A diorama at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park
depicts the 39th Regiment of U.S. Infantry breaching the Creek fortification during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend..
In 1814 Andrew Jackson took a little trip.
But despite the memorable ballad,
he never came “down the Mighty Mississip.” Well before he got to New Orleans he and an army of Tennessee
Volunteers, Army
Regulars, and a few hundred Cherokee
and other native allies
plunged deep into the Alabama wilderness
in pursuit of a “renegade” faction
of the Creek Nation known as the Red Sticks.
He found them at a place called Horseshoe
Bend and fought them in the most important American battle you have
probably never heard of.
Historians are somewhat divided on how to categorize the
conflict. Many, maybe most, put it in
the broader context of the on-going War
of 1812 because the Red Sticks were informal allies of the British and were largely armed with
weapons smuggled from Spanish Florida. Others insist on calling it a distinct Red Stick or Creek War and placing it more generally in the context of an
on-going, genocidal land grab from Native Americans. It seems to me it was both.
The whole thing started as something
of a civil war within the Creek
Nation. The Creek were a large tribe
whose traditional territories and hunting grounds stretched from western Georgia across much of the mid-South. Like their cousins, and sometimes rivals for
hunting grounds, the Cherokee they were
considered one of the Civilized Tribes because
they tended to live in permanent or semi-permanent settlements and engaged in extensive agriculture in addition to hunting.
In the eastern and southern portions of their range in Georgia, many had adopted White farming methods, clothing, and customs. Many intermarried with frontier Whites and
the more prosperous owned slaves.
When war broke out with the British
these Creeks, who had lived cheek to jowls with Whites in a sometimes dicey,
but essentially stable relationship
for decades, declared their allegiance
to the United States and expressed
willingness to support the Army militarily
if need be.
A larger group of Creeks residing
further inland, however, maintained their traditional
culture and were resentful of both the “civilized” branch of the tribe and
the continuing pressure of encroaching
settlement in their territory by Whites.
In 1811 the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, a close ally of the British, toured the Five
Civilized Tribes of the South in an effort to bring them into his Indian Confederacy to oppose American
expansion. The British, he told tribal
leaders, would provide arms and guarantee a permanent Native homeland off limits to settlement. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Lower Creeks, and other tribes who all had treaties with
the U.S. refused to join. But the Red
Sticks, influenced by younger warriors, were ready for war against the
Americans.
They did not formally join
Tecumseh’s Confederacy but became allies and allies of the British, who were
active in near-by Florida. The
Red Sticks were soon raiding isolated farms and settlements in a relatively low
key guerilla war. In support of their treaty commitments, Lower
Creeks asserted their claim to tribal leadership and moved against the Red
Sticks, arresting those warriors they could find. The Red Sticks responded with attacks on the
Lower Creeks including the slaughtering of cattle, pigs and other domestic
animals that were symbolic of adoption of white ways.
In July of 1813 a sizable party of
Red Sticks was returning from Florida with a pack train of horses loaded down with corn meal, powder, shot, and arms purchased with £500 sent to them by the British via the
Spanish in Florida. Lower Creeks got
wind of the transaction and sent word to American troops at Fort Mims, Alabama. Troops under Major Daniel Beasley of the Mississippi
Volunteers led a mounted force of 6 companies 150 white militia riflemen,
30 mixed blood Creek known as métis
under Captain Dixon Bailey to
intercept Red Stick Leader Peter McQueen’s party.
The troops
surprised McQueen during a mid-day meal break and quickly scattered them,
capturing the pack train. But the
undisciplined Militia fell into a frenzy of looting as they tore into the
packs. McQueen rallied his warriors in
the surrounding swamp and re-took the camp and supplies in a bloody
fight known as the Battle of Burnt Corn.
The virtual massacre at Ft. Mims sent the Alabama frontier into a panic and led to the punitive expedition commanded by Andrew Jackson
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On August
29 somewhere between 750 and 1000 Red Sticks led by McQueen and the other head warrior, William Weatherford or Red
Eagle launched an attack on the Fort, symbolically also at a noon lunch
break. Major Beasley had neglected to
put out pickets or sentries and had ignored the warnings of two slaves who had been gathering firewood outside the post. One gate
of the fort could not even be completely closed because of drifting sand.
The Red
Sticks stormed and easily took the outer palisade as the soldiers and civilians
retreated behind a lower secondary defense.
Captain Bailey rallied his forces and held off the attackers for two
hours all the while being peppered by fire by Creeks using the outer
perimeter’s gun loops. Both sides
suffered significant losses. The Red
Stick retreated outside the walls to regroup.
A second attack at 3 pm sent the defenders reeling back to their block house bastion, which the
attackers set on fire.
After
resistance finally collapsed around 5 pm warriors began to club and tomahawk the
wounded and other survivors despite Weatherford’s attempts to restrain
them. At least 250 were killed and scalped, their bodies left where they
lay. The Red Sticks spared about 100
surviving slaves, but took them captive along with 30 or so women and
children. 36 defenders, including the
mortally wounded Captain Bailey escaped to tell the tail. Two weeks later a relief column arrived to
find the Fort destroyed and the bodies of both the defenders and about 100 Red
Sticks rotting in the sun.
The news
of the Fort Mims Massacre set off a panic across the frontier. Settlers streamed to the safety of older
settlements. The Federal Government was unable to provide much help. Most of the Army was on the Canadian Frontier or scattered in costal
defense forts. The best they could do
was to call up the Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi militia and
volunteers and place them under the overall command of lawyer/planter/politician General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. While other militia units mostly took up
defensive positions on the edge of Red Stick territory, Jackson assemble an
army to extract vengeance and, “Make Alabama safe for White settlement.”
Andrew Jackson, veteran commander of the Tennessee Militia was placed in Command by the War Department of a large joint force of militia from 5 states or territories, volunteers, Regular Army, and Native American auxiliaries to punish the Red Sticks.
Jackson
had commanded the Tennessee Militia since 1802.
Under his over-all command units had been engaged in the ongoing Indian
Wars that consumed the frontier in the years after the American Revolution. Not
only did his Tennesseans include many veteran Indian fighters and experienced officers, but Jackson had drilled and trained them. These troops
in no way resembled the rag-tag militias most states sent into the field. They were well armed, well trained and
fiercely loyal to their demanding commander.
As soon
as weather permitted in 1814 Jackson headed into Alabama at the head of an army
of over 3000—2000 infantry including a company Regular Army 39th
Infantry Regiment, 700 cavalry and mounted riflemen,
and 600 Cherokee, Choctaw and Lower Creek auxiliaries. He also had at least two batteries of field howitzers.
Jackson march his column through the
wilderness with discipline and as much stealth as an army on the move could
muster.
Chief Menawa's Red Stick camp at Horseshoe bend was the target of Jackson's campaign. A naturally excellent defensive position, Menawa employed field fortifications across the neck of the loop in the river rarely employed by Native Americans.
By March 27 his scouts informed him
that he was within six miles of Chief
Menawa’s Red Stick camp of Tohopeka, nestled in a loop in
the Tallapoosa River called
Horseshoe Bend in central Alabama.
Jackson sent his close friend and longtime political crony General John Coffee with the mounted
riflemen and the native auxiliaries south across the river to surround the Red Sticks’
camp, while Jackson stayed with the rest of the 2,000 infantry north of the
neck created by the bend in the river.
He found the camp surprisingly well fortified behind an impressive earth and log breastworks stretching across the neck. The logs were laid in a 400 yard zigzag line that permitted a lethal enfilading fire from behind its
protections. These kinds of field fortifications were seldom
encountered in Indian warfare.
Around ten o’clock in the morning,
Jackson opened up with his artillery on the line. He pounded away for nearly two hours with no
discernible damage to the fortifications.
The fire also concentrated the attention of the Red Stick camp, which
failed to detect General Coffee’s maneuvers to their rear.
Third Lt. Sam Houston was severely injured by an arrow in the thigh after breeching the fortifications.
Around noon Jackson ordered a
frontal bayonet charge on the breastworks
led by Colonel John Williams’s Regular
Infantry. Despite taking heavy losses,
the troops gained the wall and some got over it. That included Third Lieutenant Sam Houston who made it over the wall only to be
gravely injured by an arrow in the thigh, a wound that would bother him
the rest of his long and colorful life.
As more of Jackson’s men poured over
the works, the fight turned into a desperate hand to hand struggle. Then
the Red Sticks were hit from the rear by Coffee’s men. The fighting continued for hours over a large
battlefield that provided good cover for the defenders, who refused to
surrender, at least as reported in the official reports of the action.
Red Stick losses, almost all killed,
were around 80% of the estimated 1000 warriors in the camp. A wounded Chief Menawa and about 200 managed
to escape and make their way to Florida where they were welcomed and absorbed
by the Seminoles there.
Tennessee militia Sgt. Davy Crocket acted as a messenger and translator to tribal leaders after the battle. But he was so horrified by the brutal treatment of the Red Sticks that he became a friend to the native tribes and as a Whig the lifelong opponent of Andrew Jackson.
The battle broke Red Stick
power. The old General established Fort Jackson near Wetumpka, Alabama as a
base of operations for mopping up actions.
He dispatched messengers to summon tribal leaders to sign what everyone
knew would be a dictated peace treaty. Among the messengers was Sgt. Davy Crocket, an experienced hunter who was fluent in Creek
and other Indian languages. He grew to
sympathize with the defeated enemy and their harsh treatment at Jackson’s hand
eventually made him a Whig and Old Hickory’s political enemy.
The treaty signed by leaders of
several bands including the Red Stick Upper Creeks, and the Lower Creeks on
August 9, 1814 ceded 23 million acres
of their remaining land in Georgia and much of central Alabama to the United
States government. The loyal Lower Creek
were shocked to be told that they had to give up their lands, but had no choice. And the Choctaw and Cherokee who also fought
alongside the Americans discovered that the Creeks had signed away land that
they had long considered theirs.
William Weatherford, Red Eagle, meets the General at Ft. Jackson where Creeks, both Red Stick and loyal Southern bands were forced to sign a treaty that ceded virtually of their lands and hunting grounds--and lands claimed by the Cherokee and Choctaw--to the United States.
Removal was not immediate although some bands began relocating across the Mississippi within a couple of
years. The rest followed over time or
were force marched out under
Jackson’s unforgiving and absolute Indian
Removal program during his presidency.
As a reward Jackson was promoted to Major General of Volunteers and kept in
the field. Meanwhile the British, in a
tardy response to the appeal for aid by the Red Sticks, had enlisted survivors
in Spanish Florida and began arming others as they arrived. They garrisoned 400 Royal Marines at Pensacola. Without authority, Jackson marched his army
into supposedly neutral Spanish
territory easily taking the city and dispelling the threat. The move also prevented Britain’s new Creek
and other native allies from pressing their attempted siege of Mobile.
Having essentially secured the Gulf Coast, Jackson then marched his
battle hardened army overland to reinforce threatened New Orleans. You probably
know the rest of the story.
American school children used to
learn about the famous Battle of Tippecanoe in which General William
Henry Harrison killed Tecumseh and destroyed forever the threat of his
Confederacy. That, they knew safely
opened up the Old Northwest Territory
for settlement.
But for some reason they are not
taught about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend which had equally disastrous effect on
the Southern tribes and entailed an even larger direct land grab.
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