Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama.

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Eggleston George Cary. Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama.

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. SHOWING, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION, HOW RED EAGLE HAPPENED TO BE A MAN OF CONSEQUENCE IN HISTORY

CHAPTER II. RED EAGLE'S PEOPLE

CHAPTER III. RED EAGLE'S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD

CHAPTER IV. THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE

CHAPTER V. RED EAGLE AS AN ADVOCATE OF WAR – THE CIVIL WAR IN THE CREEK NATION

CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN

CHAPTER VII. RED EAGLE'S ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS PARTY

CHAPTER VIII. CLAIBORNE AND RED EAGLE

CHAPTER IX. RED EAGLE BEFORE FORT MIMS

CHAPTER X. THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS

CHAPTER XI. ROMANTIC INCIDENTS OF THE FORT MIMS AFFAIR

CHAPTER XII. THE DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD AND AFFAIRS ON THE PENINSULA

CHAPTER XIII. PUSHMATAHAW AND HIS WARRIORS

CHAPTER XIV. JACKSON IS HELPED INTO HIS SADDLE

CHAPTER XV. THE MARCH INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

CHAPTER XVI. THE BATTLE OF TALLUSHATCHEE

CHAPTER XVII. THE BATTLE OF TALLADEGA

CHAPTER XVIII. GENERAL COCKE'S CONDUCT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER XIX. THE CANOE FIGHT

CHAPTER XX. THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS – THE BATTLE OF AUTOSSE

CHAPTER XXI. HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS – THE BATTLE OF THE HOLY GROUND – RED EAGLE'S FAMOUS LEAP

CHAPTER XXII. HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY

CHAPTER XXIII. A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS

CHAPTER XXIV. JACKSON'S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS OWN MEN

CHAPTER XXV. JACKSON DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS WITHOUT A BENEDICTION

CHAPTER XXVI. HOW JACKSON LOST THE REST OF HIS ARMY

CHAPTER XXVII. BATTLES OF EMUCKFAU AND ENOTACHOPCO – HOW THE CREEKS "WHIPPED CAPTAIN JACKSON."

CHAPTER XXVIII. HOW RED EAGLE WHIPPED "CAPTAIN FLOYD" – THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE CREEK

CHAPTER XXIX. RED EAGLE'S STRATEGY

CHAPTER XXX. JACKSON WITH AN ARMY AT LAST

CHAPTER XXXI. THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR

CHAPTER XXXII. RED EAGLE'S SURRENDER

CHAPTER XXXIII. RED EAGLE AFTER THE WAR

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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 steamboats; and it was a much longer journey when Tecumseh was a terror to the border and an enemy whom the United States had good reason 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 Tecumseh would not have dreamed of the possibility of establishing relations with people so distant as the Creeks were from the tribes of the North-west. But Tecumseh had all the qualities of a man of genius, the chief of which are breadth and comprehensiveness of view and daring boldness 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, Tecumseh saw, lay in two facts: first, that the whites were united, working together for a common 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.

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"Among the first who entered into the views of the British commissioners was the since celebrated 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 Seminoles. 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 vituperation 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 temper, that he lost his discretion with it, and forgot that so coarse and brutal a fellow as he here declares Red Eagle to have been – a man so wholly given over to debauchery – is sure to show in his face, his person, and his intellectual operations 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 debased creature, a glutton, or a brute. He says:

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