There were killings; but the first big blow with the Creek hatchet, to help the British and to drive the Americans into the sea, was struck in August against Fort Mimms, at the mouth of the Alabama River in southwestern Alabama above Mobile.
With all the cunning of the three bloods, the warriors waited until sand enough had drifted, day by day, to keep the gate of the fort from being quickly closed. Then, at noon of August 30, they rushed in. The commander of the fort had been warned, but he was as foolish as some of those officers in the Pontiac war. The garrison, of regulars, militia, and volunteers, fought furiously, in vain. More than three hundred and fifty--soldiers, and the families of settlers, both--were killed; only thirty persons escaped.
Now it was the days of King Philip, over again, and this time in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, instead of in Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. At the news of Fort Mimms, the settlers fled for protection into towns and block-houses.
If the Choctaws, the Chickasaws and other Southern Indians joined in league with the Creeks, there easily would be fifteen thousand brave, fierce warriors in the field.
However, the Choctaws and Chickasaws enlisted with the United States; Chief Macintosh"s friendly Creeks did not falter; and speedily the fiery Andy Jackson was marching down from Tennessee, at the head of two thousand picked men, to crush out the men of Menewa and Weatherford.
Other columns, from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, also were on the trail. The Creeks fought to the death, but they made their stands in vain. The United States was on a war footing; it had the soldiers and the guns and the leaders; its columns of militia destroyed town after town--even the sacred Creek capital where warriors from eight towns together gathered to resist the invader. Yes, and even the town built by direction of the prophets and named Holy Ground and protected by magic.
By the close of 1813, this Jackson Chula Harjo--"Old Mad Jackson," as the Creeks dubbed him--had proved to be as tough as his later name, "Old Hickory." But Menewa and Weatherford were tough, too. They and their more than one thousand warriors still hung out.
In March they were led by their prophets to another and "holier"
ground; Tohopeka, or Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in eastern Alabama.
The Creek town of Oakfuskee was located below. And here, in 1735, some eighty years before, there had been a fort of their English friends.
It was good ground.
Chief Prophet Monahoe and two other prophets, by song and dance enchanted the ground inside the bend, and made it safe from the foot of any white man. Monahoe said that he had a message from Heaven that a.s.sured victory to the Creeks, in this spot. If the Old Mad Jackson came, he and all his soldiers should die, by wrath from a cloud. Hail as large as hominy mortars would flatten them out.
As was well known to the Creeks, Old Mad Jackson was having his troubles. The Great Spirit had sent troubles upon him--had caused his men to rebel, and his provisions to fail, until acorns were saved and eaten. The United States could not much longer fight the British and the Indians together. Let the Creeks not give up.
The Horseshoe was rightly named, for a sharp curve of the Tallapoosa River enclosed about one hundred acres of brushy, timbered bluffs and low-land, very thick to the foot. The entrance to the neck was only three hundred yards wide. On the three other sides the river flowed deep.
Menewa was the field commander of the Red Sticks, at this place. He showed a great head--he was half white and half red, but all Creek in education. Across the neck, at its narrowest point he had a barricade of logs erected, from river bank to river bank.
The barricade, of three to five logs piled eight feet high and filled with earth and rock, was pierced with a double row of port-holes: one row for the kneeling warriors, and one for the standing warriors. The barricade was built in zigzags, along a concave curve, so that attackers would be cut down by shots from two sides as well as from in front. By reason of the zig-zags it could not be raked from either end.
All around the high ground back of the barricade, trees were laid, and brush arranged so that the warriors might, if driven, pa.s.s back from covert to covert, until they reached the huts of the women and children and old men, at the river, behind. Here a hundred canoes were drawn up, on the bank, in readiness.
But the Red Sticks of Chief Menewa had no thought of flight. They were one thousand. Their prophets had a.s.sured them over and over that the medicine of the Creek nation was strong, at last; that the Great Spirit was fighting for them; that the bullets of the Americans would have no effect, and that the Americans themselves would die before the barricade was reached. The cloud would come and help the Creeks, with hail--hail like hominy mortars!
On March 24 "Old Mad Jackson," just appointed by President Madison to be major-general in the United States army, set out against "Crazy-war-hunter" Menewa at Tohopeka.
The way was difficult, through dense timber, swamps and cane-brakes.
Alabama, in these days, had been only thinly settled by white people.
He had three thousand men: a part of the 39th U. S. Infantry, a thousand Tennessee militia, six hundred friendly Creeks and Cherokees.
He had two cannon: a six-pounder and a three-pounder.
His chief a.s.sistant was General John Coffee of Alabama, who had formerly been his business partner. Major Lemuel P. Montgomery, a Virginian of Tennessee, commanded one battalion of the regulars. He was six feet two inches, aged twenty-eight, and "the finest looking man in the army." Young Sam Houston, who became the hero of Texas independence, was a third lieutenant. Head Chief William Macintosh, Menewa"s rival, led the Creeks. Chief Richard Brown led the Cherokees.
In the evening of March 26 bold General Jackson viewed the Red Sticks"
fort, and found it very strong. He was amazed by the skill with which it had been laid out. No trained military engineers could have done better.
But his Indian spies saw everything--they saw the line of canoes drawn up in the brush along the river bank behind, at the base of the bend; and General Jackson decided to do what the Red Sticks had not expected him to do.
Early in the next morning, March 27, he detached General Coffee, with seven hundred mounted men, the five hundred Cherokees and the one hundred Creeks, to make a circuit, cross the river below the bend, and come up on the opposite side, behind the Horseshoe. This would cut off escape in canoes.
With the remainder of his soldiers he advanced to the direct attack upon the breast-works. He planted his two cannon. At ten o"clock he opened hot fire with the camion and with muskets.
Chief Menewa"s Red Sticks were ready and defiant. They answered with whoops and bullets. Their three prophets, horridly adorned with bird crests and feathers and jingling charms, danced and sang, to bring the cloud. The b.a.l.l.s from the cannon only sank into the damp pine logs, and did no damage. The musket b.a.l.l.s stopped short or hissed uselessly over.
For two hours Old Mad Jackson attacked, from a distance. He had not dared to charge--the prophets danced faster, they chanted higher--the Red Sticks had been little harmed--they whooped gaily--they had faith in their Holy Ground.
But suddenly there arose behind them a fresh hubbub of shots and shouts, and the screams of their women and children; the smoke of their burning huts welled above the tree-tops. General Coffee, with his mounted men, had completely surrounded the bend, on the opposite side of the river; his Indians had swum across, had seized the canoes, had ferried their comrades over by the hundred, the soldiers were following--and now the Menewa warriors were between two fires.
At the instant, here came Mad Jackson"s troops to charge the barricade.
That was a terrible fight, at the breast-works. Chief Menewa encouraged his men. The test of the Holy Ground protected by the Great Spirit and the prophets had arrived.
The battle was to decide whether the Creek nation or the American nation was to rule in Georgia and Alabama, and the Red Sticks made mighty defense. While they raged, they looked for the cloud in the sky.
So close was the fighting, that musket muzzle met musket muzzle, in the port-holes; pistol shot replied to rifle shot; and bullets from the Red Sticks were melted upon the bayonets of the soldiers.
Major Lemuel Montgomery sprang upon the top of the barricade. Back he toppled, shot through the head. "I have lost the flower of my army,"
mourned General Jackson, tears in his eyes.
Lieutenant Houston received an arrow in his thigh; and later, two bullets in his shoulder.
Lieutenants Moulton and Somerville fell dead.
Again and again the white warriors were swept from the barricade by the Red Sticks" arrows, spears, tomahawks and b.a.l.l.s. Others took their places, to ply bayonets and guns--stabbing, shooting. The uproar in the rear grew greater, and many of the Red Sticks behind the breast-works were being shot in the back; the voices of the prophets had weakened; no cloud appeared in the sky, bearing to the whites death from the Great Spirit.
Beset on all sides, Chief Menewa"s men began to scurry back for their timber shelters, to fight their way to the river. But no one surrendered.
Having won the barricade, and cut off the escape of the Red Sticks in the opposite direction, the white general halted the further attack.
He sent a flag of truce forward, toward the jungle.
"If you will stop fighting, your lives will be spared," he ordered the interpreter to call. "Or else first remove your women and children, so they will not be killed."
But the anxious eyes of warrior and prophet had seen the Spirit cloud rising, at last, into the sky; high pealed their whoops and chants again; a volley of bullets answered the truce flag.
The white soldiers re-opened with musket b.a.l.l.s and grape-shot. The Cherokee and Creek scouts, fighting on their side, tried to ferret out the hiding places. Alas, the cloud proved to be only a little shower, and then vanished. The Great Spirit had deserted the prophets.
The American bullets thickened. With torches and blazing arrows the jungle was set afire. Roasted from their coverts, the Red Sticks had to flee for the river. When they fled, the rifles of the Tennessee sharp-shooters caught them in mid-stride, or picked them off, in the river.
Chief Menewa was bleeding from a dozen wounds. He made desperate stand, but the cloud had gone, the fire was roaring, Head Prophet Monahoe was down dead, dead; the Great Spirit had smitten him through the mouth with a grape-ball, as if to rebuke him for lying. There was only one prophet left alive. Him, Menewa angrily killed with his own hand; then joined the flight.
He plunged into the river. His strength was almost spent, and he could not swim out of reach of the sharp-shooters" bullets. The water was four feet deep. So he tore loose a hollow joint of cane; and crouching under the water, with the end of the cane stuck above the surface, he held fast to a root and breathed through the cane.
Here he stayed, under water, for four hours until darkness had cloaked land and river, and the yelling and shooting had ceased. Then, soaked and chilled and stiffened, he cautiously straightened up. He waded through the cane-brake, hobbled all night through the forest, and got away.
But he had no army. Of his one thousand Red Sticks eight hundred were dead. Five hundred and fifty-seven bodies were found upon the Horseshoe battle-field. One hundred and fifty more had perished in the river. Only one warrior was unwounded. Three hundred women and children had been captured--and but three men. The Red Sticks of the Creek nation were wiped out.
Of the whites, twenty-six had been killed, one hundred and seven wounded. Of the Cherokee and Creek scouts, twenty-three had been killed, forty-seven wounded.
Chief William Macintosh also had fought bravely, but he had not been harmed.