among the trees, away from the Indian trail. The hoot of an owl came
floating through the silence of the evening, and was at once answered
by Davy. It was the signal of the half-breed, who soon afterward came
into the gleam of their fire. The morning broke, and there was still no
news of the other party of scouts. As usual, Davy decided to go ahead,
and passed through a Cherokee village, twenty miles farther south,
reaching the house of a squaw-man, named Radcliff, in time for dinner.
This man they found badly scared. He told them that ten painted Creeks
had left the place during the forenoon; if they learned that he had
fed the scouts, they would kill his whole family and burn the house.
When dinner was over, Davy found that a few of his men wanted to turn
back; they said that the party was too small to venture into the Creek
country, just before them. But Davy knew that some of the men would
stand by him, and he determined to go ahead. When he started on the
whole party went along, for the few who wished to go back were afraid
to do so alone. Soon after dark they reached a camp of some friendly
Creeks. It was a strange condition of affairs, when some of the Indians
of this tribe could be trusted, while others were slinking through the
woods, smeared from head to foot with vermilion, and fierce for blood.
The moon was at its full, and for a while Davy and his men tried
their skill with the bows and arrows of the Indian boys. While they
were doing this, a scared negro who had joined them during the day
warned them that the Red Sticks were likely to surprise them, but they
made light of his fears. They tied their horses ready to mount at a
second’s notice, and lay with their guns by their sides. They had
scarcely dozed when a cry like that of an angry panther rang through
the night. The negro shouted that the Red Sticks were coming, and every
one stood at bay. Then an Indian appeared in the bright moonlight, with
the news that the war party had been crossing the Coosa all day at the
Ten Islands, on their way to fight Jackson’s army, then gathering at
Fayetteville, in Tennessee.
In a few minutes every Indian in the camp had fled, while Davy and
his men “put out in a long lope” on the back trail, to give notice to
the force they had left at the landing, sixty-five miles away. At the
Cherokee town they found great fires blazing, but no Indians. Radcliff
and his family had disappeared. At daylight they came to Brown’s
house, where they ate hurriedly and then pushed on. Having crossed
the Tennessee, they reached the volunteers’ camp, and reported to
Colonel Coffee. To Davy’s disgust, the Colonel seemed to place little
confidence in the story he had to tell, so far as the imminence of
danger was involved. The little band of scouts had ridden their tired
horses sixty-five miles in eleven hours by moonlight, and had forded
the river, and they were disgusted by their reception. Davy said that
he was burning inside like a tar-kiln, and wondered that the smoke was
not pouring out of him as he withdrew.
The next day the Major came into camp with a similar report, which set
Colonel Coffee into what Davy called “a fidget.” He at once threw up
breastworks twelve hundred feet long, and dispatched a messenger to
hurry up Jackson’s army. It always rankled in Davy’s memory that the
word of a common soldier and scout could be so lightly held, while the
Major’s report was never doubted for a moment. Davy had much to learn
in a world where so many unjustly receive pay and praise for work that
is done by obscure toilers. The forty thousand French who lay dead
or dying that week before the walls of Leipzig are nameless now, but
Napoleon is not forgotten. Davy’s sense of the unfairness of Fame may
be the reason for his later enmity towards Andrew Jackson. When, years
afterward, he told of the forced march that brought Old Hickory and his
troops to the support of Coffee, he called the General “Old Hickory
Face.”
Still suffering and weak from his wound, Jackson arrived at Huntsville
with his command the next day, October 11, 1813. The men were wearied
with the forced march, and their feet were blistered and lame, so they
went to their tents while the volunteers kept watch for the enemy.
Although now in charge of at least two thousand men, Jackson was
without supplies, and at this time Major Reid, of his staff, wrote to a
friend:
“At this place [Thompson’s Creek, on the Tennessee] we remain a day to
establish a depot for provisions; but where these provisions are to
come from, God Almighty only knows. I speak seriously when I declare
that we may soon have to eat our horses, which may be the best use we
can put a great many of them to.”
Of Davy’s movements between October 11th and the following month, we
have no account, but he could have played only a minor part in the
waiting game that took place. But one day in November, Coffee, with
eight hundred volunteers, including Davy’s company, went west to Mussel
Shoals, where they crossed the Tennessee, losing some of their horses
in the dangerous and rocky fording. From there the expedition struck
south, crossing the Warrior River, to Black Warrior’s town, near the
present site of Tuscaloosa. Here they found some corn and a lot of
dried beans, but no Indians. They burned the town, and turned back to
meet the main army at the place where Davy and his scouts had waited in
vain for Major Gibson, in October. The next day the supply of meat gave
out, and Davy went to Coffee and asked permission to hunt while the
march progressed. He says Coffee told him he might do so, but to take
good care of himself. Within an hour he found a freshly-killed deer,
skinned and still warm. He knew that an Indian must have fled at his
approach, and, even under the conditions, had scruples against taking
the meat. What he tells of this is so typical of his character that it
should be repeated:
“Though I was never much in favor of one hunter stealing from another,
yet meat was so scarce in camp that I thought I must go in for it.
So I just took up the deer on my horse before me, and carried it on
till night. I could have sold it for almost any price I would have
asked; but this wasn’t my rule, neither in peace nor war. Whenever I
had anything, and saw a fellow-being suffering, I was more anxious to
relieve him than to benefit myself. And this is one of the secrets
of my being a poor man to this day. But it is my way; and while it
has often left me with an empty purse, which is as near the devil as
anything else I have ever seen, yet it has never left my heart empty
of consolations which money couldn’t buy, of having sometimes fed the
hungry and covered the naked.”
Davy kept enough of the deer for his own mess, and gave the rest away.
Most of the men were living on parched corn.
The day after, they made camp near a large cane-brake. In these brakes,
the cane, of which the scientific name is _Arundinaria Macrosperma_, is
an arborescent grass, dying down in the winter, but growing to a height
of twenty feet, in some places, during the summer. Into this brake,
impassable except for paths made by cattle and swine, Davy went with
his rifle after meat. In a short time he found a number of hogs, and
as he shot one of them the whole drove started towards camp. The roar
of guns and the squealing of the hogs sounded like an Indian massacre.
Most of the hogs and a fat cow were the results of his activity, and
for these an order on Uncle Sam was given the people of the Cherokee
town where they stopped the next day. Before night they met Jackson’s
army, and turned south with them. At Radcliff’s place they found his
two big half-breed sons, and, having learned that he had sent the
runner who had so alarmed the camp with the news of the Red Sticks’
approach, they forced them to serve as soldiers, to repay Radcliff for
what was intentionally a false alarm.
At a place named Camp Wills, Coffee was made a General, and other
promotions were announced. The next point reached was Ten Islands,
on the Coosa River, and here they heard of a gathering of Red Sticks
at a town ten miles distant. Jackson sent nine hundred men, under
General Coffee, to attack them. Part of the force was made up of
friendly Cherokees, under their chief, known as Dick Brown. To prevent
being mistaken for the enemy, these Indians wore white feathers and
deer-tails on their heads.
At daybreak, Colonel Allcorn, with the cavalry, in which Davy served,
went to the right of the line of march, while Coffee and Colonel Cannon
kept to the left, soon enclosing the town completely with a cordon of
horse and foot. The Indians discovered their approach, and manifested
their defiance with yells and frantic beating of their drums. As they
refused to come out, Captain Hammond and two companies of rangers
advanced to bring on the action. The Indians seem to have believed
this small force to be all with whom they had to deal, for, as Davy
says, they soon came at them “like so many red devils.” As the rangers
fell back, the main army line was reached, and the fight was on. The
Creeks fired a volley and ran back to their huts. Slowly the cordon of
soldiers closed upon them, and one of the most desperate Indian fights
of history took place. The Red Sticks asked no quarter, firing from
the shelter of their cabins until they were shot dead by the soldiers
who came to their doors, or charging with shrill war-cries between the
impassable walls of gleaming rifles that surrounded them. Refusing
quarter even from the Cherokees, whom they had known as friends before,
they fought till they could no longer lift their guns or draw their
knives in a last effort.
According to Crockett’s story of the affair, the squaws rushed through
the hail of bullets to ask for mercy. Many of them were accidentally
shot in the houses with the men, but that was unavoidable. Every brave
was killed, and eighty-four women and children were taken prisoners.
General Coffee counted one hundred and eighty-six dead Indians, while
of his own force but five were killed and forty wounded.
The difference in the mortality between the two sides is remarkable.
The red man never knew how hopeless a battle he fought with the
Juggernaut of Civilization. All his savage energy could avail against
the pioneer no more than the throne of Hardicanute, on Britain’s shore,
could turn the wild and angry waves of the North Sea.
During the fight, many of the Creeks took refuge in one of the houses
of the town. As the soldiers closed in, a squaw who sat in the doorway
with a bow and arrow put her feet against the bow, placed an arrow,
pulled with all her might, and killed Lieutenant Moore, outright. The
act so enraged the soldiers that she was riddled with bullets, and the
house, with the forty-six Indians in it, was burned. A boy of twelve,
who had been wounded, was seen by Davy so near the burning house that
he was being scorched by the heat; yet this brave lad made no sound,
nor did he ask for help.
Though they had gained a decisive victory, the soldiers were in
terrible straits for food, and when everything in sight had been eaten,
they learned that “Hunger is sharper than the Sword.”
VII.
HARD FIGHTING
The friendly Indians besieged at Talladega――Jackson sends them
help――The attempted ambush――“Painted scarlet, and naked as when
they were born”――The battle of Talladega, and the bleaching
skulls――Mutiny of the volunteers――Davy goes home when his time is
up and reënlists――The Indian victory at Enotachopco Creek――Davy is
in a furious fight――One hundred volunteers killed or wounded――English
Intrigue at Pensacola――Davy’s visit to that place――Many stirring
adventures in the Escambia River country――Davy is hungry enough to
climb a tree after a squirrel――With powder and lead he buys corn from
an Indian――Home at last.
Early in November, 1813, Jackson built a fort at Ten Islands, on the
north shore of the Coosa River, and many refugees came within its
stockades. It was called Fort Strother, after the owner of the place on
which it stood. On the 7th of the month an Indian runner arrived with
bad news from the friendly town of Talladega, where a small fort had
been built. One hundred and fifty peaceable Creeks were besieged by
more than a thousand Red Sticks and their allies. The latter had given
the fort three days to surrender, and relied on thirst and hunger to
bring their intended victims to terms. The runner who came to Jackson
is said to have disguised himself as a hog, in order to escape in the
woods near-by. Jackson resolved to save the friendly Indians at any
risk. Their faithfulness could not be unrewarded. They had refused all
attempts to turn their allegiance, and when the enemy tried to induce
them to help whip Jackson’s army and secure the booty that might be
expected, they were repulsed with scorn. Just after midnight Jackson
began crossing the river with two thousand men, of whom eight hundred
were mounted. He relied upon the arrival of General White, with his
men, to protect Fort Strother.
It was sun-up of the 8th when the little army came in sight of
Talladega, and deployed to right and left, for the purpose of
surrounding the hostile Creeks. Only through the bravery of the
beleaguered Indians were the companies under Major Russell and Captain
Evans saved from an ambush. As they drew near to the fort, the friendly
Indians within shouted in welcome:
“How do, brother? How do?”
This they kept up till Major Russell had passed the fort and was headed
for the brush-covered creek behind it, where the enemy waited to
surprise him. The friendly Creeks tried in vain to call him to a halt,
and at last two of them leaped from the walls, ran to his horse’s head,
and pointed out the danger. At once the hidden warriors fired on them,
and, to quote Crockett’s description of the event, “They came forth
like a cloud of Egyptian locusts, screaming as if all the young devils
had been turned loose, with the old devil of all at their head. They
were all painted scarlet, and were as naked as when they were born.”
Leaving their horses, Russell’s men made for the fort. As the cordon
of soldiers rushed to enclose them in an ever-narrowing ring of fire,
the ill-fated Red Sticks fell in heaps. Many of them were armed only
with bows and arrows――futile weapons, even against flintlock guns. Four
hundred painted braves fell before the survivors broke through the
line of drafted militia and escaped. When Davy returned that way, a
year afterward, he saw the bleaching skulls scattered about like gourds
upon a winter field.
At Fort Strother, after returning from Talladega, the volunteers,
whose sixty days were long elapsed, asked to go home for fresh horses
and clothing, but Jackson, who felt that he needed every man, refused
permission. White had failed him, following orders from General Cocke,
and the situation was a bad one. The volunteers were within their
rights, but the General was determined, and as they prepared to leave,
he covered with cannon, and the guns of his other troops, a bridge that
must be crossed on leaving camp. Of this affair a dramatic account is
given in Eggleston’s history of the war. He tells us that behind the
cannoneers with matches lit, their general gave the malcontents a few
seconds in which to go back, with the promise of shot and shell if they
refused; and then, the story runs, the mutineers gave in and asked for
terms.
Davy Crockett says that the discontented volunteers, with flints
picked and guns primed, marched across the bridge, amid the clicking
of the gun-locks of the militia, some of whom had run at the battle
of Talladega. He says they were determined to fight their way, or die
together. The merits of this affair are in dispute, but Davy and his
company returned to Tennessee, where many reënlisted after a time. It
may be set down for certain that from that day Davy was no friend of
Jackson.
When Davy returned to the Creek country, he went to serve the balance
of six months, although his term of two months had expired. Jackson
now had less than a thousand whites, with about two hundred and fifty
Cherokees and friendly Creeks. One of the companies was made up of
officers whose men had gone home. Major Russell was in command of a
body of scouts, of whom Davy was one.
It is strange that such a small force could not be supplied with
provisions. It seems to have been in no way backed up by the
Government. But in the East matters had not gone well. Perry’s victory
and other naval successes had not made the New Englanders any more
loyal. Their pockets had suffered, and the prizes won in privateering
were only a partial salve for their losses. The war with the Alabama
nations was not regarded as a matter of importance on the Atlantic
coast.
It was from the ranks of the ill-fed volunteers of Kentucky and
Tennessee that victory was to come. The battle of New Orleans was
fought after the conclusion of peace, but the capture of that city by
Pakenham would have meant more war. Jackson knew the danger of Indian
victories, and with his hungry and ragged troops and scouts fought
regardless of odds. Davy Crockett was one of the men who learned to
know what hunger was, but he was eager to be in the hottest of the
trouble, and never had enough.
In January, 1814, Jackson’s little army pushed on to the Horseshoe Bend
of the Tallapoosa River, and camped in a hollow square, with every
prospect of being attacked by hostiles, who were in great numbers in
the vicinity. Two hours before dawn, the pickets were heard firing.
Throwing brush on the camp-fires, the volunteers waited for the attack,
expecting to see the Indians by the glare of the flames; but the Creeks
kept out of sight, and were themselves aided in aiming by the light in
the camp. Four whites were killed and a number wounded, and although
several charges were made, Jackson found it necessary to retreat. The
dead were burned, to prevent their being scalped, and the force fell
back to the Enotachopco Creek. Some historians have called this affair
a victory!
When the army was about to cross the creek, the savages fell on the
rear guard, which Colonel Carroll was commanding. On the right flank
Colonel Perkins was in charge, and on the left Colonel Stump. Carroll
did his duty bravely, but the other Colonels fled and their men
followed them. As Stump rode frantically past Jackson, the General
tried to cut down the coward with his sword, but missed him. Colonel
Carroll was thus left with only twenty-five men, and was in danger of
being cut to pieces by the yelling and triumphant warriors.
Then the scouts under Russell, with the aid of the artillerymen, who
had only one six-pound cannon, sprang to the aid of the rear guard,
and Davy had a chance to fight that must have satisfied him. While
the artillerymen were dragging the piece up the bank of the creek
and loading it with grape, Davy’s company, led by old Major Russell,
rushed across the stream and attacked the left flank of the Indians,
who outnumbered the whites ten to one. Constantine Perkins and Craven
Jackson, of the cannoneers, at last swept the ranks of the savages,
huddled in the narrow descent to the creek, with a hail of grape. Then
the scouts fell on the demoralized enemy, who took to the woods, and
Jackson’s army was saved. One hundred and eighty-nine dead Indians
were counted after this fight, and twenty volunteers were killed and
seventy-five wounded.
It is worth while to consider the iron tenacity of Old Hickory, in
the face of such disastrous losses. Practically without an army, and
with no supplies for the friendly Creeks, he renewed his appeals to
the people of Tennessee and Kentucky, and hopefully awaited their
response. Every day of delay made the danger greater, for the Creeks
were constantly securing firearms and powder and lead from the British
agents at Pensacola.
The spectacle of the English unloading guns and scalping-knives for
the savages at a Spanish port has always been miserable to look upon.
But in 1865, after the surrender of Lee had ended the Civil War,
twenty-five cases of Colt’s Navy revolvers, received via London, were
taken from the warehouse of the Confederate Agent at St. George’s in
the Bermuda Islands, sold to an American, and sent to New York on the
bark _Palo Alto_. The Southern army had Hartford revolvers, via England
and the blockade, with which to fight the brothers of the men who made
them. Until the United States Government prohibited the shipping of
beef to Nassau, Bermuda, and Havana, there was a supply sent to the
Confederates through the blockade, as best it could be, by New York
dealers. There is no use in the pot calling the kettle black.
As the volunteers returned to their homes, they stirred the hearts of
their neighbors with the story of Jackson’s bravery and self-sacrifice,
and the indifference of the people turned to enthusiasm. Before the end
of February, Coffee returned to Alabama with two hundred of his old
brigade, and there soon followed him two thousand men from Western
Tennessee, and two thousand more from the mountains of Eastern Tennessee.
Every man was a rifleman. The Choctaws also offered the stubborn General
all the warriors of their tribe to fight the Creeks.
After serving about four months instead of the two for which he at
first volunteered, Davy Crockett returned to his home, and for some
time he was busy in providing for the comfort of his family. After the
battle of Tohopeka, in March, 1814, in which Jackson completely routed
the hostile Creeks, the victorious General made plans for an attack
on Pensacola, which port the British fleet was using as if it were
under the “gridiron” flag. Davy has said of this time: “I determined
to go again with them [to Pensacola] as I wanted a small taste of
British fighting, and I supposed they would be there.” It was in vain
that Polly Crockett begged him to change his mind. Under the command
of Major Russell, he crossed the Tennessee at Mussel Shoals, and at
the junction of the Alabama and the Tombigbee Rivers, was two days
behind the main army of General Jackson. Here they found the horses of
the army, and left their own, as forage was not to be had nearer to
Pensacola. With their guns, blankets, and provisions, they made the
march of nearly eighty miles in two days, and came in sight of the town
and of the British fleet, which lay off the port.
It was now November of the year 1814, and as Jackson had made terms
with the Indians, and had occupied Pensacola, he marched his army to
New Orleans, where the British were defeated in the following January.
As Crockett was now at liberty to go home, he did so, but he was a long
time getting there.
A careless reading of his story of this period of his adventurous life
is utterly confusing, but with a better understanding of his meaning,
the account is a logical one. Davy called things as he was accustomed
to hear them called, and when he speaks of the Scamby River, meaning
the Escambia, or calls the Conecuh, the Conaker, he gives the best
proof that in his relation he was not indebted to the imagination of
an educated and inventive editor. In Eggleston’s intensely interesting
history of the Creek War, the author tells us that after his treaty
with the Creek nation, August 14, 1814, General Jackson went back to
The Hermitage, because his work was done, and that for a year Red
Eagle, the vanquished chief, was his guest. But from Hickory Grove,
the place of the treaty, Jackson must have gone to Pensacola, which he
occupied November 7, 1814; and as he fought the battle of New Orleans
in January, 1815, it is a cause for wonder that any historian should
make a statement so far from facts known to the ordinary schoolboy.
It was in November that Davy and his regiment set out for Tennessee.
Just how long the trip lasted, we do not know, but before it ended
they met volunteers from the Tennessee mountains bound to New Orleans.
Among them was a younger brother of Davy’s, as well as many of his old
neighbors. The regiment to which Davy belonged seems to have gone to
Fort Montgomery, near Fort Mims, and then towards Pensacola, and back
and forth between the Choctawhatchee and Escambia Rivers, intent, for
the most part, on getting something to eat. Some of their adventures
are of interest, but must be referred to without any attempt to fix
their dates. Davy tells them as they happen to come into his head, and
his book was written twenty years after.