An artful impostor, Tecumseh of the Shawnees, a man of most
extraordinary abilities and consummate address, conceived the bold
design of an union of the red against the white population of America,
under a hope that by a general and continued assault along the whole
line of our frontiers, the future extension of settlements might be
checked, if the present inhabitants could not be driven into the ocean.
Assuming the attributes of a prophet, and, among other things, assisted
by the fortuitous occurrence of an earthquake, of which he had hazarded
a prediction, a confidence began to be reposed in the sacredness of his
character and mission. A majority of the Creek nation were enlisted in
his cause, and the storm of an exterminating savage war hung over the
West. Its first explosion was on Fort Mims, a rude stockade defence,
into which the Southern inhabitants of Alabama had lately retreated
for security. More than 300 persons, including women and children,
fell victims to savage barbarity. “The slaughter was indiscriminate;
mercy was extended to none, and the tomahawk often transfixed mother
and child at the same stroke. But seventeen of the whole number in the
fort, escaped to give intelligence of the dreadful catastrophe.” In
the midst of an alarm which such an inhuman outrage was calculated to
excite, the eyes of Tennessee were turned on Jackson. Though confined
at this period to his house by a fractured arm, his characteristic
firmness did not desert him, and he cheerfully yielded to a second call
for his services in the cause of his country. Two thousand militia were
ordered to assemble at Fayetteville in Tennessee, in addition to five
hundred cavalry previously raised under the command of Gen. Coffee.
The alarming accounts of the concentration of the forces of the enemy,
with a view of deluging the frontier in blood, compelled General
Jackson (though individually in a most disabled state of body) to take
the field before the ranks of his army had been filled, or his troops
organized.
With this undisciplined force, he prepared for active operations;
but the wisest dispositions were counteracted, and all his movements
embarrassed, by the failure of unfeeling and speculating contractors.
The enemy were gathering strength, and on the advance; they had already
threatened a fort of Indian allies. In this situation, to retreat was
to abandon our frontier citizens to the mercy of savages; to advance,
was with the certainty of exposure to every privation.
Jackson hesitated not on the alternative, and with but six days’
rations of meat, and less than two of meal, he moved with his army upon
the Coosa; and, with Coffee’s command, gave a most decisive blow to the
enemy at Tallushatchee, in less than twenty-five days after he had
marched from the rendezvous at Fayetteville. The loss of the Creeks in
this engagement, was 186 killed, and 84 prisoners.
Though compelled by the want of supplies to return to his depots on
the frontier, we find him in less than six weeks in the field, at
the well fought battle of Talledega, and in the subsequent conflicts
at Emuckfau, Enotichopco, and Tohopka, annihilating the hopes and
expectations of the Creeks, and crushing the hydra of savage hostility
in the South.
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