The sanguinary struggle known as the
Creek War of 1813 and 1814, took place in what is now southern Alabama,
but was then the eastern part of Mississippi Territory. It formed, as it
were, a stirring side issue to the greater conflict then raging - the War
of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. Begun by the war party
of the Creeks in the effort to crush and large and growing settlements
of white pioneers along the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers, it developed
into a war, almost of extermination, against the Creeks themselves. The
Creeks ranked first in military prowess and political sagacity among the
tribes of Southern Indians forming the great Choctaw-Muscogee family. Their
famous political Confederacy had its origin in remote times, embracing
numerous subjugated tribes, as well as fugitive tribes that had applied
to the Creek nation for protection.
At the time of the war the region embraced
by the Creek Confederacy extended from the Oconee River in Georgia to the
Alabama River. Indeed, the western members of the Confederacy, the Alibamos,
claimed to the banks of the Tombigbee. The country of the Upper Creeks
lay along the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and that of the Lower Creeks
along the Chattachoochee. Most of the Upper Creek towns (with which are
included the Alibamos), were hostile to the Americans, while the Lower
Creeks, strongly influenced by the government agent, Col. Hawkins, were
for the most part friendly. Before it ended, the war was waged by the Creeks
to maintain their homes, their hunting grounds, their burial places and
the land of their ancestors, and the Indians fought with a desperation
that "has hardly a precedent in Indian contests." For nearly ten months
this powerful Confederacy was able to offer a successful resistance to
trained American soldiers, and even jeopardized the very existence of the
pioneer white settlements along the Mobile, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers.
The Creeks appear to have had at this
time about fifty towns and some 10,000 members, including the women and
children. The white settlements embraced about 2,000 whites, and a nearly
equal number of blacks, and were thinly scattered along the western banks
of the Mobile and Tombigbee for more than seventy miles, while they extended
nearly seventy-five miles upon the eastern borders of the Mobile and Alabama.
It is difficult to conceive the almost complete isolation of these white
settlements; on their south were the Spaniards; on the east, separating
them from Georgia; were the Creeks; on the west was the broad country of
the Choctaws, between them and older white settlements at the Natchez and
the Yazoo; and on the north were the Creeks and Chickasaws, dividing them
from the settlements in the bend of the Tennessee river. Many causes had
combined to draw the whites to this region at an early period, and the
French, British and Spanish had all made treaties with the Indians which
opened up the country.
The policy of the United States when
it came into control of the Mississippi Territory was sufficiently aggressive.
March 28, 1797, Washington made a treaty with the Creeks by which t6he
nation ceded lands for government trading posts, and Col. Benjamin Hawkins
was shortly after appointed government agent among the Creeks. May 5, 1799,
American troops from Natchez, under Lt. John McClary, marched across Mississippi
and occupied St. Stephens. A few weeks later, these troops moved south
and built Fort Stoddert at Wards Bluff, a few miles above the boundary
line between the Spanish province of West Florida and the American territory
of Mississippi; it was three miles below the junction of the Alabama and
Tombigbee, and about 50 miles above Mobile.
In 1802 a treaty was made with the Choctaws
and a tract of land was ceded to the United States, which is said to have
called forth this protest from "Mad Wolf," a Creek chief: "The people of
Tombigbee have put over their cattle in the Fork of the Alibamo hunting
grounds and have gone a great way on our lands. I want them put back. WE
all know they are Americans."
In 1805 some thirty Creek chiefs and
warriors, then in Washington, through pressure brought o bear upon them
there, had taken on themselves the right to cede the use of a horse path
through the Creek country; and the same year the Choctaws, by the treaty
of Mt. Dexter, ceded 5,000,000 acres of their land to the united States,
which embraced the Creek claim west of the watershed. In 1811, the grant
of a "horse path" became the much used Federal Road, which was cut from
a point on the Chattahoochee river to Mims' Ferry on the Alabama, and the
Creeks were much stirred up by the constant stream of white emigrants moving
to the western settlements from the Atlantic seaboard.
The white settlements tended to encroach
more and more on the Alibamo hunting grounds. In the fall of 1811, or he
spring of 1812, came from the North the persuasive and eloquent chief,
Tecumseh, to the Creeks assembled at Tookabatcha. Tecumseh was making the
grand circuit of the Indian tribes, and he made every effort to induce
the Southern Indians to join his great confederacy, urging that "the Creeks
could thus recover all the country that the whites had taken from them;
and what the British would protect them in their rights." His efforts,
followed by those of his prophet emissaries, aroused a war spirit among
the Creeks before which the friendly Indians fled for safety.
The great trade CENTER of the Spaniards
was at Pensacola; they looked with growing disfavor on these river settlements.
The Indians were constantly coming and going among them, and the Spaniards
took great pains to stir them to further discontent. After the War of 1812,
the British exerted all their influence to provoke the Indians to hostilities.
The great exciting cause of the Creek war is thus seen to be "the large
and growing settlements of white pioneers along the Tombigbee and the Alabama
rivers. Encroachments upon the Indian hunting grounds and rights
were of necessity made. The great wagon road was an encroachment; the presence
of so many white families with their cattle and hogs and horses was an
encroachment. It needed not Tecumseh's stirring words to assure them that
they must before long give up their Indian life, cultivate the ground,
and accept the white man's civilization; or they must migrate; or they
must break up this settlement of sturdy frontier families on their western
borders. Their proposed attempt thus to do, encouraged by the Spaniards,
by Tecumseh and the British, brought on the disastrous Creek War." (The
Creek War, Halbert and Ball.)
It is in evidence that the Creeks, in
July 1813, endeavored to persuade the Choctaws at Pushmataha (in present
Choctaw County, Alabama), to join them in a war against the whites, but
were unsuccessful, as Tecumseh had been before them. The white were aware
of the growing war spirit, and were further alarmed by occasional outrages
perpetrated by the Indians against white settlers, such as the abduction
of Mrs. Crawley from her home near the mouth of the Tennessee river and
afterwards bravely rescued by "the daring backwoodsman," Tandy Walker,
and brought to St. Stephens. Alarmed by the rising war cloud, the settlers
on the Mobile and Tensaw and the Alabama and Tombigbee, hastily improvised
a line of stockades or forts, which stretched across the neck of Clarke
county from river to river. Altogether there were in the summer of 1813
some twenty of these so-called forts, including those erected at an earlier
day such as Fort St. Stephens, Fort Stoddert, Fort Madison and the two
forts and U. S. arsenal at Mount Vernon. Farther west, in what is now Wayne
County, miss., were also Patton's Fort at Winchester and Roger's Fort,
six miles above. Gen. Wilkinson and a force of United States troops had
captured Mobile in April and a force of United States troops had captured
Mobile in April 1813 and here was the fine old Fort Charlotte, built by
the French and now manned by an American garrison; also the new Fort Bowyer,
built by the Americans at the mouth of the Mobile Bay.
As the alarm spread, plantations were
deserted, and refugees filled the forts. Ill-fated Fort Mims was situated
on the east side of the Alabama, a short distance below the "cut off,"
and about a quarter of a mile from the Tensaw boat Yard. According to the
historian Pickett, there were in this fort or stockade in August 1813,
553 human beings, made up of white settlers, a few Spaniards, colored people,
and
half-breeds; of these 265 were soldiers, including 70 home militia commanded
by Capt. Dixon Bailey, a detachment from Mount Vernon under Lieut. Osborn,
and 175 Mississippi volunteers under Major Daniel Beasley. Major Beasley
was in general command of the fort. General F. L. Claiborne, with a force
of regulars, was in command at Fort Stoddert and Mount Vernon; Col. Joseph
Carson was the military commander between the Tombigbee and Alabama; Col.
James Caller, of Washington county, was the senior militia officer on the
frontier; Gen. Wilkinson had been ordered to the Canadian border, and Gen.
Flournoy succeeded him in general command of the Southwest at Mobile and
New Orleans.
In July 1813, news came that a force
of hostile Creeks led by Peter McQueen had gone to Pensacola to obtain
arms and ammunition from Governor Manique. On receipt of this information,
Col. Caller, at St. Stephens, raised a force of about 180 militia, mounted
and armed, and intercepted the Indians, or at least a portion of them,
at Burnt Corn on July 27. The whites were poorly organized and disciplined,
and though they surprised the Indians and gained an initial success, they
were ultimately routed with loss and completely dispersed.
The worst feature of this first battle
was the loss of white prestige which followed, and it was at once followed
by more serious depredations on the part of the Indians, including the
terrible massacre at Fort Mims. It is only fair to say that neither Col.
Hawkins, the government agent living among the Creeks, nor Gen. Flournoy,
who was doubtless, influenced by the former, believed that the war party
in the Creek nation would prevail. Hence we even find Flournoy writing
Gen. Claiborne August 10, 1813, after the Fort Mims' affair, "You wish
to penetrate into the Indian country, with a view of commencing the war,
does not meet my approbation, and I again repeat, our operations must be
confined to defensive measures."
It is the belief of many candid historians
such as Halbert, that strict adherence to the policy of Gen. Flournoy,
would have prevented the disasters at Burnt Corn and Fort Mims, and very
possibly have prevented a serious war at all. Says Brewer: "The savages
highly incensed at the attack on them at Burnt Corner, July 27, 1813, resolved
to avenge themselves on the Tensaw and Tombigbee settlers." Thus one vengeance
succeeded another.
The following account of the events
succeeding Burnt Corn is abridged from Hamilton's excellent chapter on
the Creek War:
"It was at noon on the 30th
of August, while dancing was going on; and a Negro was about to be whipped
for giving what was deemed a false alarm of Indians coming, that McQueen
and Weatherford and their thousand savages dashed through the open gate
of the palisade surrounding the house of Samuel Mims on the Tensaw. Major
Beasley redeemed his carelessness by dying sword in hand, and the noble
half-breed Dixon bravely led on the whites in defense of the women and
children. But the odds were too great, and at least fire aided the butchery
by the savages. Even Bailey was mortally wounded, and hardly two dozen
escaped of the five hundred and fifty men, women, and children in that
stockaded acre of ground. God's acre it was, for, when a relief corps came,
it was only to find ashes, and mangled and burning dead. Neighboring Fort
Pierce was abandoned during the battle and Lieutenant Montgomery led its
people to Mobile; while, among other fugitives from Fort Mims, David Tate
and some of his family escaped with the two Pierces on a flatboat down
to Fort Stoddert."
The tragedy enacted at Fort Mims aroused
the whole country and steps were at once taken to invade the Creek country
from the north, west and east, and with the purpose of annihilating the
Creeks as a nation. Chiefly through the efforts of Capt. George S.
Gaines and Col. McKee, the friendly cooperation of the Choctaws and Chickasaws
was secured, and a battalion of about 150 Choctaw warriors, under Pushmataha,
fought with Gen. Claiborne at the Holy Ground.
Later in the war, another force of 43
warriors, commanded by Pushmataha, with Moshulitubbee as second in command,
formed part of Maj. Blue's detachment, and materially aided in bringing
the war to a close; indeed, the whole record of the Choctaw warriors throughout
the war was an honorable one and showed the nation was truly loyal to the
United States. Inflamed by the news from Fort Mims, Andrew Jackson and
his brigade of mounted volunteers came down from Nashville, Tenn., and
joined by Cherokees, and friendly Creeks,
"captured Tallesehatche, founded
Fort Strother, and on Nov. 9 (1813) won the battle of Talladega . . . From
the east, too, the Georgians under Floyd defeated the Creeks at Autose,
but had to retire from lack of provisions. General Claiborne fortunately
construed the "defense of mobile" broadly, and in November 1813, from the
west he also marched into enemy territory. Above the site of the
Canoe fight (where Nov. 12, 1813 Sam Dale, Jeremiah Austill and James Smith
engaged in their daring hand to hand conflict with nine Indians and slew
them one by one), Fort Claiborne at Weatherford's Bluff was built as a
base of supplies, and his square fort can still be traced on the bluff
of the Alabama river. His objective was Econachaca, the Holy Ground, on
a bluff of the Alabama in what is now Lowndes County. It had been built
by Weatherford as a place of safety, where plunder was secured and white
prisoners burned. Impregnable, the prophets said, but Claiborne stormed
in on December 23, and drove into the water those savages who were not
killed outright, for there was little quarter in this war. Weatherford
himself fled, and with characteristic daring leaped his gray horse Arrow
over into the river. The town was burned to the ground, after the army
reserved some supplies and the plunder had been turned over to Pushmataha."
This battle practically ended the participation
of the Mississippi twelve months' volunteers in the Creek war, as their
term of service hand ended, and Claiborne's army soon disbanded. It is
not our purpose here to trace in detail the closing scenes of the war.
Suffice it to say that the country of the creeks was overrun and devastated
form three directions by forces from the north, east, and west. Though
the Creeks fought with the courage of desperation, the struggle was too
one sided and could not long endure.
The great decisive battle was fought
at the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa river March 27, 1814, between Jackson
and his Cherokee allies, and some twelve hundred Creeks gathered here for
a final stand. The battle was little more than a slaughter, and barely
two hundred Creek warriors escaped alive, while the loss to the American
troops was nominal.
The final treaty of peace was not concluded,
however, until August 9, 1814, between Jackson and the defeated Creeks.
In this treaty they surrendered to the United States all their lands, except
the part east of the Coosa River and of a line drawn southeastwardly from
Fort Jackson (the old French Toulouse); the Creeks were forbidden all communication
with British or Spanish posts; and the United States were given the right
to establish military posts, roads and free navigation of waters within
the territory guaranteed the Creeks. The war was fatal to the Creeks, and
their formidable strength was forever broken.
.