies. 
 
 Not many days had passed after the return to 
 the Ten Islands when information reached Jack 
 son that the men of the militia regiment intended 
 to return to their homes with or without permis 
 sion, and that they had appointed the next day 
 as the time of starting. Luckily he believed that 
 he could still depend upon the volunteers. He 
 knew, too, that in this matter he had to deal with 
 bodies of men, not with individuals. The power 
 of public sentiment, which in this case was corps 
 sentiment, was the power arrayed against him. 
 He knew that the men would not desert singly, 
 that their pride would restrain them from deser 
 tion unless they could act together, each being 
 sustained by the opinion and the common action 
 of all his fellows. The militia had determined to 
 march home in a body ; Jackson determined to 
 restrain them in a body. 
 
 On the appointed day he called the volunteers 
 to arms, and at their head placed himself in the 
 way of the mutinous militiamen. He plainly in 
 formed the men that they could march homeward 
 only by cutting their way through his lines, and 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 233 
 
 this was an undertaking which they were not pre 
 pared for. Being unable to overcome Jackson, 
 thcv had no choice but to yield to him and return 
 to their tents, which they did at once, with what 
 cheerfulness they could command. 
 
 The volunteers whose power Jackson was thus 
 able to use in arresting the departure of the mi 
 litia were scarcely less discontented than they. 
 On the very day on which they stopped the 
 march of the militia they resolved themselves to 
 go home, and prepared to depart on the following 
 morning. Jackson had information of what was 
 going on, and he prepared to reverse the order 
 of things by using the militia in their turn to op 
 pose the volunteers. The militia having returned 
 to their duty obeyed the commands of their gen 
 eral, and opposed a firm front to the mutinous 
 volunteers. The affair wore so much of the ap 
 pearance of a practical joke that it put the whole 
 force into momentary good-humor. 
 
 With his men in this mood, however, Jackson 
 knew that he had merely gained a very brief time 
 by his firmness, and that the discontent of which 
 the mutiny was born existed still in undimin- 
 ished force. He therefore sent the cavalry to 
 Huntsville to recruit their horses, first exacting 
 a promise that they would return as soon as that 
 
234 RED EAGLE. 
 
 end could be accomplished a promise which the 
 men afterward violated shamelessly. He then 
 called all the officers of the army together, and, 
 after giving them all the facts in his possession 
 upon which he founded the confident hope that 
 provisions in plenty would soon arrive, he made 
 a speech to them, trying to win them back to 
 something of their old devotion to duty. He 
 had good reason to believe that supplies both of 
 meat and of breadstuffs were now actually on 
 their way to him, and his chief present purpose 
 was to gain time, to persuade his followers to 
 patience and obedience for the two or three days 
 which he thought would end the period of short 
 rations. According to Eaton s report of the 
 speech, Jackson said to his officers : 
 
 " What is the present situation of our camp? 
 A number of our fellow-soldiers are wounded and 
 unable to help themselves. Shall it be said that 
 we are so lost to humanity as to leave them in 
 this condition ? Can any one, under these circum 
 stances and under these prospects, consent to an 
 abandonment of the camp ; of all that we have 
 acquired in the midst of so many difficulties, pri 
 vations, and dangers ; of what it will cost us so 
 much to regain ; of what we never can regain 
 our brave wounded companions, who will be 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 235 
 
 murdered by our unthinking, unfeeling- inhu 
 manity ? Surely there can be none such ! N .), 
 we will take with us when we go our wounded 
 and sick. They must not, shall not perish by our 
 cold-blooded indifference. But why should you 
 despond ? I do not ; and yet your wants are not 
 greater than mine. To be sure we do not live 
 sumptuously ; but no one has died of hunger or 
 is likely to die. And then how animating are 
 our prospects ! Large supplies are at Deposit, 
 and already are officers despatched to hasten 
 them on. Wagons are on the way ; a large num 
 ber of beeves are in the neighborhood, and de 
 tachments are out to bring them in. All these 
 resources cannot fail. I have no wish to starve 
 you, none to deceive you. Stay contentedly, and 
 if supplies do not arrive in two days we will all 
 march back together, and thro\v the blame of our 
 failure where it should properly lie ; until then 
 we certainly have the means of subsisting, and if 
 we are compelled to bear privations, let us re 
 member that they are bftrne for our country, and 
 are not greater than many, perhaps most, armies 
 have been compelled to endure. I have called 
 you together to tell you my feelings and wishes. 
 This evening think on them seriously, and let me 
 know yours in the morning." 
 
236 RED EAGLE. 
 
 To this appeal the response was not satisfac 
 tory. The militia indeed agreed to remain dur 
 ing the stipulated two days, and promised that if 
 the expected provisions should come within that 
 time they would cease to murmur, and go on 
 with the campaign ; but the volunteers were now 
 wholly given over to mutiny. They insolently 
 informed General Jackson that they were going 
 to march back to the borders of Tennessee, and 
 that if he refused to yield immediately to their 
 will in the matter, without waiting for the allotted 
 two days to expire, they would go without per 
 mission and would use force if necessary to ac 
 complish that end. 
 
 There can be no doubt whatever about the 
 nature of the reply which Jackson would have 
 made to this message if he had had even a small 
 force upon which he could rely at his back. In 
 that case the volunteers must have chosen be 
 tween submission to his will and a battle with 
 him. As it was, he was one man against the 
 whole force. He could not oppose the mutinous 
 volunteers with arms, and he felt that he must 
 in some way prevent the abandonment of all that 
 had been gained in the campaign. He there 
 fore resorted to a compromise, which he hoped 
 would solve the perplexing problem. He com- 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 237 
 
 munded the militia and one regiment of the vol 
 unteers to remain in the fort as a gafrison, and 
 ordered the other volunteer regiment to march 
 toward Fort Deposit until it should meet the pro 
 vision train, and then to countermarch and return 
 with it. In this way he lost immediately only one 
 half of the volunteers, winning the rest of them to 
 his proposition for a delay of two days ; and even 
 the regiment which had been sent away might 
 yet return with the provisions, as the lack of food 
 was the only plea that had been urged in defence 
 of the mutiny. 
 
 The discontent really lay much deeper than 
 that : it had come as much from idleness in camp 
 and from home-sickness as from hunger, and it 
 had eaten into the soldierly characters of the men, 
 honeycombing them with sedition and insubordi 
 nation ; but while the plea of starvation remained 
 to them the men urged no other, and Jackson s 
 memory of their courage and good conduct on 
 former occasions, led him to hope that with this 
 cause of trouble removed the trouble itself would 
 disappear. 
 
 When the two days of waiting had passed, 
 and no supplies had come, a new difficulty lay in 
 Jackson s path, namely, his own voluntary prom 
 ise. He had asked for two days delay, promising 
 
238 RED EAGLE. 
 
 to permit the men to march away if food did not 
 arrive within that time. The promise now fell 
 due and the men exacted its fulfilment. In his 
 sore distress he could do nothing further to com 
 pel obedience. He had even relinquished his 
 right to command the men to remain and his 
 privilege to bargain for further delay. He must 
 let them go now, but there was no reason why 
 any of them who chose to do so might not vol 
 untarily remain to defend the fort. It was a slen 
 der hope, but Jackson was grasping at straws 
 now. He set out to seek volunteers, declaring 
 that if even two men should consent to stay with 
 him he would not abandon Fort Strother and the 
 campaign, but would stay there and wait for the 
 corning of reinforcements. One of his captains 
 at once offered himself as one of this army of two, 
 and by an earnest effort they succeeded in swell 
 ing the number of volunteers to one hundred and 
 nine men. 
 
 This was all that was left of Jackson s army, 
 and the campaign lay mostly before him. A man 
 of less stubborn resolution would have despaired ; 
 but Jackson held on in the hope of gaining 
 strength after awhile and gathering men enough 
 around him to make a resumption of operations 
 possible. 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 239 
 
 He permitted the rest of his troops to leave the 
 post, first exacting 1 a promise that they would 
 return if they should meet the supply train, and 
 in order the more effectually to enforce this de 
 mand Jackson accompanied the column, leaving 
 his army, one hundred and nine strong, to hold 
 the fort until his return. 
 
 Twelve miles from the fort the column met the 
 provision train. Jackson called a halt and ordered 
 rations to be distributed to the men. It was now 
 his turn to insist upon the faithful fulfilment of a 
 promise. He had kept his word in permitting his 
 men to abandon Fort Strother at the time ap 
 pointed ; he could now, with especially good 
 grace, insist that the men should keep their prom 
 ise and return with the provision train. 
 
 Now for the first time the mutiny began to as 
 sume its true colors. With stomachs filled with 
 good beef and bread for a large drove of beef 
 c:ittle was with the provision train, and Jackson 
 hnd given the men beef rations it was no longer 
 possible to urge hunger in excuse for abandon 
 ment of duty ; but the men had set out intending 
 to go home, and they had no thought of relin 
 quishing that intention rr-rely because the excuse 
 by which they had justified their conduct would 
 no longer serve their purpose. 
 
240 RED EAGLE. 
 
 When ordered to take up the line of march to 
 ward the fort the men rebelled and started home 
 ward instead. 
 
 Then ensued one of the most impressive scenes 
 in Jackson s career. Raving with rage, his thin 
 lips set and his frame quivering with anger, the 
 commander s face and mien were terrible. His 
 left arm was still carried in a sling, and the hard 
 ships, hunger, fatigue, and ceaselesss anxiety to 
 which he had been subject ever since he quitted 
 his sick-becl to come upon this campaign had not 
 made his \vasted frame less emaciated ; he was a 
 sick man who ought to have been in bed : but the 
 illness was of the body, not of the soul. The spirit 
 of the man was now intensely stirred, and when 
 Jackson was in this mood there were few men 
 who had the courage to brave him. 
 
 Riding after the head of the column, he placed 
 himself with a few followers in front of it, and 
 drove the men back like sheep. Then leaving 
 the officers who were with him he rode alone 
 down the road, until he encountered a brigade 
 which was dra\vn up in column, resolved to con 
 quer its way by a regular advance against any 
 body of men who might oppose its homeward 
 march. If a company or a battalion had under 
 taken to arrest the march of these men there 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 241 
 
 would have been a battle there in the road with 
 out question. They were prepared to fight their 
 comrades to the death ; they \vere ready to meet 
 a force equal to their own. They met Andrew 
 Jackson instead Andrew Jackson in a rage, An 
 drew Jackson with all the blood in his frail body 
 boiling ; and that was a force greatly superior to 
 their own. 
 
 Snatching a musket from one of the men Jack 
 son commanded the mutineers to halt. He broke 
 forth in a torrent of vituperation, and declared 
 that they could march toward home only over 
 his dead body ; he declared, too, with an empha 
 sis which carried conviction with it, that while he 
 could not, single-handed, overcome a brigade of 
 armed msn, he at least could and would shoot 
 down the first man who should dare to make the 
 least motion toward advancing. 
 
 The men were overawed, terrified, demoralized 
 by the force of this one resolute man s fierce de 
 termination. They stood like petrified men, not 
 knowing what to do. It was now evident that 
 no man there would dare to make himself Jack 
 son s target by being the first to advance. Jack 
 son had beaten a brigade, literally single-handed, 
 for he had but one hand that he could use. 
 
 By this time General Coffee and some staff offi- 
 
242 RED EAGLE. 
 
 cers had joined Jackson, and now a few of the 
 better disposed men, seeing their general oppos 
 ing a brigade of mutineers, ranged themselves 
 by his side, prepared to assist him in any en 
 counter that might come, however badly over 
 matched they might be. The mutineers were 
 already conquered, however, and sullenly yield 
 ing they were sent back to the fort. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 
 
 HAVING thus succeeded in sending- what re 
 mained of his army back to Fort Strother, with 
 abundant food at least for present uses, Jackson 
 hastened to Fort Deposit and succeeded there in 
 effecting arrangements for a constant supply of 
 bread and meat. 
 
 Then he mounted his horse and rode back to 
 Fort Strother, determined to collect what force he 
 could without delay, and by vigorous measures 
 to bring the campaign to a speedy and successful 
 end. 
 
 His first measure was to order General Cocke 
 t) join him with the East Tennessee troops, say 
 ing in his letter to that officer that if he could ar 
 rive at Fort Strother by the I2th of December, 
 b.inging with him all the provisions he could 
 gather, the Creeks could be crushed within three 
 weeks. This was a most inspiriting prospect, 
 and Jackson was apparently all the more elated 
 because of his recent depression. 
 
 His good fortune was destined to be short- 
 
244 RED EAGLE. 
 
 lived, however. He had scarcely reached Fort 
 Strother on his return from Fort Deposit Avhen 
 he discovered that his volunteers were planning 
 a new mutiny, or, as they stoutly maintained, 
 were preparing to leave him with legal right and 
 justice on their side. 
 
 The state of the case may be briefly summed 
 up as follows : These volunteers had been mus 
 tered into service on the loth of December, 1812, 
 the terms of their enlistment being that they 
 should serve for one year within the next t\vo 
 years, unless sooner discharged ; that is to say, 
 they were to be discharged as soon as they should 
 have served a year ; or, if their actual service in 
 the field should not amount to a full year they 
 should be discharged on uie loth of December, 
 1814. They were called into service when Jack 
 son made his march with them to Natchez, which 
 has been spoken of in a former chapter. After a 
 few months, their services not being needed, they 
 were dismissed from actual service to their homes, 
 subject, however, to a call at any time until their 
 time of service should expire. 
 
 Under this enlistment they were recalled to the 
 field in September, 1813, as we have seen, and 
 were under obligation to serve for a sufficient 
 time to complete their term of one year in the 
 
A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 245 
 
 field ; but as it had been supposed when they 
 were enlisted that their services would be needed 
 C3iitinuously for a year, they had thought little 
 about the alternative condition. They now held 
 that their enlistment would expire just one year 
 after it had begun that is to say, on the loth of 
 December, 1813, a date now at hand. They were 
 determined to permit no allowance to be made 
 for the months which they had passed at homo, 
 and insisted that as they had enlisted for one year 
 they would go home when the year should end. 
 
 In this demand for discharge the officers, who 
 should have been the men s instructors in such a 
 case, made the matter hopeless by joining the dis 
 contented soldiery. With their colonels and ma 
 jors and captains to second them, the men were 
 doubly certain to persist in their interpretation of 
 the contract of service. 
 
 Not long before the disputed date the colonel 
 of one of the volunteer regiments laid their case 
 before Jackson in a letter, in which he assured 
 him that the volunteers would demand their 
 honorable discharge from service on the loth of 
 December, the anniversary of their enlistment. 
 The appeal made in this letter was an adroit effort 
 to play upon next to the strongest feeling in Jack 
 son s heart his fatherly affection for the men 
 
246 RED EAGLE. 
 
 \vho had followed him into battle. We say next 
 to the strongest feeling in his heart, because the 
 strongest was, undoubtedly, his desire to serve 
 his country by accomplishing the utter suppres 
 sion of the Creeks. The colonel told Jackson that 
 the volunteers looked to their loved and honored 
 general to protect them in this their right, and to 
 secure justice to them ; that they lamented the ne 
 cessity of leaving the field at such a time, but that 
 their families and their private affairs required 
 their return to their homes ; that upon him, to 
 whom they looked with reverence as to a father, 
 depended the question whether, after their hard 
 service under his leadership they should be per 
 mitted to go home with the certificates of honor 
 able discharge to which they were entitled, or 
 should be forced to carry with them the ill-repute 
 of deserters. He was strongly implored not to 
 reward their devotion to the cause and to him by 
 fixing this brand of disgrace upon them and their 
 children after them. 
 
 The appeal was adroit we say, and a masterly 
 piece of special pleading ; but the officer who 
 wrote it must have known when he did so that 
 the demand which he sought to enforce was un 
 just ; that even if it had been just, Jackson had 
 no more authority than he himself had to ;;rant 
 
A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 247 
 
 it ; and that the disputed question had already 
 been submitted formally and fully to the Secre 
 tary of War, who had decided it adversely to the 
 men, and had accompanied that decision by the 
 assurance that as the matter was governed by an 
 express act of Congress, no power short of that 
 of the national legislature neither the Secretary 
 nor the President himself was competent to 
 change the terms of the enlistment, or to discharge 
 the troops until either they had given a year to 
 actual service, or the two years during which 
 they were subject to a call had expired. For the 
 men, and perhaps also for the subordinate offi 
 cers, there may have been the excuse of an hon 
 est misunderstanding, but for this colonel, whose 
 letter shows him to have been a man of high in 
 telligence, there can have been no excuse at all. 
 
 Jackson replied to this letter in one of the 
 ablest documents which has come from his hand. 
 Eaton has preserved it in his Life of Jackson, 
 and Mr. Parton has copied it. Let us see what 
 the commander, touched without doubt by the 
 argument um ad Jiomincm that was used, had to say 
 by way of answer : 
 
 " I know not what scenes will be exhibited on 
 the loth instant, nor what consequences are to 
 flow from them, here or elsewhere ; but as I shall 
 
248 RED EAGLE. 
 
 have the consciousness that they are not imput- 
 able to any misconduct of mine, I trust I shall 
 have the firmness not to shrink from a discharge 
 of my duty. 
 
 " It will be well, however, for those who intend 
 to become actors in those scenes, and who are 
 about to hazard so much on the correctness of 
 their opinions, to examine beforehand with great 
 caution and deliberation the grounds on which 
 their pretensions rest. Are they founded on any 
 false assurances of mine, or upon any deception 
 that has been practised toward them ? Was not 
 the act of Congress, under which they are en 
 gaged, directed by my general order to be read 
 and expounded to them before they enrolled 
 themselves ? That order will testify, and so will 
 the recollection of every general officer of my di 
 vision. It is not pretended that those who now 
 claim to be discharged were not legally and fairly 
 enrolled under the act of Congress of the 6th of 
 February, 1812. Have they performed the ser 
 vice required of them by that act, and which they 
 then solemnly undertook to perform ? That re 
 quired one year s service out of two, to be com 
 puted from the day of rendezvous, unless they 
 should be sooner discharged. Has one year s 
 service been performed ? This cannot be seri- 
 
A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 249 
 
 ously pretended. Have they then been dis 
 charged ? It is said they have, and by me. To 
 account for so extraordinary a belief, it may be 
 necessary to take a review of past circumstances. 
 " More than twelve months have elapsed since 
 we were called upon to avenge the injured right 
 of our country. We obeyed the call. In the 
 midst of hardships, which none but those to 
 whom liberty is dear could have borne without 
 a murmur, we descended the Mississippi. It was 
 believed our services were wanted in the prose 
 cution of the ju.;t war in which our country was 
 engaged, and we were prepared to render them. 
 But though we were disappointed in our expec 
 tations w r e established for Tennessee a name which 
 will long do her honor. At length we received 
 a letter from the Secretary of War directing our 
 dismission. You will recollect the circumstances 
 of wretchedness in which this order was calculated 
 to place us. By it we were deprived of every 
 article of public property ; no provision was made 
 for the payment of our troops or their subsist 
 ence on their return march ; while many of our 
 sick, unable to help themselves, must have per 
 ished. Against the opinion of many I marched 
 them back to their homes before I dismissed 
 them. Your regiment, at its own request, was 
 
250 RED EAGLE. 
 
 dismissed at Columbia. This was accompanied 
 with a certificate to each man, expressing the 
 acts under which he had been enrolled and the 
 length of the tour he had performed. This it is 
 which is now attempted to be construed a final 
 discharge. But surely it cannot be forgotten by 
 any officer or soldier how sacredly they pledged 
 themselves, before they were dismissed or re 
 ceived that certificate, cheerfully to obey the 
 voice of their country, if it should re-summon 
 them into service ; neither can it be forgotten, I 
 dare hope, for what purpose that certificate was 
 given ; it was to secure, if possible, to those brave 
 men, who had shown such readiness to serve 
 their country, certain extra emoluments, speci 
 fied in the seventh section of the act under which 
 they had engaged, in the event they were not 
 recalled into servics for the residue of their term. 
 Is it true, then, that my solicitude for the in 
 terest of the volunteers is to be made by them a 
 pretext for disgracing a name which they have 
 rendered illustrious ? Is a certificate, designed 
 solely for their benefit, to become the rallying 
 word for mutiny ? Strange perversion of feeling 
 and of reasoning ! Have I really any power to 
 discharge men whose term of service has not ex 
 pired ? If I were weak or wicked enough to at- 
 
A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 251 
 
 tempt the exercise of such a power, does any one 
 believe the soldier would be ttiereby exonerated 
 from the obligation he has voluntarily taken upon 
 himself to his government ? I should become a 
 traitor to the important concern which has been 
 intrusted to my management, while the soldier 
 who had been deceived by a false hope of lib 
 eration would be still liable to redeem his pledge. 
 I should disgrace myself without benefiting you. 
 ; I can only deplore the situation of those offi 
 cers who have undertaken to persuade their men 
 that their term of service will expire on the loth. 
 In giving their opinions to this effect they have 
 acted indiscreetly and without sufficient author 
 ity. It would be the most pleasing act of my 
 life to restore them with honor to their families. 
 Nothing could pain me more than that any other 
 sentiments should be felt toward them than those 
 of gratitude and esteem. On all occasions it has 
 been my highest happiness to promote their inter 
 est, and even to gratify their wishes, where with 
 propriety it could be done. When in the lower 
 country, believing that in the order for their dis 
 missal they had been improperly treated, I even 
 solicited the government to discharge them finally 
 from the obligations into which they had entered. 
 You know the answer of the Secretary of War : 
 
RED EAGLE. 
 
 that neither he nor the President, as he believed, 
 had the power to discharge them. How then 
 can it be required of me to do so ? 
 
 The moment it is signified to me by any com 
 petent authority, even by the Governor of Ten 
 nessee, to whom I have written on the subject, or 
 by General Pinckney, who is now appointed to the 
 command, that the volunteers may be exonerated 
 from further service, that moment I will pro 
 nounce it with the geatest satisfaction. I have 
 only the power of pronouncing a discharge, not 
 of giving it, in any case a distinction which I 
 would wish should be borne in mind. Already 
 have I sent to raise volunteers on my own re 
 sponsibility, to complete a campaign which has 
 been so happily begun, and thus far so fortu 
 nately prosecuted- The moment they arrive, and 
 I am assured that, fired by our exploits, they will 
 hasten in crowds on the first intimation that we 
 need their services, they will be substituted in the 
 place of those who are discontented here. The 
 latter will then be permitted to return to their 
 homes with all the honor which, under such cir 
 cumstances they can carry along with them. But 
 I still cherish the hope that their dissatisfaction 
 and complaints have been greatly exaggerated. 
 I cannot, must not, believe that the volunteers 
 
A XI-;\V PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS. 253 
 
 of Tennessee, a name ever dear to fame, will dis 
 grace themselves and a country which they have 
 honored, by abandoning her standard as mutineers 
 and deserters ; but should I be disappointed and 
 compelled to resign this pleasing hope, one thing 
 I will not resign my duty. Mutiny and sedition, 
 so long as I possess the power of quelling them, 
 shall be put down ; and even when left destitute 
 of this, I will still be found in the last extremity 
 endeavoring to discharge the duty I owe my 
 country and myself." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 JACKSON S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS OWN 
 MEN. 
 
 WHEN troops unused as these men were to 
 systematic obedience make up their minds to 
 abandon the service they are of very little ac 
 count thereafter, as soldiers. If one pretext for 
 mutiny and desertion fails them, they quickly find 
 another, as the men had done in this case. While 
 famine lasted, famine was the best possible ex 
 cuse for wishing to go home, and the men 
 thought of no other. They even protested their 
 devotion to the cause and their willingness to re 
 main in service if food could be found for them ; 
 but no sooner were their mouths stopped with 
 abundant supplies of beef and bread than they 
 tried to leave, as has been described, without any 
 pretext whatever. Failing in that, they picked 
 this flaw, or this pretended flaw, in their contract 
 of enlistment, and Jackson probably knew that ro 
 far as their restoration to the condition of good 
 soldiers was concerned, he was wasting words in 
 arguing the case ; but it was necessary to detain 
 
JACKSON S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS MEN. 255 
 
 ^ men until the others for whom he had sent 
 to Tennessee should arrive to take their places. 
 They were useless for any thing like offensive 
 operations, else he would have marched with 
 them at once toward the Creek strongholds ; but 
 while they should remain at Fort Strother he 
 could depend upon them to defend that post 
 against any assault that might be made upon it, 
 simply because in the event of an attack they 
 must defend themselves, and to do that would 
 have been to defend the fort. 
 
 Jackson had ordered the enlistment of a new 
 force to take the place of these discontented men, 
 but until the new* army should come he was bent 
 upon keeping the old one. 
 
 Precisely what arrangements he had made to 
 meet trouble on the loth of December we have 
 no means of knowing. He was not permitted to 
 wait for the coming of that day. On the even 
 ing of the Qth, word was brought to him that the 
 men were already strapping their knapsacks on 
 their backs and getting ready to march imme 
 diately. 
 
 It was time to act. Jackson issued one of the 
 shortest cf all his proclamations, ordering all good 
 soldiers to assist in putting down the mutiny. 
 Then he ordered the militia to parade at once 
 
2$6 RED EAGLE. 
 
 under arms. Placing his cannon in a command 
 ing position, he drew up the militia in line of 
 battle and confronted the mutinous volunteers. 
 
 Riding to the front he made a speech to the 
 volunteers, beginning by assuring them that they 
 could march only over his dead body ; that he 
 had done with entreaty, and meant now to use 
 force ; that they must now make their choice be 
 tween returning to their tents and remaining qui 
 etly upon duty, and fighting him and his troops 
 right where he stood ; the point, he said, could 
 be decided very quickly by arms if they chose to 
 submit the question to that kind of argument. 
 He told them, too, that he was expecting new 
 troops to take their places, and that until these 
 new troops should arrive not a man present should 
 quit the post except by force. 
 
 He was now terribly in earnest, and bent upon 
 no half-way measures. He had drawn his men 
 up in line of battle, not as a threat, but for pur 
 poses of battle. He was ready to fight, and 
 meant to fight, not defensively, but offensively. 
 He wanted no negotiation, asked no man upon 
 what terms he would submit. He had dictated 
 the terms himself and meant now to enforce 
 them. He had given the volunteers a choice- 
 cither to remain peaceably until he shoulS send 
 
JACKSON S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS MEN. 257 
 
 them home, or to fight a battle with him right 
 there in the road and right then on the Qth of 
 December ; he had offered them this choice, and 
 they must choose and say what their choice was. 
 \Vhen he ended his speech the volunteers stood 
 grimly, sullenly silent. They did not offer to 
 advance, but that was not enough. They must 
 say whether they would remain and obey, or ac 
 cept battle. If they would promise to remain 
 without further attempts of this kind, he was con 
 tent ; if not, the battle would begin. 
 
 " I demand an explicit answer, "he said ; an 1 
 no reply coming, he turned to his artillerymen 
 and ordered them to stand to their guns with 
 lighted matches. 
 
 It was now a question merely of seconds. 
 Jackson gave the men time to answer, but not 
 many moments would pass before he would speak 
 the only words which were left to him to speak 
 the words "commence firing," those words 
 which in every battle are the signal for the trans 
 formation of iron or brazen guns from harmless 
 cylinders of metal into bellowing monsters, belch 
 ing fiery death from their throats. 
 
 There was silence for a moment that awful 
 silence which always precedes the turmoil of bat 
 tle, doing more to appall men than all the demo- 
 
258 RED EAGLE. 
 
 niac noises of the contest do ; then a murmur was 
 heard as of men hastily consulting ; then the 
 officers of the volunteer brigade stepped a pace 
 to the front and delivered the answer which Jack 
 son had demanded. 
 
 They had made their choice, and the answer 
 was that they would return to duty, and remain 
 at the fort until the new men should come, or 
 until their commander should receive authority 
 to discharge them. 
 
 This affair of the Qth of December, 1813, is 
 nowhere set down in the list of Jackson s battles ; 
 but nowhere did he win a more decided victory 
 or display his qualities as a great commander to 
 better advantage. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 JACKSON DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS 
 WITHOUT A BENEDICTION. 
 
 JACKSON had not deceived himself with respect 
 to these mutinous men. He knew very well that 
 their usefulness as soldiers was hopelessly gone, 
 and he had no thought of undertaking a cam 
 paign with them. Evrea before this last trouble 
 came he had abandoned all hopjj of this, and had 
 ceased to regard the army he had with him as 
 worth keeping, except as a garrison for Fort 
 Strother, during the period of waiting for a new 
 arm y to be raised to take its place. It was his 
 purpose to send this army back to Tennessee as 
 soon as he could replace the men with others fit 
 to fight with, and to get those others he was 
 working in every possible way. He had sent to 
 Tennessee for the enlistment of a new force, and 
 had written to everybody he knew there who 
 had aught of influence preachers, doctors, law 
 yers, and men of affairs urging them to stir the 
 enthusiasm of the young men and persuade them 
 to volunteer. He had already ordered General 
 
260 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Cocke to join him with his force, and that offi 
 cer had promised to do so immediately. As this 
 would give him a sufficient garrison for ti^e fort 
 almost immediately, Jackson determined to send 
 home at once every man who could not be 
 stirred to a proper sense of his duty, every man 
 who could not be induced, by a fair and earnest 
 statement of the case, to remain voluntarily and 
 finish the campaign. In order to separate any 
 such sheep, if there were any, from the homesick 
 goats, the commander on the I3th of December 
 issued a final appeal, which was read to the 
 troops. It was as follows : 
 
 " On the 1 2th day of December, 1812, you 
 assembled at the call of your country. Your 
 professions of patriotism and ability to endure 
 fatigue were at once tested by the inclemency of 
 the weather. Breaking your way through sheets 
 of ice you descended the Mississippi and reached 
 the point at which you were ordered to be halted 
 and dismissed. All this you bore without mur 
 muring. Finding that your services were not 
 needed, the means for marching you back were 
 procured ; every difficulty was surmounted, end 
 as soon as the point from which you embarked 
 was regained, the order for your dismissal WM-, 
 carried into effect. The promptness with which 
 
JACKSON DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS. 26 1 
 
 you assembled, the regularity of your conduct, 
 your attention to your own duties, the deter 
 mination manifested on every occasion to carry 
 into effect the wishes and will of your govern 
 ment, placed you on elevated ground. You not 
 only distinguished yourselves, but gave to your 
 state a distinguished rank with her sisters, and 
 led your government to believe that the honor of 
 the nation would never be tarnished when en 
 trusted to the holy keeping of the volunteers of 
 Tennessee. 
 
 In the progress of a war which the implacable 
 and eternal enemy of our independence induced 
 to be waged, we found that without cause on our 
 part a portion of the Creek Nation was added to 
 the number of our foes. To put it down, the 
 first glance of the administration fell on you, and 
 you were again summoned to the field of honor. 
 In full possession of your former feelings, that 
 summons was cheerfully obeyed. Before your 
 enemy thought you in motion you were at Tal- 
 lushatchee and Talladega. The thunder of your 
 arms was a signal to them that the slaughter of 
 your countrymen was about to be avenged. You 
 fought, you conquered ! Barely enough of the 
 foe escaped to recount to their savage associates 
 your deeds of valor. You returned to this place 
 
262 RED EAGLE. 
 
 loaded with laurels and the applause of your 
 country. 
 
 " Can it be that these brave men are about to 
 become the tarnishers of their own reputation, 
 the destroyers of a name which does them so 
 much honor ? Yes, it is a truth too well disclosed 
 that cheerfulness has been exchanged for com 
 plaints. Murmurings and discontents alone pre 
 vail. Men who a little while since were offering 
 tip prayers for permission to chastise the merci 
 less savage, who burned with impatience to teach 
 them how much they had hitherto been indebted 
 to our forbearance, are now, when they could 
 so easily attain their wishes, seeking to be dis 
 charged. The heart of your general has been 
 pierced. The first object of his military affec 
 tions and the first glory of his life were the vol 
 unteers of Tennessee. The very name recalls to 
 him a thousand endearing recollections. But 
 these brave men, these volunteers, have become 
 mutineers. The feelings he would have in 
 dulged, your general has been compelled to sup 
 press ; he has been compelled, by a regard to 
 that subordination so necessary to the support of 
 every army, and which he is bound to have ob 
 served, to check the disorder which would have 
 destroyed you. He has interposed his authority 
 
JACKSON DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS. 263 
 
 for your safety to prevent you from disgracing 
 yourselves and your country. Tranquillity has 
 been restored in our camp ; contentment shall 
 also be restored. This can be done only by per 
 mitting those to retire whose dissatisfaction pro 
 ceeds from causes that cannot be controlled. 
 
 " This permission will now be given. Your 
 country will dispense with your services if you no 
 longer have a regard for that fame which you have 
 so nobly earned for yourselves and her. Yes, 
 soldiers ! You who were once so brave, and to 
 whom honor was so dear, shall be permitted to 
 return to your homes, if you still desire it. But 
 in what language, when you arrive, will you ad 
 dress your families and friends ? Will you tell 
 them that you abandoned your general and your 
 late associates in arms within fifty miles of a sav- 
 n^e enemy, who equally delights in shedding the 
 blood of the innocent female and her sleeping 
 babe as that of the warrior contending in battle ? 
 Lamentable, disgraceful tale ! If your disposi 
 tions are really changed, if you fear an enemy 
 you so lately conquered, this day will prove it. 
 I now put it to yourselves ; determine upon the 
 part you will act, influenced only by the sugges 
 tions of your own hearts and your own under 
 standings. All who prefer an inglorious retire- 
 
264 RED EAGLE. 
 
 mcnt shall be ordered to Nashville, to be dis- 
 ( barged as the President or the Governor may 
 clircct. Those who choose to remain and unite 
 with their general in the further prosecution oi 
 the campaign can do so, and will thereby fur 
 nish a proof that they have been greatly tra 
 duced, and that although disaffection and cow 
 ardice have reached the hearts of some, it has 
 not reached theirs. To such my assurance is 
 given that former irregularities will not be at 
 tributed to them. They shall be immediately 
 organized into a separate corps, under officers of 
 their own choice ; and in a little while it is con 
 fidently believed an opportunity will be afforded 
 of adding to the laurels you have already won." 
 
 If these men had had a single spark of soldierly 
 spirit left in them if the manhood itself had not 
 all gone out of them such an appeal as this would 
 have shamed them into their duty. It is incrcci- 
 blc that men who had once had spirit enough to 
 volunteer in the service of their country should 
 have lost it so utterly that they could resist this 
 plea to their pride, their duty, and their regard 
 for their own good name ; but such was the fact. 
 Out of the whole brigade, officers and men, only 
 one was found with manliness enough to stay. 
 That one man was a Captain Wilkinson, the men- 
 
JACIvSOX DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS. 265 
 
 tion of whose name is only a just tribute to his 
 soldierly manhood. The rest were no longer 
 men in spirit, but homesick wretches, lusting for 
 the flesh-pots of Tennessee, the ease, the indj- 
 lence, the comfort of home. 
 
 Public opinion is particularly strong in a new 
 country, where every man s history is known to 
 all his neighbors, and few men in such a case can 
 successfully brave it. Public opinion in Ten 
 nessee sharply condemned these volunteers for 
 their abandonment of the service upon a mere 
 technicality, at a time when the enemy was in 
 their front. How sorely they smarted under the 
 taunts of their neighbors we may easily imagine ; 
 and when they could silently endure the censure 
 no longer, they prepared a plea in their own jus 
 tification, which was published in March of the 
 following year. This plea was offered in the form 
 of a statement, signed by the brigadier-general 
 who commanded the disaffected brigade, one col 
 onel, two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, an 
 aide-de-camp, and the brigade-quartermaster. 
 These officers in their statement recount the his 
 tory of their service, and rest their case upon the 
 dates used in their muster-rolls, and the techni 
 cality that in dismissing them after their Nat 
 chez expedition Jackson had used the word " dis- 
 
266 RED EAGLE. 
 
 charge" instead of " dismiss." They assert that 
 they and their men were fully and finally dis 
 charged at the end of that expedition, and ex 
 plain their readiness to answer the call to march 
 against the Creeks, when Jackson assembled them 
 a second time, by a confession that they thought 
 they saw a chance to secure pay for service not 
 rendered. They declare that they returned to 
 the service, believing that their term could only 
 last till the loth of December in any case, and 
 that by doing so they could compel the govern 
 ment to give them soldiers pay for all the time 
 which they had passed at home. 
 
 Read carelessly, their plea seems to palliate 
 their misconduct ; read at all carefully, it adds to 
 their shame. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 HOW JACKSON LOST THE REST OF HIS 
 ARMY. 
 
 HAVING begun the work of getting rid of men 
 upon whom he could not depend for active ser 
 vice, Jackson was disposed to complete it as 
 speedily as possible, in order that he might re 
 sume the active operations of the campaign, 
 knowing precisely what he could count upon in 
 the way of an army and governing his measures 
 accordingly. 
 
 He had counted upon General Cocke s force 
 for at least half his strength, but here again he 
 WPCS doomed to disappointment. General Cocke 
 cine, it is true, according to the appointment, 
 and brought an army of two thousand men with 
 him ; but they were three-months men, and they 
 had already served more than two months ! 
 General Cocke has declared in a printed letter 
 that he had asked these men to give up the 
 thought of going home at the expiration of their 
 term of service, and voluntarily remain until the 
 end of the campaign, and that the men had 
 
r68 RED EAGLE. 
 
 promised him to do so. He expressed in that 
 letter surprise, not unmixed with indignation, that 
 Jackson did not take them at their word ; but 
 when we remember what Jackson had just gone 
 through, and reflect that these men would have 
 ceased to be soldiers and become citizens when 
 their time should expire ; that their promise to 
 remain till the end of the campaign would have 
 had no binding force whatever ; that they would 
 have had the fullest right, individually or in bod 
 ies, to abandon the army at any moment, how 
 ever critical the situation might be ; and that 
 Jackson would have had absolutely no authority 
 over them, even to command obedience to orders 
 in camp or battle, we cannot wonder that he 
 declined to begin a campaign in the wilderness 
 against a savage and wily foe, with an army 
 which might dissolve at any moment and go 
 home, and which, even while it should remain 
 with him, would be free to disobey orders at its 
 own sweet will. Campaigns are not successfully 
 carried on, battles are not won, with mobs. Jack 
 son meant to have an army before setting out 
 again to crush the Creeks, and accordingly he 
 sent Cocke s men home, retaining only Colonel 
 Lillard s regiment as a temporary garrison for 
 the fort. 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 269 
 
 He then ordered General Cocke to return to 
 East Tennessee and enlist a new force, and ur^ed 
 
 o 
 
 the returning- men to volunteer again as soon as 
 they should have provided themselves at home 
 v ith suitable clothing for a winter campaign. 
 
 It was his hope that two thousand men or 
 more would be secured in East Tennessee and a 
 like number in West Tennessee, and with such a 
 force he could march into the Creek Nation and 
 crush the savages, he believed, within a very brief 
 time. 
 
 General Cocke obeyed the order very reluc 
 tantly, as he has himself told the public. His 
 confidence in his men was so great, that he 
 thought it unnecessary and unwise to dismiss 
 them and search for others to take their place. 
 He did as he was bidden, however, returning to 
 East Tennessee and speedily securing a new 
 force two thousand strong. These men volun 
 teered for six months, and were mustered into 
 service in time to march on the i/th of January. 
 
 On the march, however, these six-months men 
 learned that the new levies from the western part 
 of the State men between whom and the East 
 Tennesseeans a wretched jealousy prevailed 
 were to be enlisted for only three months, and 
 this bred sore discontent in General Cocke s 
 
270 RED EAGLE. 
 
 camp. General Cocke met this difficulty reso 
 lutely, and in a published letter he has given an 
 account of what he did. 
 
 "I overtook the troops," he says, "at the 
 Lookout Mountain, when I found a dissatisfaction 
 among the troops amounting almost to mutiny. 
 They declared their determination to return 
 hom^ at the end of three months. I made them 
 a speech, in which I told them that if they left 
 the army without any honorable discharge, they 
 would disgrace themselves and families ; that 
 much of their time had already expired, and for 
 all the good they could do, if they intended to 
 leave at the end of three months they had better 
 go home then, but appealed to their magnanim 
 ity and patriotism to go on like brave men and 
 good soldiers, and serve until the expiration of 
 the term for which they were ordered into ser 
 vice. " 
 
 These troops were certainly not in a mood to 
 become soldiers fit for the work they had to do. 
 Meantime the work of enlistment in West Ten 
 nessee had gone on very slowly and unsatisfac 
 torily, and even Coffee s troopers, whom Jackson 
 had sent to Iluntsville to recruit their horses, 
 exacting a promise from them that they would 
 return as soon as they should accomplish that 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 2/1 
 
 object, had broken faith and deserted in a body 
 in spite of all that their gallant leader could do to 
 restrain them. 
 
 Even this was not the end of Jackson s troubles. 
 The men whom he fiad retained from Cocke s 
 command were ready to leave as soon as their 
 term of service should expire, and the date of its 
 expiration was near at hand. This would dimm 
 ish the force in Fort Strother from fourteen hun 
 dred to six hundred men. These six hundred 
 were militiamen, and now, as if to break down 
 what remained of Jackson s hopes, these troops 
 managed to find an excuse for quitting the ser 
 vice and going home presently. The act of the 
 legislature by which they had been called int:> 
 service was bunglingly drawn, and upon ex 
 amining it the militia officers discovered that 
 nothing whatever had been said in the law with 
 respect to the length of time for which they 
 should serve. Then the question arose, How 
 long have these men engaged to serve ? The 
 men held that as no term was set by the law 
 the lawgivers must be held to have meant the 
 shortest time for which it was customary to call 
 out the militia, namely, three months, and that 
 time would end on the 4th of January. Jackson, 
 on the other hand, held that the law set no other 
 
2/2 RED EAGLE. 
 
 limit to the term of service, because it meant that 
 the service should continue as long as the war 
 did. The men had been called out, he said, to 
 suppress the Creeks, and their term of service 
 would end when they had Sone that, and not be 
 fore whether that should be three months or 
 three years after their enlistment. Jackson had 
 fourteen hundred men, of whom eight hundred 
 had an unquestioned right to quit in the middle 
 of January, while the remaining six hundred as 
 serted their right to retire at the beginning of 
 that month. The new East Tennessee troops 
 who were on their way to him had enlisted for six 
 months, but, as we know, were determined to 
 serve only half of that term, a considerable part 
 ol whicH had already expired. Never was a com 
 mander in a sorer strait. Sent to fight a cam 
 paign and held responsible for its success, he was 
 denied an army with which to fight at all. His 
 commanding general urged him to activity, on 
 the ground that the British must at any cost be 
 shorn of the strength they had sought to secure 
 by stimulating Indian hostilities ; the British were 
 already in Florida, threatening Mobile and New 
 Orleans ; the Seminoles in the Spanish province 
 and the runaway negroes there Avere ready to 
 take up arms and assail the Georgia borders ; 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 273 
 
 while in the North and West the war was pros 
 ecuted by the enemy with untiring perseverance. 
 
 But what was Jackson to do? The troops he 
 had were about to leave him, and it began to ap 
 pear that no others were likely to come to him. 
 Even Governor Blount advised him to yield to 
 the demands both of the six-months volunteers 
 who wanted to quit the service at the end of three 
 months, and of the militia who wanted to quit al 
 most immediately. Governor Blount sent Jack 
 son a letter in which he urged this course upon 
 him, advising him to regard the campaign as at 
 an end, retire to the borders of Tennessee and 
 protect that state as well as he could, abandon 
 the attempt to raise a new force by enlisting vol 
 unteers, and quietly wait until the National Gov 
 ernment should provide him with an army by 
 ordering a draft or by some other means. 
 Governor Blount believed that he had no au 
 thority to raise further forces, and that any at 
 tempt which he might make to do so must injure 
 rather than help the service. 
 
 Then Jackson rose to the occasion, and showed 
 that he was no less able as a debater than as a 
 fighter. He wrote a letter to Governor Blount 
 which changed the whole face of affairs, con 
 verted that executive officer to views the op 
 
274 RED EAGLE, 
 
 posite of those that he had held, and led to the 
 creation of a new army, or rather of two new 
 armies, one bcin ^ a temporary supply OL short- 
 term men, with whom Jackson did some work, 
 and the other coming immediately to take its 
 place. 
 
 This letter, for the text of which we are in 
 debted to Mr. Parton, is called by that writer 
 "the best letter he [Jackson] ever wrote in his 
 life one of those historical epistles which do the 
 work of a campaign." Jackson wrote : 
 
 11 Had your wish that I should discharge a part 
 of my force and retire with the residue into the 
 settlements assumed the form of a positive order, it 
 might have furnished me some apology for pursu 
 ing such a course, but by no means a full justifica 
 tion. As you would have no power to give such 
 an order, I could not be inculpable in obeying, 
 with my eyes open to the fatal consequences 
 that would attend it. But a bare recommenda 
 tion founded, as I am satisfied it must be, on the 
 artful suggestions of those fireside patriots who 
 seek in a failure of the expedition an excuse for 
 their own supineness, and upon the misrepresen 
 tations of the discontented from the army, who 
 wish it to be believed that the difficulties which 
 overcame their patriotism are wholly insur- 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 275 
 
 mountable would afford me but a feeble shield 
 against the reproaches of my country or my 
 conscience. Believe me, my respected friend, 
 the remarks I make proceed from the purest 
 personal regard. If you would preserve your 
 reputation or that of the State over which you 
 preside, you must take a straightforward, deter 
 mined course, regardless of the applause or cen 
 sure of the populace, and of the forebodings of 
 that dastardly and designing crew who at a time 
 like this may be expected to clamor continually 
 in your ears. The very wretches who now be 
 set you with evil counsel will be the first, should 
 the measures which they recommend eventuate 
 in disaster, to call down imprecations on your 
 head and load you with reproaches. 
 
 Your country is in danger ; apply its re 
 sources to its defence. Can any course be more 
 plain ? Do you, my friend, at such a moment as 
 the present, sit with your arms folded and your 
 heart at ease, waiting a solution of your doubts 
 and definitions of your powers ? Do you wait for 
 special instructions from the Secretary of War, 
 which it is impossible for you to receive in time 
 for the danger that threatens ? How did the 
 venerable Shelby act under similar circumstances, 
 or rather under circumstances by no means so 
 
276 RED EAGLE. 
 
 critical ? Did he wait for orders to do what every . 
 man of sense knew, what every patriot felt to be 
 right ? He did not ; and yet how highly and justly 
 did the government extol his manly and energetic 
 conduct ! and how dear has his name become to 
 every friend of his country ! 
 
 " You say that an order to bring the necessary 
 quota of men into the field has been given, and 
 that of course your power ceases ; and although 
 you are made sensible that the order has been 
 wholly neglected, you can take no measure to 
 remedy the omission. I consider it your imperi 
 ous duty, when the men called for by your author 
 ity, founded upon that of the government, are 
 known not to be in the field, to see that they be 
 brought there ; and to take immediate measures 
 with the officer who, charged with the execution 
 of your order, omits or neglects to do it. As the 
 executive of the State, it is your duty to see that 
 the full quota of troops be constantly kept in the 
 field for the time they have been required. You 
 are responsible to the government ; your officer 
 to you. Of what avail is it to give an order if 
 it be never executed and may be disobeyed with 
 impunity ? Is it by empty mandates that we can 
 hope to conquer our enemies and save our de 
 fenceless frontiers from butchery and devasta- 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 277 
 
 tion ? Believe me, my valued friend, there are 
 times when it is highly criminal to shrink from 
 responsibility or scruple about the exercise of 
 our powers. There are times when we must dis 
 regard punctilious etiquette, and think only of 
 serving our country. What is really our present 
 situation ? The enemy we have been sent to 
 subdue may be said, if we stop at this, to be only 
 exasperated. The commander-in-chief, General 
 Pinckney, who supposes me by this time pre 
 pared for renewed operations, has ordered m3 
 to advance and form a junction with th^ 
 Georgia army ; and upon the expectation that I 
 will do so are all his arrangements formed for 
 the prosecution of the campaign. Will it do to 
 defeat his plans and jeopardize the safety of the 
 Georgia army ? The General Government, too, 
 believe, and have a right to believe, that we 
 have now not less than five thousand men in the 
 heart of the enemy s country, and on this 
 opinion are all their calculations bottomed ; and 
 must they all be frustrated, and I become the in 
 strument by which it is done ? God forbid ! 
 
 " You advise me to discharge or dismiss from 
 service, until the will of the President can be 
 known, such portion of the militia as have ren 
 dered three months service. This advice as- 
 
2/8 RED EAGLE. 
 
 tonishes me even more than the former. I have 
 no such discretionary power ; and if I had, it 
 woul.l be impolitic and ruinous to exercise it. 
 I believed the militia who were not specially re 
 ceived for a shorter period were engaged for six 
 months, unless the objects of the expedition 
 should be sooner attained ; and in this opinion I 
 was greatly strengthened by your letter of the 
 1 5th, in which you say, when answering my 
 inquiry upon this subject, The militia are de 
 tached for six months service ; nor did I know 
 or suppose you had a different opinion until the 
 arrival of your last letter. This opinion must, 
 I suppose, agreeably to your request, be made 
 known to General Roberts brigade, and then 
 the consequences are not difficult to be foreseen. 
 Every man belonging to it will abandon me on the 
 4th of next month ; nor shall I have the means 
 of preventing it but by the application of force, 
 which under such circumstances I shall not be at 
 liberty to use. I have labored hard to reconcile 
 these men to a continuance in service until they 
 could be honorably discharged, and had hoped 
 I had in a great measure succeeded ; but your 
 opinion, operating with their own prejudices, 
 will give a sanction to their conduct, and render 
 useless any further attempts. They wiH go ; but 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 2/9 
 
 I can neither discharge nor dismiss them. Shall 
 I be told that, as th^v will go, it may as well be 
 peaceably permitted ? Can that be any good 
 reason why 1 should do an unauthorized act ? Is 
 it a good reason why I should violate the order 
 of my superior officer and evince a willingness 
 to defeat the purposes of my government ? 
 And wherein does the sound policy of the 
 measures that have been recommended consist ? 
 or in what way are they likely to promote the 
 public good ? Is it sound policy to abandon a 
 conquest thus far made, and deliver up to havoc 
 or add to the number of our enemies those friend 
 ly Creeks and Cherpkees who, relying on our 
 protection, have espoused our cause and aided 
 us with their arms ? What ! Retrograde under 
 such circumstances ? I will perish first. No. I 
 will do my duty ; I will hold the posts I have es 
 tablished, until ordered to abandon them by the 
 commanding general, or die in the struggle ; 
 long since have I determined not to seek the pre 
 servation of life at the sacrifice of reputation. 
 
 " But our frontiers, it seems, are to be de- 
 lended ; and by whom ? By the very force that 
 is now recommended to be dismissed : for I am 
 first told to retire into the settlements and pro 
 tect the frontiers ; next to discharge my troops ; 
 
28O RED EAGLE. 
 
 and then that no measures can be taken for rais 
 ing others. No, my friend, if troops be given 
 me, it is not by loitering on the frontiers that I 
 will seek to give protection : they are to be 
 defended, if defended at all, in a very different 
 manner by carrying the war into the heart of 
 the enemy s country. All other hopes of defence 
 are more visionary than dreams. 
 
 "What, then, is to be done? I ll tell you 
 what. You have only to act with the energy and 
 decision the crisis demands, and all will be well. 
 Send me a force engaged for six months and I 
 will answer for the result ; but withhold it and 
 all is lost the reputation of the State, and yours 
 and mine along with it. 
 
 Fortunately, Governor Blount had not only 
 the sense to see into what errors he had fallen, 
 when the real state of the case and the obliga 
 tions it placed upon him .were thus pointed out, 
 but the courage also to act inconsistently and to 
 do that which he had once solemnly declared that 
 he ought not to do. It was too late to undo the 
 mischief he had done by advising the discharge 
 of the discontented militia, but he set to work at 
 once to provide men to take their places. The 
 militia left in spite of all that Jackson cared to 
 do to detain them, and Cocke s volunteers fol- 
 
HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY. 281 
 
 lowed them ten days afterward, but in the mean 
 time a force of nine hundred new men had ar 
 rived. They had enlisted in part for two and in 
 part lor three months, and were therefore of com 
 paratively little value ; bat Jackson resolved to 
 use them at least while waiting- for the arrival of 
 the larger and better force which had been 
 ordered to gather at Fayetteville on the 28th of 
 January. He meant to strike a blow \vith what 
 force he had while its enlistment should continue, 
 so that no more men might be paid for service as 
 soldiers without doing any fighting. The volun 
 teers whose term had expired marched out of 
 camp on the I4th of January, and on the next 
 day Jackson set his new men in motion for work. 
 They were undrilled, undisciplined, and weak 
 in numbers, but Jackson was now bent upon 
 fighting with any thing that he could get which 
 remotely resembled an army. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOr- 
 CO HOW THE CREEKS "WHIPPED CAP 
 TAIN JACKSON." 
 
 IN an earlier chapter of this book the author 
 expressed the opinion that if the Creeks could 
 have had an equal share with their enemies in 
 writing the history of the war their story would 
 have given us very different impressions from 
 those that we now have with respect to many of 
 the events of the struggle. Perhaps no better 
 illustration of the truth of this assumption could 
 be given than that which is furnished by the story 
 of Jackson s short campaign with his two and 
 three months men. The Creek chiefs who 
 fought this force in the battles of Emuckfau and 
 
 o 
 
 Enotachopco always declared, in talking of the 
 matter after the war, that they " whipped Cap 
 tain Jackson and ran him to the Coosa River," 
 and while neither Jackson s report of the cam 
 paign nor any other of the written accounts of it, 
 admit the truth of this Indian version of the 
 story, they furnish a good many details which 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACIIOPCO. 283 
 
 strongly suggest that the Creek chiefs may not 
 have been altogether wrong in their interpreta 
 tion ot events. 
 
 But as they had no historians to put their ac 
 count upon record, except by reporting their 
 verbal assertion which we have quoted, the wri 
 ter is compelled to rely upon the testimony of 
 the other side exclusively for all information 
 about matters of detail. 
 
 The force which had come from Tennessee 
 consisted of about nine hundred men in all, of 
 whom eight hundred and fifty were fit for duty. 
 They were in two regiments, one commanded 
 by Colonel Perkins, the other by Colonel Hig 
 gins. 
 
 With this small force Jackson at once began 
 his march. Crossing the Coosa River on the 
 day after their arrival, he pushed forward to 
 Tallade^-a, where he was reinforced by a body of 
 
 O 7 
 
 friendly Indians consisting of sixty-five Chero- 
 kees and about two hundred Creeks. He had 
 with him an artillery detachment with a single 
 iron six pounder cannon ; a company of spies 
 under Captain Russell, and another under 
 Captain Gordon ; and one company composed 
 . exclusively of officers. These were officers of 
 various grades whose men had gone home. 
 
284 RED EAGLE. 
 
 General Coffee, whose troops also had left him, 
 had gathered these officers together and com 
 manded them in person. General Jackson said 
 in his report that his force numbered exactly 
 nine hundred and thirty men, exclusive of the 
 friendly Indians who accompanied him. These 
 Indians are said to have been somewhat alarmed 
 when they saw how small a force Jackson had 
 with him, but there is nothing to show that they 
 in the least faltered in their duty or hesitated to 
 march when ordered to do so. 
 
 General Floyd was already moving to strike 
 the Creeks again, having recovered from his 
 wound. Of this movement and of the nature of 
 Floyd s plans Jackson was advised, in order that 
 he might as far as possible arrange his own in 
 accordance with them. 
 
 At Talladega General Jackson received a 
 despatch from Colonel Snodgrass, commanding 
 at Fort Armstrong, that a force of Creeks had 
 assembled at Emuckfau, in a bend of the Talla- 
 poosa River, near the mouth of Emuckfau Creek, 
 in what is now Tallapoosa County, Alabama, and 
 that these Indians, now about nine hundred 
 strong, were preparing to attack Fort Arm 
 strong. Jackson resolved to find and fight this 
 Creek force at once. His men, as he tells us in 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO. 285 
 
 his report, were both undrilled and insubordinate, 
 and their officers were without skill or experi 
 ence ; but the troops were really anxious to fight 
 a battle, and in this particular their general was 
 disposed to gratify them as speedily as possible. 
 Luckily he had a few good men upon whom he 
 could depend, and his company of brave and ex 
 perienced officers who were serving as private sol 
 diers with General Coffee for their captain were 
 his special staff of reliance. 
 
 Pushing forward as rapidly as possible, the 
 army arrived at Enotachopco, about a dozen miles 
 from Emuckfau, on the afternoon of January 2oth. 
 The march was resumed the next morning, and 
 early in the day signs were discovered of the 
 proximity of a large Creek force. Well- beaten 
 trails w r ere found, and a few Indians seen. 
 
 It was necessary now to reconnoitre before 
 proceeding further, in order to avoid a surprise 
 in some unfavorable spot. Jackson selected a 
 halting-place and ordered the men to encamp in 
 the form of a hollow square, taking great pains 
 to surround the camp with a line of well-placed 
 picket-guards. Then he sent out his spies to dis 
 cover the whereabouts and the strength of the 
 Indian force. 
 
 Before midnight the spies reported that a large 
 
2r6 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Indian encampment lay within about three miles 
 of Jackson s position, and that the Indians were 
 removing their \vomen and evidently preparing 
 for battle. It was probable that they did not 
 intend to await Jackson s attack, but intended t 
 fall upon his camp during the night, but the 
 careful commander, having already taken every 
 precaution against surprise, contented himself 
 with warning the pickets against neglect of vigil 
 ance and the men against panic in the event of a 
 night attack. 
 
 The Indians advanced as morning approached, 
 and at six o clock, while it was not yet light, 
 fell upon Jackson s left flank with great fury. 
 The men, raw as they were, behaved well and met 
 the assault with spirit. General Coffee rode at 
 once to the point at which the firing was heaviest, 
 and both by his presence and his words animated 
 the men ; but the struggle was a severe one, and 
 for a time the left flank was so hard pressed that 
 their ability to hold their position was a matter 
 of some doubt. As soon as it was light enough 
 to see, and hence light enough to move troops 
 from one part of the line to another without 
 danger of producing confusion and panic, a fresh 
 company of infantry was ordered to reinforce the 
 left ; and Coffee, who with the adjutant-general, 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO. 287 
 
 Colonel Sitler, and the inspector-general, Col 
 onel Carroll, for his aids, had assumed the im 
 mediate command, ordered the whole line for 
 ward, leading- the men to one of the most gallant 
 and determined charges of the war. Thus as 
 saulted the Creeks gave way, and after a few 
 moments of irregular resistance fled precipitately, 
 closely pressed both by the troops and by the 
 friendly Indians. Coffee with his usual vigor 
 followed the broken and retreating savages for 
 two miles, inflicting considerable damage upon 
 them. 
 
 Then Jackson ordered Coffee to take four hun 
 dred men and march to the Indian encampment, 
 about three miles away, and, if it should be 
 practicable, to destroy it. He cautioned the 
 gallant, and perhaps too daring general who 
 w is said by one of his contemporaries to have 
 been "a great soldier without knowing it" to 
 avoid unnecessary risk, and not to attack the 
 place if it should prove upon inspection to be 
 strong. 
 
 Coffee marched at once, taking the single piece 
 of artillery with him ; but upon arriving at 
 Emuckfau he found the place so well fortified and 
 the force there so strong that he deemed it im 
 portant not only to withdraw without attacking, 
 
288 RED EAGLE. 
 
 but to hasten his return to the camp lest the 
 army thus divided should be attacked and beaten 
 in detail. It was soon made plain that the attack 
 of the morning- had been not much more than a 
 beginning of the Indian attempt to overwhelm 
 Jackson. 
 
 Half an hour after Coffee returned the Creeks 
 renewed the battle. A considerable force began 
 the action by making an assault upon Jackson s 
 right flank. As soon as their line was developed 
 Coffee asked permission to turn their left flank- 
 moving from the rear of Jackson s right with 
 two hundred men. Through some misunder 
 standing only fifty-four men accompanied Coffee, 
 but that particularly enterprising officer, not to 
 be balked of his purpose or delayed in executing 
 it, dashed on though the woods with his little 
 force, which consisted chiefly of his own officer 
 company, and fell upon the flank of the savages 
 nei cely. Jackson seeing with how small a force 
 Coffee was making this critical movement, mov 
 ed two hundred friendly Indians to the right 
 to assist the flanking party by attacking that part 
 of the Indian line in front. 
 
 Had the Indian attack been what it appeared 
 to be, the battle would have been decided by the 
 results of this combined blow upon the Indian left 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOrcO. 289 
 
 from Jackson s right and Coffee s position be 
 yond ; but it was presently apparent that the at 
 tack upon the right of Jackson s line was merely 
 a feint designed to distract attention from tli3 
 real object of the savage leader, and to lead Jack 
 son to strengthen his right at the expense of his 
 left, upon which the savages intended then to fall 
 with crushing force. 
 
 Jn this scheme the Indians were baffled. Jack 
 son, anticipating something of the sort, not only 
 avoided weakening his left, but specially com 
 manded the officers there to expect an attack in 
 force and prepare to meet it. 
 
 As soon as the right was fully engaged, the 
 main body of the Indians advanced with spirit 
 and confidence against the left. The assault was 
 well made, the shock falling upon the whole front 
 of the left flank at once ; but it was equally well 
 received. For a time the firing was very heavy 
 and at short range ; then, knowing that raw 
 troops can stand any amount of active work bet 
 ter than a strain which must be borne passively, 
 Jackson, who had ridden to this part of the field 
 as soon as the alarm was given, ordered his men 
 to cease firing fix bayonets, charge, and sweep 
 the field. The men behaved, Jackson tells us, 
 with " astonishing intrepidity," and quickly 
 
2QO RED EAGLE. 
 
 cleared their front, Colonel Carroll leading- the 
 charge. The Indians wavered, gave way, and 
 then broke and fled in confusion, under a de 
 structive fire, and with their pursuers close upon 
 their heels. 
 
 The friendly Indians did good work whenever- 
 actual fighting was going on in their front, but 
 being without that habit of unquestioning obe 
 dience which more than any thing else makes the 
 difference between a good soldier and a raw re 
 cruit, they could never be depended upon to exe 
 cute an order the ulterior purpose of which they 
 could not see. In this battle of Emuckfau their 
 habit of acting for the good of the cause upon 
 their own judgment and without regard to 
 orders came near involving Coffee and his com 
 pany of officers in serious disaster. When Jack 
 son ordered them to the right to co-operate with 
 Coffee, they went gladly and fought well, enabling 
 Coffee to drive the savages in his immediate front 
 into the swamps ; but when the firing began on 
 the left they quickly withdrew from the position 
 they had been ordered to occupy, and went to 
 join in the mclcc at the other end of the line, 
 without pausing to think of what might befall 
 Coffee in consequence. 
 
 No sooner had they gone than the Creeks ral- 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO. 2ql 
 
 lied and attacked Coffee again, well-nigh ovcr- 
 v.-hclming his small force \vith their greater num 
 bers. Luckily, Coffee was both an able and an 
 experienced officer, and it was equally a fortu 
 nate circumstance that his followers, the ex-offi 
 cers, were the very best troops in the army, else 
 the whole of the little band, including Coffee, an 
 
 C5 
 
 officer whom Jackson could ill have spared, must 
 have been destroyed. The little band fought 
 with desperate determination, holding their 
 ground and keeping the Indians at bay, but hav 
 ing to fight on every side at once. Coffee fell 
 severely wounded, but continued to direct the 
 operations of his men. His aide-de-camp and 
 three others of his followers were killed. 
 
 Jackson, hearing the firing on that flank, re 
 called the friendly Indians from the pursuit at the 
 1 jft as soon as he could, and sent them at double- 
 quick to rescue Coffee. They carne up at a run 
 and with a yell, headed by their chief, Jim Fife. 
 As soon as Coffee was thus reinforced he ordered 
 a charge, before which the foe gave way and fled, 
 followed for miles by the relentless Jim Fife and 
 his Indians. 
 
 Thus ended the battle of Emuckfau. Whether 
 or not it ended in victory for Jackson is a ques 
 tion with two sides to it, even when the evidence 
 
292 RED EAGLE. 
 
 comes to us altogether from one side. Jackson 
 held the field, it is true, but he did not think it 
 prudent to advance a few miles and destroy the 
 Indian encampment. He determined, on the 
 contrary, to retreat without delay to Fort Stro- 
 ther, and even for the single night that he was to 
 remain on the battle-field he deemed it neces 
 sary to fortify his camp. Certainly he did not 
 regard the Indians as very badly beaten on this 
 occasion. They were still so dangerously strong 
 that the American commander thought it neces 
 sary to provide camp defences, which he had not 
 thought of on the preceding night. In view of 
 these things and of the retreat and pursuit which 
 followed, we may fairly acquit the Indians of the 
 charge of unduly boasting when they said, as 
 already quoted, " We whipped Captain Jackson 
 and ran him to the Coosa River." 
 
 In his official report of the affair, Jackson ex 
 plained his determination to retreat by saying : 
 " Having brought in and buried the dead and 
 dressed the wounded, I ordered my camp to be 
 fortified, to be the better prepared to repel any 
 attack which might be made in the night, deter 
 mining to make a return march to Fort Strother 
 the following day. Many causes concurred to 
 make such a measure necessary. As I had not 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTAGHOPCO. 293 
 
 set out prepared or with a view to make a per 
 manent establishment, I considered it worse than 
 useless to advance and destroy an empty encamp 
 ment. I had, indeed, hoped to have met the 
 enemy there ; but having met and beaten them a 
 little sooner, I did not think it necessary or pru 
 dent to proceed any further not necessary, be 
 cause I had accomplished all I could expect to 
 effect by marching- to their encampment, and 
 because, if it was proper to contend with and 
 weaken their forces still farther, this object would 
 be more certainly attained by com n Dicing a re 
 turn, which having to them the appearance of a 
 retreat, would inspirit them to pursue me : not 
 prudent, because of the number of my wounded ; 
 of the reinforcements from below, which the 
 enemy might be expected to receive ; of the 
 starving condition of my horses, they having had 
 neither corn nor cane for t\vo days and nights ; 
 of the scarcity of supplies for my men, the Indians 
 who joined me at Talladega having drawn none 
 and being wholly destitute ; and because if the 
 enemy pursued me, as it was likely they would, 
 the diversion in favor of General Floyd would be 
 the more complete and effectual." 
 
 The retreat began the next morning, and was 
 conducted with all the caution and care possible. 
 
2Q4 RED EAGLE. 
 
 Jackson knew very well that the fight of the day 
 before had been really little better than a drawn 
 battle. He knew that he had not broken the 
 strength of the Indian force which he had been 
 fighting, and that their running away was the 
 running away of Indians, not of regular soldiers ; 
 that it indicated no demoralization or loss of 
 readiness to renew the fight, but merely their 
 conviction that for the moment they had better 
 run away. This distinction is an important one 
 to be made. When a disciplined army breaks be 
 fore the enemy and runs away, the fact proves 
 their utter discomfiture ; it shows that they have 
 lost spirit and abandoned their standards in panic, 
 and in such a case it is certain that they are in no 
 fit condition to renew the battle either offensively 
 or defensively. But, in the case of Indians, run 
 ning away indicates nothing of the kind. Indians 
 hght in a desultory way, advancing and retiring 
 equally without regard to regular principles. 
 They run away if they think that to be the best 
 thing to do for tli2 moment, whether they are 
 frightened or not ; and the moment they see an 
 opportunity to strike their foes successfully, they 
 arc as ready to turn and fight as they were to 
 run. 
 
 Jackson knew this, and hence he made his re- 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO. 295 
 
 treat with all points guarded against surprise. 
 Before nightfall he had reached Enotachopco, and 
 there he selected a camp with reference to its de 
 fensive capabilities, and strongly fortified it before 
 permitting his men to go to rest for the night. 
 The Indians were discovered to be in the neigh 
 borhood, having dogged the retreating army s 
 footsteps through the day, but the precautions 
 taken to strengthen the camp deterred them from 
 attacking during the night. 
 
 The next morning, January 24th, Jackson had 
 even greater reason than on the.preceding day to 
 anticipate an attack. His pursuers had shown 
 themselves rather boldly during the night, and 
 were evidently contemplating an assault upon his 
 column during the day s march. Knowing that 
 the deep Enotachopco Creek between two hills 
 lay just ahead of him, and that the road by which 
 he was retreating crossed this creek in a defile 
 which offered his pursuers every opportunity to 
 attack him with advantage, Jackson ordered his 
 guides to seek a more favorable place of crossing, 
 and they chose a place where the banks were 
 clear of reeds and underbrush, and where, if at 
 tacked, the army could defend itself better than 
 at the regular place of crossing. When the 
 guides reported Jackson moved out of his camp 
 
296 RED EAGLE. 
 
 in the order of a harassed general in retreat. 
 He moved in three columns, with strong front 
 and rear guards out, the wounded men in the 
 centre, and light companies on the flanks. He 
 had even taken the precaution, so confident was 
 he that his enemy would attack him that morn 
 ing, of making his dispositions for battle, issuing 
 a general order instructing the men in what order 
 to form in the event of an attack in front, in rear, 
 or on either flank. 
 
 Can we wonder that the Indians who saw all 
 these precautions taken believed that they had 
 14 whipped Captain Jackson" and were " driving 
 him to the Coosa River" ? 
 
 The army moved forward in this cautious way 
 and arrived at the creek. The advance-guard 
 crossed first, and after them the wounded were 
 carried to the opposite shore. Having cared for 
 the helpless wounded men, the solitary gun in the 
 army s possession became the next most im 
 portant object of solicitude, and the artillery 
 company advanced to cross. Just as they were 
 entering the water a shot in the rear announced 
 that the enemy was pressing Colonel Carroll, who 
 had command there. According to Jackson s 
 orders for the formation of a line of battle in the 
 event of an attack from the rear, Carroll, with 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AN T D EN T OTACIIOPCO. 2?f 
 
 t!i3 centre column of the rear-guard, was to face 
 about and maintain his position with his front to 
 the rear of the line of march ; Colonel Perkins, 
 commanding" the right column of the rear-guard, 
 was to face to the right and wheel to the right, 
 using Carroll s flank as a pivot ; while Colonel 
 Stump, with the left column of the rear-guard, 
 was to execute a corresponding movement, thus 
 inclosing the enemy s fores within three sides of 
 a hollow square, and attacking him simultane 
 ously in front and on both flanks. 
 
 Colonel Carroll executed his part of the ma 
 noeuvre perfectly.* The moment that the savages 
 attacked the rear company in the column, he 
 faced his men about, deployed them in line, and 
 received the shock of the onset manfully ; but 
 the right and left columns behaved badly, break 
 ing and fleeing precipitately without firing a gun. 
 The worst of it was that their flight bred a panic 
 among the troops of the centre, and nearly the 
 whole force fled like a mob, Colonel Stump ac 
 tually leading the retreat, riding frantically into 
 and across the creek. As he passed by Jackson, 
 the infuriated general, who had chosen the 
 ground in the hope that he might crush the enemy 
 here by attacking him on all sides, made an effort 
 
298 RED EAGLE. 
 
 to cut the coward down with his sword, but 
 without success. 
 
 The Might had effectually dissipated all hopes of 
 winning a victory, and it had done more it had 
 left the worthy men of the army, very nearly all 
 of them who were worth having in an army at 
 all, exposed to destruction. Colonel Carroll had 
 only twenty-five men left, with Captain Quarles 
 in direct command, but he stood firm and held 
 his ground like a soldier. Jackson says, in his 
 elaborate report : 
 
 There was then left to repulse the enemy 
 the few who remained of the rear-guard, the ar 
 tillery company, and Captain Russell s company 
 of spies. They, however, realized and exceeded 
 my highest expectations. Lieutenant Armstrong, 
 who commanded the artillery company in the 
 absence of Captain Deaderick (confined by sick 
 ness), ordered them to form and advance to the 
 top of the hill, whilst he and a few others 
 dragged up the six-pounder. Never was more 
 bravery displayed than on this occasion. Amidst 
 the most galling fire from the enemy, more than 
 ten times their number, they ascended the hill, 
 and maintained their position until their piece 
 was hauled up, when having levelled it they 
 poured upon the enemy a fire of grape, reloaded 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO. 299 
 
 and fired again, charged and repulsed them. The 
 most deliberate bravery was displayed by Constan- 
 tine Perkins and Craven Jackson, of the artillery, 
 acting as gunners. In the hurry of the moment, 
 in separating the gun from the limbers, the ram 
 mer and picker of the cannon were left tied to 
 the limber. No sooner was this discovered than 
 Jackson, amidst the galling fire of the enemy, 
 pulled out the ramrod of his musket and used it 
 as a picker, primed with a cartridge, and fired 
 the cannon. Perkins, having pulled off his bay 
 onet, used his musket as a rammer and drove 
 down the cartridge ; and Jackson, using his for 
 mer plan, again discharged her. The brave 
 Lieutenant Armstrong, just after the first fire of 
 the cannon, with Captain Hamilton of East Ten 
 nessee, Bradford, and McGavock, all fell, the 
 lieutenant exclaiming as he lay, My brave fel 
 lows, some of you may fall, but you must save 
 the cannon ! 
 
 The charge made by the artillery company 
 was seconded by Captain Gordon s spies, who, 
 marching at the head of the column, had crossed 
 the creek w r hen the action began, but who 
 quickly turned and recrossed, striking the ene 
 my in the left flank. A number of other men 
 had now rallied and regained their positions in 
 
3 
 
 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the line, and as soon as a determined assault was 
 made the enemy gave way and the field was 
 cleared, leaving Jackson free to resume his re 
 treat toward the Coosa River. 
 
 In the two battles of Emuckfau and Enota- 
 chopco the Indian loss was heavy, one hundred 
 and eighty-nine bodies being found on the field. 
 Jackson s loss was twenty men killed and seventy- 
 five wounded, some of them mortally. Among 
 the killed was Captain Quarles, who fell at the 
 head of his brave twenty-five rear-guardsmen, 
 who checked the enemy and prevented utter 
 disaster from overtaking the army by their cour 
 age and coolness. 
 
 General Coffee was moving forward on a litter 
 when the battle at Enotachopco began, suffering 
 from the wound he had received at Emuckfau ; 
 but when the army broke into a confused and fly 
 ing mass he mounted his horse in spite of his 
 condition, and to his exertions chiefly Major 
 Eaton attributes the rallying of the men and the 
 ultimate repulse of the enemy. 
 
 It became Coffee s duty to write a letter break 
 ing the news of Captain Donelson s death to his 
 friends, and in that letter, the manuscript of which 
 is preserved in the archives of the Tennessee 
 
BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACIIOPCO. 30! 
 
 Historical Society, he says of the ill-luck of the 
 expedition : 
 
 "Our great loss has been occasioned by our 
 troops being raw and undisciplined, commanded 
 by officers of the same description. Had I had my 
 old regiment of cavalry I could have driven the 
 enemy wherever I met them, without loss. But 
 speculation had taken them out of the field, and 
 thus we have suffered for them. Their advisers 
 ought to suffer death for their unwarrantable 
 conduct, and I hope our injured citizens will 
 treat them with the contempt they so justly 
 
 merit." 
 
 Jackson had no sooner reached his camp at 
 Fort Strother, than he called Colonels Perkins 
 and Stump to account for their conduct at Eno- 
 tachopco, preferring charges against them and 
 sending them before a court-martial for trial. 
 The court, upon the evidence submitted, ac 
 quitted Colonel Perkins, but found Colonel 
 Stump guilty of the charge of cowardice, and 
 sentenced him to be cashiered. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 HOW RED EAGLE WHIPPED "CAPTAIN 
 FLOYD" THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE 
 CREEK. 
 
 WE left Floyd retiring upon his base of sup 
 plies on the Chattahoochee River after the battle 
 of Autosse, suffering from a wound received in 
 that action. After a few weeks of inaction he re 
 sumed operations, with the town of Tookabatcha 
 for the objective point of his campaign. Jack 
 son s chief purpose in his expedition to Emuckfau 
 had been to create a diversion in favor of Floyd, 
 and so help to the accomplishment of that gen 
 eral s purpose. In his report of the operations 
 detailed in the last chapter, Jackson, apparently 
 feeling that it was necessary to vindicate the 
 wisdom of the movement, laid special stress upon 
 the fact that his operations had tended thus to 
 assist Floyd. If Floyd had attained the objects 
 of his expedition, this might have been full re 
 compense for Jackson s ill-success ; but almost at 
 the very time when the Red Sticks for that 
 vvas the term by -which the hostile Creeks were 
 
THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE CREEK. 303 
 
 called, because Tecumseh had given sticks painted 
 red to all the Creeks who would " take his talk " 
 almost at the very time, we say, when the 
 Red Sticks were "whipping Captain Jackson " 
 at Emuckfau and Enotachopco, they were also 
 "whipping Captain Floyd " they always called 
 commanders captains at Calebee Creek, not de 
 feating him in battle, but so hurting him as to 
 compel him to retire and abandon the purpose 
 with which he set out, even more entirely than 
 they had compelled Jackson to abandon his. 
 
 Floyd made his advance slowly and cautiously, 
 pausing to establish forts at intervals so that a 
 line of defensive posts should lie like a trail be 
 hind him, protecting his line of communications 
 and affording convenient places for the storage and 
 safe keeping of supplies. He began his march 
 with about twelve hundred infantry, four hundred 
 friendly Indians, one cavalry company and his 
 artillery, making a total force of seventeen hun 
 dred or eighteen hundred men. It was his pur 
 pose to push his column into the Creek country, 
 not rapidly, but resistlessly ; so firmly establish 
 ing it as to make it, as it were, a permanent 
 wedge of invasion. 
 
 When he arrived at a point on Calebee Creek, 
 in what is now Macon County, Alabama, he de- 
 
304 RED EAGLE. 
 
 termined to establish one of his fortified posts upon 
 some high ground there. Here, however, Red 
 Eagle entered his protest against the plans of the 
 Georgia general. Leading a force of Creeks in 
 person, the commander of the Indians was dog 
 ging Floyd s footsteps for several days before his 
 arrival at Calebee Creek, but having selected 
 that as the ground on which he would give battle 
 to the whites, the shrewd Indian general adroitly 
 concealed his presence, so handling his force as 
 to keep himself fully informed of Floyd s move 
 ments without permitting that officer to know in 
 return that the enemy was near. Floyd took all 
 those precautions which prudence dictates to a 
 commander marching through an enemy s coun 
 try, but he does not appear to have discovered 
 Red Eagle s presence, or to have expected the 
 attack that w T as made upon him on the morning 
 of January 27th. 
 
 Adopting the tactics \vhich had so often been 
 used against the Indians, Red Eagle moved his 
 men under cover of darkness into position on 
 three sides of Flood s camp, and fell upon the 
 post by surprise, making his attack simultaneously 
 in front and upon both flanks. In order to effect 
 this surprise, Red Eagle and his men had lain 
 concealed in the swamps until about half after 
 
THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE CREEK. 305 
 
 five o clock in the morning, and thsn, while it 
 was still entirely dark, made their assault quickly, 
 silently, and so violently as to crowd the sentries 
 biici. ind reach the lines of the camp itself before 
 Floyd s msn could form. The troops, thus rudely 
 and suddenly awakened from their slumbers by 
 an attack which does not appear to have bjsn 
 in the least expected, behaved particularly well, 
 forming without confusion and maintaining a 
 firm front in the darkness. 
 
 The assault of the savages was fierce and deter 
 mined. They always fought better under Red 
 Eagle s eye than at other times. Even when 
 Captain Thomas brought his artillery to the 
 front, supported by Captain Adams s riflemen, 
 and opened that fire of grapeshot which Indians 
 have everywhere found it most difficult to stand 
 against, the Red Sticks not only held their 
 ground, but gallantly advanced their line until it 
 was not more than thirty yards distant from the 
 guns, and there, at short pistol range, endured 
 the murderous discharges from the cannon. 
 
 The friendly Indians in camp did little during 
 this part of the action, being panic-stricken by 
 the suddenness of the alarm, but the whites 
 everywhere behaved well. 
 
 Captain Broadnax, in command of a picket 
 
306 RED EAGLE. 
 
 post, was passed by the Indian line at the first 
 assault, and was thus cut off from the camp and 
 the army, but refusing to surrender, he and his 
 squad cut their way through the lines of the en 
 emy and reached their friends in safety. 
 
 While darkness lasted Floyd could do nothing 
 more than stand on the defensive. As soon as 
 the light was sufficient to justify an attempt to 
 shift the positions of his battalions, he ordered his 
 right and left wings to swing round to the front 
 upon their pivots, so as to reverse the order of the 
 battle and inclose the Indian force within three 
 sides of a parallelogram. As soon as this move 
 ment was executed he ordered a charge, which 
 quickly drove the savages back to the swamps, 
 whither they were pursued by the cavalry, the 
 light companies, and the friendly Indians, who 
 had now recovered their courage. 
 
 In the battle Floyd s horse was killed under 
 him. His loss was seventeen white men and five 
 friendly Indians killed, and one hundred and 
 thirty-two white men and fifteen friendly Indians 
 wounded. He was sorely hurt, and it was not 
 known how much damage he had inflicted in 
 return, although it is pretty certain that Floyd 
 had greatly the worst of the affair. He held 
 the battle-field, it is true, but the Indians were 
 
THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE CREEK. 307 
 
 manifestly disposed to renew the attack, and for 
 that purpose were still hovering around his 
 camp and threatening- it. It was clear that they 
 believed themselves to be the winners in the 
 action, and that they were preparing to renew 
 it and to crush the Georgia army. 
 
 Floyd feared they might accomplish this. 
 His respect for Red Eagle s skill as a com 
 mander was so increased by the experience of 
 that morning that he abandoned the object for 
 which he had set out, and retreated again. 
 
 It is said that Zachariah McGirth whom the 
 reader will remember as the half-breed who, sup 
 posing that his family were among the victims at 
 Fort Mims, became a despatch-bearer, and dared 
 all manner of dangers arrived at Floyd s head 
 quarters on the night of the attack, bearing 
 a despatch from Claiborne. He had passed 
 through the swamp when it was filled with lurk 
 ing Indians awaiting the moment of attack. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 RED EAGLE S STRATEGY. 
 
 WHEN Red Eagle established his camp at the 
 Holy Ground, from which Claibornc drove him, 
 his purpose was to provide for resistance by con 
 centrating the warriors of the nation after the 
 manner of civilized armies. The Indian practice 
 of breaking into small, roving bands and concen 
 trating only when some special occasion arose, 
 was in favor among the Creek chiefs, but Red 
 Eagle was too capable a soldier not to see how 
 fatal this practice must be in the end. After the 
 massacre at Fort Minis it was his wish to keep 
 his army together and operate with persistent 
 vigor against Mobile if he could gain Spanish 
 consent, and if not, against Georgia and Ten 
 nessee. If he could have done this, there can be 
 little doubt that he would have driven Jackson 
 from Fort Strother during the days of starva 
 tion and mutiny, by bringing a strong force for 
 ward to the attack. His influence had been 
 greatly weakened, however, by his attempt to 
 restrain the demoniac fury of his men at Fort 
 
RED EAGLE S STRATEGY. 309 
 
 Mims, and in spite of all that he could do, his 
 army dissolved into small wandering bands be 
 fore he could strike an effective blow. The war 
 riors were still willing enough to serve under 
 his command whenever occasion for an immedi 
 ate fight should arise, but he could not restrain 
 their natural tendencies, or convert them from 
 their practice of desultory warfare to a policy 
 of systematic operations. Hence Jackson had 
 time for his lonof strusrsfle with his mutinous men. 
 
 o d> o 
 
 and escaped the destruction which must other 
 wise have threatened him for want of an efficient 
 army . 
 
 Seeing how impossible it was to convert the 
 savage Creeks into a cohesive body of civilized 
 troops, and to use them as an aggressive army, 
 Red Eagle sought to do the next best thing 
 namely, to establish strong posts at certain strat 
 egic points, collect his warriors around them, 
 and moving out from them, as occasion should 
 offer, strike sudden blows at advancing columns 
 of whites. 
 
 In pursuance of this policy he fortified the 
 Holy Ground, from which Claiborne drove him 
 on the 23d of December, as has been related in 
 a former chapter. The Holy Ground was only 
 one of Red Eagle s strategic points, however. 
 
3IO RED EAGLE. 
 
 He established the post at Emuckfau, against 
 which Jackson marched with the slender suc 
 cess already described, and a still more important 
 one a few miles away at Tohopeka, or the Horse 
 Shoe. This Horse Shoe is a peninsula formed 
 by a sharp bend in the Tallapoosa River, enclos 
 ing about one hundred acres of ground, high in 
 the middle and marshy along the river - bank. 
 This peninsula, together with an island in the 
 river, Red Eagle selected as the central strong 
 hold of the nation, and he strengthened it by 
 every means in his power. Of that, however, 
 we shall have occasion to speak more fully 
 hereafter ; just now we are concerned only with 
 Red Eagle s general disposition of his force. 
 
 When Jackson advanced from Fort Strother 
 and Floyd from the Chattahoochee River, the 
 wisdom of the Indian commander s arrange 
 ments was made manifest. From his central posi 
 tions he was able to send five hundred warriors 
 against Jackson ; for notwithstanding the asser 
 tions frequently made that Jackson was outnum 
 bered at Emuckfau and Enotachopco, it is ap 
 parently a well-established fact that the Indian 
 force there was only five hundred strong, while 
 he himself led a larger force against Floyd s 
 larger and better organized army. He was thus 
 
RED EAGLE S STRATEGY. 311 
 
 able to defeat the plans of both generals, getting 
 the best of both, and compelling both to abandon 
 the objects with which they had set out. He 
 struck them in detail, after the best modes of 
 grand tactics, and his plan of operations bears 
 the test of the soundest military criticism. His 
 first purpose was to strike the two armies sepa 
 rately ; his second to interpose his own forces 
 between them, so that if he should be forced back 
 toward the point of convergence of the two lines 
 of march his own divided force would be united 
 before his enemies could form a junction with 
 each other. This was thoroughly good grand 
 tactics ; it was precisely the course which any 
 trained military commander in like circumstances 
 would have adopted. 
 
 It would perhaps be too much to say that Red 
 Eigle either overcame his two skilled opponents 
 in battle or outgeneralled them in his strategy ; 
 but it is not too much to say that he read their 
 purpose, and thwarted them, or that he fairly 
 matched their tactics with his own, and inflicted 
 upon them in battle at least as severe damage as 
 he himself suffered. They outnumbered him in 
 both instances ; their men were civilized and 
 organized, while his were savages without or 
 ganization, discipline, or training ; they had ar- 
 
312 
 
 RED EAGLE. 
 
 tillery to aid them and he had none, many of his 
 men having no better arms than bows and war- 
 clubs ; yet he managed so firmly to resist their 
 advance as to turn both of them back in worse 
 condition than they left him. Shall we hesitate 
 to recognize this man as a thoroughly capable 
 military commander, who, with very imperfect 
 means and against tremendous odds, acquitted 
 himself well? It would be idle to speculate 
 upon what Red Eagle might have accomplished 
 if he could have had means equal to those of his 
 enemies ; but it is only just to recognize his ge 
 nius as it was shown in what he did with the inad 
 equate means at his command. He was an Indian 
 and the commander of savages ; but he was a pa 
 triot, who fought for what he believed to be the 
 interest of his country, and he fought with so 
 much skill and so much courage as to win the 
 admiration and even the friendship of Jackson, 
 whose manly spirit recognized a brother in the 
 not less manly spirit of the Creek chieftain. 
 
 Red Eagle s success was necessarily but tem 
 porary. It was not in the nature of things that 
 he should win the war, although he might win a 
 campaign. He had matched the Creek Nation 
 against the United States, and the contest was a 
 hopelessly unequal one. For him to overcome one 
 
RED EAGLES STRATEGY. 313 
 
 army and drive it back, broken and discouraged, 
 was only to make certain the coming of another 
 army, stronger and larger, against him. He knew 
 this perfectly, and he had known it probably from 
 the beginning. He had never intended to make 
 the unequal match in which he was engaged ; he 
 had meant to lend the strength of the whole 
 Creek Nation to an English army of invasion, and 
 as we know had tried to avoid the contest when 
 he learned that it must be fought by a part of the 
 Creeks only, and without the expected assistance 
 from without. Having entered the war, how 
 ever, he was determined to fight it out, with all 
 his might, to the very end. In order that his 
 resistance might be as determined as possible, 
 and that the whites might be made to pay a 
 high price for their ultimate victory, he was 
 now gathering men from ever} 7 available quar 
 ter, and strengthening his fortified posts, in 
 which he intended to make his last desperate 
 stand. He had persuaded the warriors of the 
 Ocfuske, Hillabee, Oakchoie, Eufaulahatchee, 
 New Yauca, Fishpond, and Hickory Ground 
 towns to join his forces, and they were now at 
 the Horse Shoe. The end of the war was draw 
 ing near, but a fierce battle remained to be fought 
 before the power of the Creeks could be broken. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 JACKSON WITH AN ARMY AT LAST. 
 
 JACKSON S long and earnest entreaty ior an 
 army with which to carry on the campaign at 
 last produced its desired effect. He who had 
 so long and vainly begged for men, getting only 
 a handful at a time, and getting even them upon 
 terms which made it impossible to use them 
 with full effect, now saw men coming in great. 
 numbers from every quarter to fight under his 
 standard. How far this was merely the accumu 
 lated result of his successive pleas, and how far 
 the return of the militiamen who had fought at 
 Emuckfau and Enotachopco, bearing with them 
 their general s warm commendation, was influ 
 ential in behalf of enlistments, it is difficult to 
 determine ; but in some way an enthusiasm for 
 Jackson and for the service had sprung up in 
 Tennessee, and the long baffled and weary gen 
 eral at last, saw coming to him an army five 
 thousand strong an army so greatly outnumber 
 ing any force which the Creeks could now put 
 
JACKSOX WITH AN ARMY AT LAST. 315 
 
 into the field, that its coming promised the speedy 
 overthrow of what remained of the Creek power. 
 
 Two thousand men came from West Tennessee, 
 two thousand more from the eastern half of that 
 State. Coffee succeeded in gathering together 
 a part of his old brigade, backed by whom he 
 always felt himself to be capable of accomplish 
 ing any thing, and at the head of these trained 
 and trusted veterans the general who had made 
 himself Jackson s right hand in all difficult enter 
 prises galloped into the camp at Fort Strother, 
 amid the cheers of all the men assembled there. 
 
 Better still, if any thing could be better in Jack 
 son s eyes than Coffee s coming with his hard- 
 fighting old brigade, Colonel Williams arrived 
 on the 6th of February with the Thirty-ninth 
 Regiment of regular troops, a body of men six 
 hundred strong, whose example of discipline as 
 regular soldiers was of incalculable advantage 
 in the work of converting volunteers into some 
 thing better than raw recruits. 
 
 As if to verify the adage that " it never rains 
 but it pours," a messenger came from the chiefs 
 of the Choctaw Nation offering the services of all 
 their warriors for the campaign. 
 
 Thus at last Jackson had an army as large as 
 he needed or wanted, but before moving such a 
 
316 RED EAGLE. 
 
 force it was necessary to provide an abundant 
 supply of food for them, and this was no light 
 task. The winters in North Alabama are rainy, 
 with alternate freezings and thawings, which ren 
 der roads almost impassable ; and in addition to 
 the usual difficulty of securing the food needed 
 there was the still greater difficulty of transport 
 ing the supplies from Fort Deposit to Fort Stro- 
 ther to be overcome. 
 
 Jackson bent all his energies to this task. He 
 set large forces of his men at work upon the road, 
 paving it in the worst places with logs, making 
 what is called in the South a corduroy road of it. 
 In spite of all that could be clone, however, the 
 road Remained a bad one, and it was with great 
 difficulty that wagons moved over it at a snail s 
 pace, even when drawn by four horses and very 
 lightly loaded. Seven days were consumed upon 
 each wagon journey from Fort Deposit to the 
 Ten Islands, although a force of men accompanied 
 each wagon to lift it out of mires and hurry it 
 forward. The wagons were lightly loaded too, 
 else they could not have made the journey at 
 all. The strongest of the teams could draw no 
 more than sixteen hundred pounds. 
 
 Little by little the supplies were brought up in 
 this laborious fashion, and meantime boats were 
 
JACKSON WITH AN ARMY AT LAST. 317 
 
 built, with which Jackson intended to send his 
 provisions down the Coosa River, while he should 
 m.irch his men overland to an appointed place of 
 rendezvous. 
 
 At last all was ready. Jackson had a satisfac 
 tory army and a satisfactory supply of food for 
 his men, and he w r as now at last prepared to 
 crush the Creeks by an irresistible blow, deliv 
 ered at the centre of their strength . There was 
 no chance now for any Creek force to " whip 
 Captain Jackson." 
 
 Sending- his wounded and sick men to Tennes 
 see, Jackson sent his flatboats down the river, 
 accompanied by the regiment of United States 
 regular troops as a guard. Then, leaving Colonel 
 Steele with a garrison of four hundred men to 
 hold Fort Strother, and if necessary to co-op 
 erate with the troops left between that point and 
 Fort Deposit in protecting the army s commu 
 nications, Jackson began his final march into the 
 Creek Nation, at the head of three thousand effec 
 tive men. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 
 
 THE Indians were now concentrated at Toho- 
 peka, or the Horse Shoe, the peninsula already 
 mentioned, which was formed by a sharp bend 
 of the Tallapoosa River, as the reader will see 
 by reference to any good map of Alabama, as the 
 place has not lost its name. This bend incloses 
 about one hundred acres of ground, and the dis 
 tance across its neck or narrowest part is between 
 three hundred and four hundred yards. Across 
 this isthmus the Indians had constructed a strong 
 breastwork composed of heavy timbers built up 
 into a thick wall, and designed, unlike the ordi 
 nary Indian stockade, to withstand artillery fire. 
 This breastwork was provided with port-holes 
 through which the fire of the garrison could be 
 delivered, and the angles of the fortification were 
 so well and so regularly drawn after the manner 
 of educated military engineers, that any force 
 which should approach it in assault must do so 
 at cost of marching under a front and an enfilad 
 ing fire. Care was taken also so to dispose the 
 
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 319 
 
 houses within the inclosure, the log-heaps, felled 
 trees, and even the earth in some places, as to 
 make additional fortifications of all of them ; and 
 about one hundred canoes were fastened along 
 the river-bank as a means of retreat to the forest 
 on the other side in the event of defeat. 
 
 All of this systematic preparation, and espe 
 cially the erecting of the strong and well-placed 
 breastworks, were things wholly new in Indian 
 warfare. This is not the way in which the sav 
 age warrior prepares himself for battle : it is the 
 method of the trained soldier ; and Mr. Pa/ton, 
 struck with the unlikeness of the preparations to 
 any thing ordinarily seen in Indian warfare, says : 
 " As the Indian is not a fortifying creature, it 
 seems improbable that Indians alone were con 
 cerned in putting this peninsula into the state of 
 defence in which Jackson found it." To which 
 we may add, that Red Eagle was not only an In 
 dian chief : he was on one side the white man, 
 William Weatherford, and the white man in 
 him was essentially a civilized white man. He 
 had been trained by that old soldier, General Alex 
 ander McGillivray, and by that other soldier, 
 General Le Clerc Milfort ; he had visited Mobile 
 and Pensacola, and must have learned both the 
 nature and the elementary principles of fortifica- 
 
320 RED EAGLE. 
 
 tion there. It was he who planned the establish 
 ment of the strongholds of which Tohopcka was 
 one, and what is more probable than that he 
 planned the defences whose fitness for their pur 
 pose was so remarkable ? 
 
 The fighting force of the Creeks at Tohopeka 
 is believed to have been about one thousand 
 strong. They had with them, of course, their 
 women and children, and they had news of Jack 
 son s approach ; but notwithstanding the over 
 whelming numbers opposed to them, they re 
 mained in their stronghold determined to await 
 their enemy s attack there, instead of hanging 
 upon his flank after their usual manner, and seek 
 ing to surprise him. 
 
 The road was long and difficult over which 
 Jackson marched. Rather there was no road, 
 and Jackson had to cut one through an unbroken 
 wilderness, establishing a depot of supplies and 
 garrisoning it before he dared advance to the 
 work he had to do. 
 
 Finally, on the morning of March 27th, 1814, 
 the Tennessee commander found himself, after all 
 his toils and harassing difficulties, in front of the 
 enemy he had so long wished to meet in a deci 
 sive struggle. He had about two thousand effec 
 tive men with him, the rest having been left in 
 
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 321 
 
 garrison at the different posts \vhichit was neces 
 sary to defend. 
 
 Having made himself acquainted with the na 
 ture of the ground, he sent General Coffee with a 
 force of seven hundred cavalry and six hundred 
 friendly Indians down the river, with orders to 
 cross two miles below and march up the eastern 
 bank to the bend, where he was directed to oc 
 cupy a continuous line around the curve, and thus 
 cut off retreat across the river. 
 
 Then with the main body of his army and his 
 two light field -pieces one of them a three- 
 pounder and the other a six-pounderJackson 
 himself marched up the river and formed his line 
 of battle across the isthmus, facing the breast 
 works. 
 
 About ten o clock, Coffee arrived at the bend, 
 and directed his Indians under Morgan to oc 
 cupy the margin of the river. This they quickly 
 did, deploying along the stream until their line 
 stretched all the way around the bend, leaving 
 no gap anywhere. With the mounted men Coffee 
 posted himself upon a hill just in rear, for the 
 double purpose of intercepting any Creeks who 
 might come from below to the assistance of their 
 beleaguered friends, and of being in position him- 
 
322 RED EAGLE. 
 
 self to reinforce any part of his Indian line which 
 might be hard pressed. 
 
 When all was ready, Coffee signified the fact tq 
 Jackson by means which had been agreed upon 
 between them, and the commander advanced his 
 line to give the enemy battle. The artillery un 
 der Captain Bradford was advanced to a point 
 within eighty yards of the breastwork, with the 
 hope that its fire at short range might make a 
 breach in the formidable line of fortification. The 
 position was a fearfully exposed one for the can- 
 noniers, but they were gallant fellows, under 
 command of a brave officer, and they held their 
 ground manfully under a most galling fire, bom 
 barding the \vorks ceaselessly. The riflemen 
 added their fire to that of the artillery, not be 
 cause it was likely to have any effect upon the 
 thick breastworks, but because its maintenance 
 would prevent the concentration of the enemy s 
 fire upon the artillery. 
 
 The cannon-shot plunged into the fortification 
 at every discharge ; but the parapet was too thick 
 to be penetrated, and except when a missile 
 chanced to pass through a port- hole, the artillery 
 fire accomplished very little beyond making the 
 Creeks yell a little more fiercely than usual in 
 
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 323 
 
 their exultation over the ineffectiveness of the 
 means employed for their destruction. 
 
 Meantime Coffee could not contentedly stand 
 still while all this work was going on just in his 
 front. Like Ivanhoe in the castle, he chafed at 
 his compulsory inaction while others were doing 
 "deeds of derring-do." In the absence of any 
 thing else to be about, he conceived the notion 
 of capturing the enemy s fleet, and ordered the 
 best swimmers in his command to cross the river 
 and bring away the canoes. Having thus se 
 cured the means of transporting men to the other 
 side, he eould not resist the temptation to make 
 an attack in the enemy s rear. If he might have 
 spared enough men for the purpose and led them 
 in person, Coffee would have brought the battle 
 to an early close by this means, saving a deal of 
 bloodshed ; but his orders were to maintain a line 
 all along the shore, and to resist the approach of 
 reinforcements from below. He could neither 
 detach a strong force for the attack in rear nor 
 leave his appointed post to lead them in person. 
 But he could at least make a diversion in Jack 
 son s favor, and this he proceeded to do. He 
 sent Morgan across in the canoes, with as many 
 men as could be withdrawn with propriety from 
 the line, ordering him to set fire to the houses b^ 
 
324 RED EAGLE. 
 
 the river-bank and then to advance and attack the 
 savages behind the breastwork. 
 
 Morgan executed this order in fine style, and 
 although his force was too small to enable him 
 to maintain his attack for any considerable time, 
 the movement was of great assistance to Jackson. 
 The burning buildings and the crack of Morgan s 
 rifles indicated to Jackson what his active and 
 sagacious lieutenant was doing, and he resolved 
 to seize the opportunity, while the Creeks were 
 somewhat embarrassed by the fire in their rear, 
 to make the direct assault upon the works which 
 it was now evident must be made before any thing 
 effective could be done. 
 
 To storm such a work was sure to be a costly 
 way of winning, even if it should succeed, while 
 if it should fail, its failure would mean the utter 
 destruction of the army attempting it. The 
 general hesitated to make so hazardous an at 
 tempt, but the men clamored to be led to the 
 charge. It was the only way, and the army was 
 evidently in the best possible temper for the doing 
 of desperate deeds. 
 
 Jackson gave the order to storm the works. 
 
 Then was seen the grandest, awfullest thing 
 which war has to show. The long line of men, 
 pressing closely together, advanced with quick, 
 
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 325 
 
 cadenced step, every man knowing that great 
 rents would be made in that line at every second, 
 a ad none knowing what his own fate might be. 
 
 Without wavering, but with compressed lips, 
 the Tennesseeans, in line with Colonel Williams s 
 regulars, rushed upon the breastwork, which 
 flashed fire and poured death among them as 
 they came. Pushing the muzzles of their rifles 
 into the port-holes they delivered their fire, and 
 then clambered up the side of the works, fighting 
 hand to hand with the savages, who battled to 
 beat them back. The first man upon the parapet, 
 Major Montgomery, stood erect but a single 
 second, when he fell dead with a bullet in his 
 brain. His men were close at his heels, and 
 surged like a tide up the slope, pouring in a tor 
 rent over the works and into the camp. The 
 breastwork was carried, and in ordinary circum 
 stances the battle would have ended almost im 
 mediately in the enemy s surrender ; but this 
 enemy had no thought of surrendering. The 
 consequences of a blunder committed so long be 
 fore as the 1 8th of November were felt here. 
 General White s attack upon the Hillabees when 
 they had submitted and asked for peace had 
 taught these men to expect nothing but cruellest 
 treachery at the hands of Jackson, whom they con- 
 
326 RED EAGLE. 
 
 fidently believed to be the author of that most 
 unfortunate occurrence. Havi-j;^ no faith in his 
 word, the Creeks believed that he and his men 
 offered quarter only to save themselves the work 
 of killing warriors who could yet fight. They 
 believed that to surrender was only to spare 
 their enemies, who, as soon as the prisoners could 
 be disarmed, would butcher them in cold blood, 
 paying no recompense in the death of any of their 
 own number. Convinced of this, the men at the 
 Horse Shoe simply refused to be taken prisoners, 
 either in a body or singly ; they would yield 
 only to death, not to their enemies. They fought 
 for every inch of ground. Wounds were noth 
 ing to them, as long as they could level a gun or 
 hurl a tomahawk. Jackson s men had to drive 
 them slowly back, dislodging them from brush 
 heaps and felled trees, and suffering considerable 
 loss in doing so. They had carried the works, 
 but had not yet conquered the defenders of the 
 place. To do that they had simply to butcher 
 them. 
 
 It was horrible work, but it must be done. 
 Brave men revolted from it, but whenever one 
 of them sought to spare even a badly- wounded 
 enemy his reward was a bullet, or a blow from 
 the fallen but still defiant warrior s club. 
 
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR. 327 
 
 Little by little the savages were driven to the 
 river bank, where the remnant of them made a 
 last stand under strong cover, from which even 
 a well-directed artillery fire at short range failed 
 to dislodge them. They were driven out at last 
 only by the burning of the heap of timber in 
 and behind which they had taken refuge. When 
 their situation was most desperate, Jackson made 
 a last effort to spare them. Sending a friendly 
 Indian forward, he assured them of his disposi 
 tion to save them alive if they would surrender, 
 but they answered only by firing upon the mes 
 senger and riddling his body with bullets. When 
 at last they were driven out by the flames they 
 were shot down like wild beasts. 
 
 Night finally came to stop the slaughter of 
 hiding warriors, but it was renewed in the morn 
 ing, sixteen warriors being found then concealed 
 in the underbrush. They refused even then to 
 surrender, and were slain. 
 
 It was in this battle that Samuel Houston, after 
 ward the president of the Republic of Texas, and 
 still later a Senator in the Congress of the United 
 States, first distinguished himself by his valor, 
 and fell so severely wounded that his recovery 
 was always thought to be little less than mirac- 
 
 .> o 
 
 ulous. 
 
328 RED EAGLE. 
 
 When the battle was ended five hundred and 
 fifty-seven dead warriors were found upon the 
 field, but even this was by no means the total 
 number of the slain. Many of them had tried to 
 escape by swimming, and for a long time Coffee s 
 men were busy shooting them in the water, where 
 when killed they sank out of sight. 
 
 Mr. Pickett tells us that one brave old chief, 
 Manowa, escaped in an ingenious and wonderful 
 way, after being literally shot to pieces. He 
 fought as long as he could. He saved himself 
 by jumping into the river where the water was 
 four feet deep. He held to a root and thus kept 
 himself beneath the waves, breathing through 
 the long joint of a cane, one end of which he 
 held in his mouth, while the other end came 
 above the surface of the water. When night set 
 in the brave Manowa rose from his. watery bed 
 and made his way to the forest bleeding from 
 many wounds." 
 
 Mr. Pickett conversed with Manowa many 
 }ears after the war, and heard the story of his 
 escape from his own lips. 
 
 Jackson s loss was thirty-two white men and 
 twenty-three friendly Indians killed, ninety-nine 
 white men and forty-seven friendly Indians 
 wounded. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 
 
 THE power of the Creek Nation was crushed 
 at the battle of Tohopeka. The force which 
 fought so desperately there represented not all, 
 but by far the larger part, of what was left of the 
 fighting force of the nation, and they were so 
 utterly beaten that there was nothing to encour 
 age an effort to assemble the scattered warriors 
 again for a struggle. The slight cohesion which 
 trioes of Indians have was gone, and Jackson 
 knew very well that no more severe battles need 
 be fought if the present one was properly fol 
 lowed up with measures designed to convince 
 the Creeks of the uselessness of further resistance. 
 He prepared, therefore, to establish his army in 
 the heart of the Creek Nation, to overawe what 
 ever bands might remain, to strike at roving par 
 ties, and to reduce the tribes to submission and 
 peacefulness. 
 
 Sinking the bodies of his dead in the river, in 
 stead of burying them, he withdrew with his 
 army to Fort Williams, the place he had estab- 
 
330 RED EAGLE. 
 
 lished and garrisoned as his supply depot, for the 
 double purpose of putting his wounded men into 
 hospital and of replenishing his supply of food, 
 for he had carried nothing with him beyond Fort 
 Williams except one week s provisions in the 
 men s haversacks. 
 
 After a tedious march lasting five days, Jack 
 son rested his worn-out men at Fort Williams, 
 and there wrote the following address, which was 
 ordered to be read to the army : 
 
 " You have entitled yourselves to the gratitude 
 of your country and your general. The expedi 
 tion from which you have just returned has, by 
 your good conduct, been rendered prosperous 
 beyond any example in the history of our war 
 fare ; it has redeemed the character of your State, 
 and of that, description of troops of which the 
 greater part of you are. 
 
 " You have, within a few days, opened your 
 way to the Tallapoosa, and destroyed a confed 
 eracy of the enemy, ferocious by nature and who 
 had grown insolent from impunity. Relying on 
 their numbers, the security of their situation, and 
 the assurances of their prophets, they derided our 
 approach, and already exulted in anticipation of 
 the victory they expected to obtain. But they 
 were ignorant of the influence and effect of r>;ov- 
 
 O * * 
 
RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 33 l 
 
 ornment on the human powers, nor knew what 
 brave men and civilized could effect. By their 
 yells they hoped to frighten us, and with their 
 wooden fortifications to oppose us. Stupid mor 
 tals ! Their yells but designated their situation 
 the more certainly, while their walls became a 
 snare for their own destruction. So will it ever 
 be when presumption and ignorance contend 
 against bravery and prudence. 
 
 "The fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer 
 murder our women and children, or disturb the 
 quiet of our borders. Their midnight flambeaux 
 will no more illumine their council-house or 
 shine upon the victim of their infernal orgies. In 
 their places a new generation will arise who will 
 know their duty better. The weapons of warfare 
 will be exchanged for the utensils of husbandry ; 
 and the wilderness, which now withers in ster 
 ility and mourns the desolation which over 
 spreads her, will blossom as the rose and become 
 the nursery of the arts. But before this happy 
 day can arrive other chastisements remain to be 
 inflicted. It is indeed lamentable that the path to 
 peace should lead through blood and over the 
 bodies of the slain ; but it is a dispensation of 
 Providence, and perhaps a wise one, to inflict 
 
33 2 RED EAGLE. 
 
 partial evils, that ultimate good may be pro- 
 duced. 
 
 11 Our enemies are not sufficiently humbled ; 
 the}- do not sue for peace. A collection of them 
 await our approach, and remain to be dispersed. 
 Buried in ignorance, and seduced by* the false 
 pretences of their prophets, they have the weak 
 ness to believe they will still be able to make a 
 decided stand against us. They must be unde 
 ceived, and made to atone their obstinacy and 
 their crimes by still further suffering. Those 
 hopes which have so long deluded them must be 
 driven from their last refuge. They must be made 
 to know that their prophets are impostors, and 
 that our strength is mighty and will prevail. 
 Then, and not till then, may we expect to make 
 with them a peace that shall be permanent." 
 
 Ten days after the battle of the Horse Shoe 
 the army again advanced, the men carrying pro 
 visions in their haversacks as before. A long 
 march brought them to the confluence of the 
 Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, where a junction 
 with the southern army was effected and supplies 
 were abundant. 
 
 There Jackson established his camp and for 
 tified it. The force of Creeks which he had expect 
 ed to strike had dispersed, and there was now no- 
 
RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 333 
 
 where a body of Indians for him to march against 
 or fight. His presence with a strong army, 
 well supplied with food and able to maintain it 
 self there in the very heart of the nation, did the 
 rest. Seeing the utter hopelessness of contend 
 ing further with such an army so commanded, and 
 hearing through friendly Indians, who were sent 
 out for the purpose, that Jackson Avished to make 
 peace, the savages rapidly flocked to his camp 
 and surrendered themselves. 
 
 Peter McQueen, Josiah Francis, and several 
 other chiefs fled to Florida, but the greater num 
 ber of the Creek leaders preferred to sue for Jack 
 son s clemency. 
 
 To them Jackson replied that he had no further 
 desire to make war, but that peace would not 
 be granted to the nation until Red Eagle or 
 Weatherford, for by that name only the whites 
 called the Creek commander should be brought 
 
 O 
 
 to him bound hand and foot. It was his purpose 
 to hang Red Eagle as a punishment for the 
 massacre of women and children at Fort Mims, he 
 knowing nothing, of course, of the warrior s dar 
 ing efforts to prevent that bloody butchery, and 
 to make of the affair a battle, not a massacre. 
 
 News of Jackson s determination was carried 
 to Red Eagle, and he was warned to fly the coun- 
 
334 R ED EAGLE. 
 
 try and make his escape to Florida, as many of his 
 companion chiefs had done. There, of course, he 
 would have been safe beyond the jurisdiction ol 
 Jackson and of the government which Jackson 
 represented ; but Red Eagle was a patriot, and 
 when he was told that the fierce commander of 
 the whites would give no terms to the Creeks 
 under which the women and children now starv 
 ing in the woods could be saved, except upon his 
 surrender, that the price of peace for his people 
 was his own ignominious death he calmly re 
 solved to give himself to suffer for his race, to 
 purchase with his blood that peace which alone 
 could save his people from destruction. 
 
 Mounting his famous gray horse the one 
 which had carried him over the bluff at the Holy 
 Ground, he rode away alone toward Jackson s 
 camp. 
 
 The author of that history of Alabama which 
 
 has been quoted frequently in these pages gives 
 
 the following account of what followed, drawn, 
 
 he assures us, from Red Eagle s own narrative in 
 
 conversations had with him : 
 
 " He rode within a few miles of Fort Jackson, 
 when a fine deer crossed his path and stopped 
 within shooting distance, which he fired at and 
 killed. Reloading his rifle with two balls, for the 
 
RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 335 
 
 purpose of shooting the Big Warrior, should he 
 give him any cause, at the fort, he placed the deer 
 behind his saddle and advanced to the American 
 outposts. Some soldiers, of whom he politely in 
 quired for Jackson s whereabouts, gave him some 
 unsatisfactory and rude replies, when a gray- 
 headed man a few steps beyond pointed him to 
 the marquee. Weatherford rode up to it and 
 checked his horse immediately at the entrance, 
 where sat the Big Warrior, who exultingly ex 
 claimed : 
 
 4 Ah ! Bill Weatherford, have we got you at 
 last? " 
 
 The fearless chieftain cast his keen eyes at the 
 Big Warrior, and said in a determined tone : 
 
 You - - traitor, if you give me any inso 
 lence I will blow a ball through your cowardly 
 heart. 
 
 " General Jackson now came running out of 
 the marquee with Colonel Hawkins, and in a 
 furious manner exclaimed : 
 
 How dare you, sir, to ride up to my tent 
 after having murdered the women and children 
 at Fort Mims ? 
 
 Weatherford said : 
 
 General Jackson, I am not afraid of you. I 
 fear no man, for I am a Creek warrior. I have 
 
336 RED EAGLE. 
 
 nothing to request in behalf of myself ; you can 
 kill me if you desire. But I come to beg you to 
 send for the women and children of the war 
 party, who are now starving in the woods. Their 
 fields and cribs have been destroyed by your peo 
 ple, who have driven them to the woods without 
 an ear of corn. I hope that you will send out 
 parties who will safely conduct them here, in 
 order that they may be fed. I exerted myself in 
 vain to prevent the massacre of the women and 
 children at Fort Minis. I am now done fighting. 
 The Red Sticks are nearly all killed. If 1 could 
 fight you any longer I would most heartily do so. 
 Send for the women and children. They never 
 did you any harm. But kill me, if the white peo 
 ple want it done. 
 
 " At the conclusion of these words many per 
 sons who had surrounded the marquee ex- 
 qlaimed : 
 
 " Kill him ! kill him ! kill him ! 
 
 " General Jackson commanded* silence, and in 
 an emphatic manner said : 
 
 " Any man who would kill as brave a man as 
 this would rob the dead ! 
 
 " He then invited Weatherford to alight, drank 
 a glass of brandy with him, and entered into a 
 cheerful conversation under his hospitable mar- 
 
RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 337 
 
 quee. Weatherford gave him the deer, and they 
 were then good friends. 
 
 Mr. Pickett discredits the accounts of this affair 
 which were given by persons who were present 
 at its occurrence, but they have been accepted 
 by so many writers of repute, including Eaton 
 and Meek, whose opportunities for learning the 
 truth were as good as his, that Mr. Parton re 
 gards them as trustworthy at least in their main 
 features. Following him in this, we give the re 
 mainder of the conversation between Jackson and 
 the heroic chieftain. Jackson told Weatherford 
 what terms he had offered to the Creeks, and 
 added : 
 
 " As for yourself, if you do not like the terms, 
 no advantage shall be taken of your present sur 
 render. You are at liberty to depart and re 
 sume hostilities when you please. But, if you 
 are taken then, your life shall pay the forfeit of 
 your crimes." 
 
 Straightening himself up, the bold warrior an 
 swered : 
 
 " I desire peace for no selfish reasons, but that 
 my nation may be relieved from their sufferings ; 
 for, independent of the other consequences of the 
 war, their cattle are destroyed and their women 
 and children destitute of provisions. But I may 
 
338 RED EAGLE. 
 
 well be addressed in such language now. There 
 was a time when I had a choice and could have 
 answered you. I have none now. Even hope 
 has ended. Once I could animate my warriors 
 to battle. But I cannot animate the dead. My 
 warriors can no longer hear my voice. Their 
 bones are atTalladega, Tallushatchee, Emuckfau, 
 and Tohopeka. I have not surrendered myself 
 thoughtlessly. While there were chances of 
 success I never left my post nor supplicated 
 peace. But my people are gone, and I now ask 
 peace for my nation and myself. On the miseries 
 and misfortunes brought upon my country I 
 look back with the deepest sorrow, and wish to 
 avert still greater calamities. If I had been left 
 to contend with the Georgia army I would have 
 raised my corn on one bank of the river, and 
 fought them on the other. But your people have 
 destroyed my nation. General Jackson, you are 
 a brave man ; I am another. I do not fear to 
 die. But I rely upon your generosity. You 
 will exact no terms of a conquered and helpless 
 people but those to which they should accede. 
 Whatever they may be, it would now be folly 
 and madness to oppose them. If they are op 
 posed, you shall find me among the sternest en 
 forcers of obedience. Those who would still 
 
RED EAGLE S SURRENDER. 339 
 
 hold out can only be influenced by a mean spirit 
 of revenge. To this they must not and shall not 
 sacrifice the last remnant of their country. You 
 have told us what we may do and be safe. 
 Yours is a good talk, and my nation ought to 
 listen to it. They shall listen to it. " 
 
 Jackson was too brave a man not to discover 
 the hero in this courageous, self-sacrificing man, 
 who, knowing that an ignominious death had 
 been determined upon for him, calmly refused to 
 save himself, and boldly placed his life in his 
 enemy s hands for the sake of his people. When 
 two men so brave as these meet there is fellow 
 ship between them, because there is brotherhood 
 between their souls. When Red Eagle thus 
 faced Jackson and offered to accept death at his 
 hands in return for peace for the now helpless 
 Creeks there was peace between the two great- 
 souled men, who knew each other by the free 
 masonry of a common heroism, a common cour 
 age, and a common spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Seeing Weatherforcl in this transaction, do we 
 need to remember his battles as proof that he was 
 a great man in the larger and better sense of the 
 word ; that he did his duty, as he understood it, 
 without regard to his personal welfare ; that he 
 was a patriot as well as a soldier ? 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 RED EAGLE AFTER THE WAR. 
 
 HAVING made peace with Red Eagle, Jack 
 son afforded him that protection which was 
 necessary while he was in a camp filled with 
 the friendly Indians, whose hatred of the warrior 
 was undying. Big Warrior even tried to take 
 his life in spite of Jackson s orders, and was re 
 strained only by the general s personal interfer 
 ence. 
 
 Red Bade busied himself at once in the paci- 
 
 O 
 
 fication of the country, as he had assured Jackson 
 that he would do, and to his great influence, in 
 a large measure, the prompt acquiescence of the 
 Creeks in the terms of peace was due. 
 
 As soon as the country was pacified Red Eagle 
 sought to return to the ways of peace, and for 
 that purpose went to his plantation near Fort 
 Mims, and tried to gather together his property 
 which had become scattered, and resume his busi 
 ness as a planter. 
 
 He was not long in learning, however, that 
 his foes among the half-breeds and Indians who 
 
RED EAGLE AFTER THE WAR. 341 
 
 had sided with the whites were implacable, and 
 that their thirst for ijis blood made his peaceful 
 stay there impossible. He therefore went to Fort 
 Claiborne and put himself under the protection 
 of the commanding officer there, who assigned 
 
 o o 
 
 him a tent near his own and a body-guard for his 
 protection. Here Weatherford remained for 
 ten or fifteen days, but there were so many per 
 sons in the camp who had l*st friends at Fort 
 Minis, and who were determined to take the 
 Creek chieftain s life, that his protector feared 
 to keep him at the fort longer, even under the 
 constant protection of a strong guard detail. But 
 it was dangerous to remove him, except secretly; 
 so determined was the enmity of the men who 
 sought to kill him ; and therefore the com 
 mander of the post ordered an aide-de-camp at 
 midnight to take the great chieftain beyond the 
 camp lines and there to arrange for his escape, 
 through Captain Laval, who was instructed to 
 escort him to a tree outside of the line of out 
 posts. There a powerful horse had been pro 
 vided, and Red Eagle, mounting the animal, gal 
 loped away in the darkness. 
 
 Upon his arrival at Jackson s camp he was re 
 ceived by the Tennessee general with the respect 
 due to so gallant a soldier, and there lie remained 
 
342 RED EAGLE. 
 
 under Jackson s watchful care until after the sign 
 ing of the treaty of August 9th, 1814, by which 
 the Creeks gave up all the southern part of their 
 territory. This was exacted nominally as an in 
 demnity to the government for the expenses of 
 the war, but the real purpose was to plant a 
 strong and continuous line of white settlements 
 between the Creeks and their bad advisers, the 
 Spanish, at Pensacola. By these means Jack 
 son, who managed the affair, made impossible any 
 future renewal of the war to which he had put 
 an end by arms. 
 
 When the treaty was concluded, Jackson s 
 mission was done, and he returned to his Ten 
 nessee home the Hermitage taking Red Eagle 
 with him as his guest, and in order that the chief 
 tain might be safe from the assassination with 
 which he was still threatened, Jackson carefully 
 concealed the fact of his presence. For nearly a 
 year the two commanders who had fought each 
 other so fiercely lived together as friends under 
 one roof, the conquered the guest of the con 
 queror. 
 
 Then Weatherford returned to Alabama and 
 established himself as a planter. His relatives had 
 saved much of his property, which they returned 
 to him, and bv wise management he recovered 
 
RED EAGLE AFTER THE WAR. 343 
 
 his fortunes and became again a man of consid 
 erable wealth. 
 
 His influence was always on the side of law 
 and order, and how valuable the influence of such 
 a man, so exerted, is in a new country, where two 
 races are constantly brought into contact, we may 
 easily conceive. 
 
 Red Eagle had been overcome in war, and was 
 disposed to maintain the peace, in accordance 
 with his promise ; but his spirit was not broken, 
 and none of his courage had gone out of him. 
 
 On one occasion a very brutal assassination 
 was committed at a public sale by two ruffians 
 of the most desperate border type. A magistrate 
 summoned the people as a posse comitatus to ar 
 rest the offenders, but they so violently swore 
 that they would kill any one who should approach 
 them, that no man dared attempt the duty. 
 Red Eagle, who was present, expressed his in 
 dignation at the murder, and his contempt for the 
 fears of the bystanders, and volunteered to make 
 the arrest if ordered by the magistrate to do so. 
 
 The magistrate gave the order, and drawing a 
 long, silver-handled knife, which was his only 
 weapon, Weatherford advanced upon the mur 
 derers, who warned him off, swearing that they 
 would kill him if he should advance. Without 
 
344 RED EAGLE. 
 
 a sign of hesitation, and with a calm look of reso 
 lution in his countenance which appalled even his 
 desperate antagonists, he stepped quickly up to 
 one of them and seized him by the throat, call 
 ing to the bystanders to " tie the rascal." Then 
 going up to the other he arrested him, the des 
 perado saying as he approached : I will not re 
 sist you, Billy Weatherford." 
 
 Weatherford s plantation was among the white 
 settlements, and the country round about him 
 rapidly filled up with white people, among 
 whom the warrior lived in peace and friendship. 
 Mr. Meek writes of him at this time in these 
 words : 
 
 "The character of the man seemed to have 
 been changed by the war. He was no longer 
 cruel, vindictive, idle, intemperate, or fond of dis 
 play : but surrounded by his family he preserved 
 a dignified and retiring demeanor ; was industri 
 ous, sober, and economical ; and was a kind and 
 indulgent master to his servants, of whom he had 
 many. A gentleman who had favorable oppor 
 tunities of judging says of him that in his inter 
 course with the whites his bearing was marked 
 by nobleness of purpose, and his conduct was 
 always honorable. No man was more fastidious 
 in complying with his engagements. His word 
 
RED EAGLE AFTER THE WAR. 345 
 
 was by him held to be more sacred than the most 
 binding legal obligation. Art and dissimulation 
 formed no part of his character. Ever frank and 
 guileless, no one had the more entire confidence 
 of those among whom he lived ? Another gen 
 tleman who knew Weatherford intimately for a 
 number of years informs me that he possessed 
 remarkable intellectual powers ; that his percep 
 tions were quick almost to intuition, his memory 
 tenacious, his imagination vivid, his judgment 
 strong and accurate, and his language copious, 
 fluent, and expressive. In short, he says, Weath 
 erford possessed naturally one of the finest minds 
 our country has produced/ These traits of char 
 acter exhibited for a number of years won for 
 their possessor the esteem and respect of those 
 who knew him, notwithstanding the circum 
 stances of his earlier life. Indeed those circum 
 stances threw around the man a romance of 
 character which made him the more attractive. 
 After the bitterness which the war engendered 
 had subsided his narratives were listened to with 
 interest and curiosity. Though unwilling gen 
 erally to speak of his adventures, he would, 
 when his confidence was obtained, describe them 
 with a graphic particularity and coloring which 
 gave an insight into conditions of life and phases 
 
346 RED EAGLE. 
 
 of character of which we can now only see the 
 outside. He always extenuated his conduct at 
 Fort Minis and during the war under the plea 
 that the first transgressions were committed by 
 the white people, and that he was fighting for the 
 liberties of his nation. He also asserted that he 
 was reluctantly forced into the war." 
 
 Red Eagle died on the Qth of March, 1824, from 
 over-fatigue incurred in a bear hunt. He left a 
 large family of children, who intermarried with 
 the whites, well-nigh extinguishing all traces of 
 Indian blood in his descendants. 
 
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