Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama Part 13

We left Floyd retiring upon his base of supplies on the Chattahoochee River after the battle of Autosse, suffering from a wound received in that action. After a few weeks of inaction he resumed operations, with the town of Tookabatcha for the objective point of his campaign.

Jackson'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 general'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 a.s.sist Floyd. If Floyd had attained the objects of his expedition, this might have been full recompense for Jackson's ill-success; but almost at the very time when the Red Sticks--for that was the term by which the hostile Creeks were called, because Tec.u.mseh had given sticks painted red to all the Creeks who would "take his talk"--almost 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 defeating 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 behind 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 hundred or eighteen hundred men. It was his purpose to push his column into the Creek country, not rapidly, but resistlessly; so firmly establis.h.i.+ng 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 determined 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 d.o.g.g.i.ng 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 movements 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 country, but he does not appear to have discovered Red Eagle's presence, or to have expected the attack that was made upon him on the morning of January 27th.

Adopting the tactics which had so often been used against the Indians, Red Eagle moved his men under cover of darkness into position on three sides of Floyd'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 five o'clock in the morning, and then, while it was still entirely dark, made their a.s.sault quickly, silently, and so violently as to crowd the sentries back and reach the lines of the camp itself before Floyd's men could form. The troops, thus rudely and suddenly awakened from their slumbers by an attack which does not appear to have been in the least expected, behaved particularly well, forming without confusion and maintaining a firm front in the darkness.

The a.s.sault of the savages was fierce and determined. 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 post, was pa.s.sed by the Indian line at the first a.s.sault, 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 enemy 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 movement 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 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 commander 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, supposing 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 pa.s.sed through the swamp when it was filled with lurking Indians awaiting the moment of attack.

CHAPTER XXIX.

RED EAGLE'S STRATEGY.

When Red Eagle established his camp at the Holy Ground, from which Claiborne drove him, his purpose was to provide for resistance by concentrating the warriors of the nation after the manner of civilized armies. The Indian practice of breaking into small, roving bands and concentrating 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 ma.s.sacre at Fort Mims 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 Tennessee. If he could have done this, there can be little doubt that he would have driven Jackson from Fort Strother during the days of starvation and mutiny, by bringing a strong force forward to the attack. His influence had been greatly weakened, however, by his attempt to restrain the demoniac fury of his men at Fort Mims, and in spite of all that he could do, his army dissolved into small wandering bands before he could strike an effective blow. The warriors were still willing enough to serve under his command whenever occasion for an immediate 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 long struggle with his mutinous men, and escaped the destruction which must otherwise 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 strategic 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. He established the post at Emuckfau, against which Jackson marched with the slender success 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, enclosing 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 stronghold 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 arrangements was made manifest. From his central positions he was able to send five hundred warriors against Jackson; for notwithstanding the a.s.sertions frequently made that Jackson was outnumbered at Emuckfau and Enotachopco, it is apparently 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 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 separately; 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 circ.u.mstances would have adopted.

It would perhaps be too much to say that Red Eagle 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 organization, discipline, or training; they had artillery 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 genius as it was shown in what he did with the inadequate means at his command. He was an Indian and the commander of savages; but he was a patriot, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 temporary. 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 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 a.s.sistance from without. Having entered the war, however, 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 every available quarter, 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 drawing near, but a fierce battle remained to be fought before the power of the Creeks could be broken.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

JACKSON WITH AN ARMY AT LAST.

Jackson's long and earnest entreaty for 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 acc.u.mulated 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 influential 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 general at last, saw coming to him an army five thousand strong an army so greatly outnumbering any force which the Creeks could now put 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng 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 enterprises galloped into the camp at Fort Strother, amid the cheers of all the men a.s.sembled there.

Better still, if any thing could be better in Jackson'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 something 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 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 render roads almost impa.s.sable; and in addition to the usual difficulty of securing the food needed there was the still greater difficulty of transporting the supplies from Fort Deposit to Fort Strother 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 done, 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 fas.h.i.+on, and meantime boats were built, with which Jackson intended to send his provisions down the Coosa River, while he should march his men overland to an appointed place of rendezvous.

At last all was ready. Jackson had a satisfactory army and a satisfactory supply of food for his men, and he was now at last prepared to crush the Creeks by an irresistible blow, delivered 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 Tennessee, 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-operate with the troops left between that point and Fort Deposit in protecting the army's communications, Jackson began his final march into the Creek Nation, at the head of three thousand effective men.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR.

The Indians were now concentrated at Tohopeka, 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 distance 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 ordinary 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 a.s.sault must do so at cost of marching under a front and an enfilading fire. Care was taken also so to dispose the 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF BATTLE SITE]

All of this systematic preparation, and especially the erecting of the strong and well-placed breastworks, were things wholly new in Indian warfare. This is not the way in which the savage warrior prepares himself for battle: it is the method of the trained soldier; and Mr.

Parton, 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 concerned 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 Indian 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 Alexander 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 fortification there. It was he who planned the establishment of the strongholds of which Tohopeka was one, and what is more probable than that he planned the defences whose fitness for their purpose 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 Jackson's approach; but notwithstanding the overwhelming numbers opposed to them, they remained in their stronghold determined to await their enemy's attack there, instead of hanging upon his flank after their usual manner, and seeking 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, establis.h.i.+ng 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 hara.s.sing difficulties, in front of the enemy he had so long wished to meet in a decisive struggle. He had about two thousand effective men with him, the rest having been left in garrison at the different posts which it was necessary to defend.

Having made himself acquainted with the nature 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 occupy 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-pounder--Jackson himself marched up the river and formed his line of battle across the isthmus, facing the breastworks.

About ten o'clock, Coffee arrived at the bend, and directed his Indians under Morgan to occupy 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 a.s.sistance of their beleaguered friends, and of being in position himself to reinforce any part of his Indian line which might be hard pressed.