THE CANOE FIGHT.
Before going further with the story of what happened around the root
fortress on that morning, it is necessary to explain how it came about
that a battle was fought there. I gather the facts from authentic
history.
During all the time spent by the Hardwickes in their wanderings and in
the root fortress, the war had been going on vigorously. The occupants
of Fort Sinquefield, when they abandoned that fort as described in the
early chapters of this story, succeeded in making their way to Fort
Glass, or Fort Madison, as it was properly named, though the people
still used its original name Fort Glass in speaking of it, for which
reason I have so called the place throughout this story. In July General
Floyd, who was in command of all the United States forces in the
south-west, sent General Claiborne, with his twelve months' Mississippi
volunteers to Fort Stoddart, with instructions to render such aid as he
could to the forts in the surrounding country. His force consisted of
seven hundred men, and of them he took five hundred to Fort Stoddart,
sending the remaining two hundred, under Col. Joseph E. Carson, a
volunteer officer, to Fort Glass. The two hundred soldiers added greatly
to the strength of the place, and with the settlers who had taken refuge
inside, rendered it reasonably secure against attack. The refugees were
under command of Captain Evan Austill, himself a planter of the
neighborhood.
Shortly after the storming of Fort Sinquefield, and almost immediately
after the garrison of that place had reached Fort Glass, the Indians
appeared in great numbers in that neighborhood, burning houses, killing
everybody who strayed even a few hundred yards outside the picket gates,
and seriously threatening the fort itself. In view of these facts Col.
Carson sent a young man of nineteen years of age named Jerry Austill,
the son of Capt. Evan Austill to General Claiborne's head-quarters,
with dispatches describing the situation and asking for reinforcements.
Young Austill made the journey alone and at night, at terrible risk, as
he had to pass through a country infested with savages, but on his
return brought, instead of assistance, an order for Col. Carson to
evacuate the fort and retire to Fort Stephens. When he did so, however,
Captain Austill and about fifty other planters, with their families,
determined to remain and defend Fort Glass at all hazards. Among those
who remained was Mr. Hardwicke, who, now that the Indians had murdered
his children, as he supposed, had little to live for, and was disposed
to serve the common cause at the most dangerous posts, where every
available man was needed.
After a time Col. Carson was sent back to the fort with his Mississippi
volunteers, and this freed the daring spirits inside the fort from the
necessity of remaining there. They went at once on scouting parties,
Tandy Walker, the guide, being almost always one of the number going out
on these perilous expeditions. They scoured the country far and near, in
bodies ranging from two or three to twenty or thirty men, and fought the
Indians in many places, losing some valuable men but making the Indians
suffer in their turn.
Finally it was determined to send out a party larger than any that had
yet gone, to operate against the savages on the south-east side of the
river. This expedition numbered seventy-two men, thirty of whom were
Mississippi Yauger men, under a Captain Jones, while the others were
volunteers from private life. The expedition was under the command of
Sam Dale, already celebrated as an Indian fighter, and known among the
Creeks, with whom he had lived, as Sam Thlueco, or Big Sam, on account
of his enormous size and strength. During this Creek war he had
performed some feats of strength, skill and daring, the memory of which
is still preserved in history, together with that of the celebrated
canoe fight, which we are now coming to. To tell of these deeds of
prowess would lead us away from our proper business, namely, the telling
of the present story; but the canoe fight comes properly into the story,
being in fact one of its incidents. Three only of Dale's companions
figured with him in the canoe fight, and they alone need mentioning by
name. These were, first Jerry Austill, the young man already spoken of,
who was six feet two inches high, slender but strong, and active as a
cat; second, James Smith, a man of firm frame and dauntless spirit; and
third Cæsar, a negro man, who conducted himself with a courage and
coolness fairly entitling him to bear the name of the great Roman
warrior.
The expedition left Fort Glass on the 11th of November, 1823. Tandy
Walker was its guide, and every man in the party knew that Tandy was not
likely to be long in leading them to a place where Indians were
plentiful. He knew every inch of country round about, and nothing
pleased him so well as a battle in any shape. The day after they left
Fort Glass, Dale's men reached the river at a point eighteen miles below
the present town of Clairborne, and about fifteen miles below the root
fortress. Here they crossed, in two canoes, to the eastern shore of the
river, and spent the night without sleep. The next morning Austill, with
six men, ascended the river in the canoes, while Dale, with the rest of
the party, marched up the bank. About a mile below the root fortress,
Dale who was marching some distance ahead of his men, came upon some
Indians at breakfast, and without waiting for his men to come up, shot
their chief. The rest fled precipitately, leaving their provisions
behind. Pushing on, Dale reached a point about two hundred yards below
the root fortress, and there determined to recross the river. The canoes
transported the men as rapidly as possible, but when all were over
except Dale and eight or nine men (among whom were Smith, Austill and
Cæsar), and only one canoe remained at the eastern side of the stream, a
large party of Indians, numbering, as was afterwards ascertained, nearly
three hundred, attacked the handful of whites still remaining. These
retreated from the field, where they were breakfasting, and keeping the
Indians in check by careful and well-aimed firing, were about to get
into the canoe and escape to the opposite bank, about four hundred yards
away, when they discovered that their retreat was cut off by a large
canoe full of Indians, eleven in all, which had come out of the mouth of
the creek just above. The savages tried to approach the shore, but, in
spite of the fact that by careening the canoe to one side and lying down
they were able to conceal themselves, they were prevented from landing
by Austill and one or two other men. Two of the Indians jumped into the
water and tried to swim to the shore, while the others, firing over the
gunwale of the boat, were sorely annoying the whites. Austill shot one
of the swimmers but the other escaped to the shore, and joined the
savages there, informing them, as Dale supposed, of the weakness of his
force, which they had not yet discovered. Dale called to the men on the
other side of the river to cross and assist him, but they, after making
an abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle
spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help
was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly
overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly
daring manoeuvre, namely, an attempt to capture the Indian canoe! He
called out to his comrades.
"I'm going to fight the canoe with a canoe. Who will go with me?"
Austill, Smith and Cæsar volunteered at once, and Cæsar took his post as
steersman, while the three stalwart soldiers were leaping into the
canoe for the purpose of fighting hand to hand the nine Indians opposed
to them. As they shot out from the shore the savages on the bank
delivered a fierce fire upon them, but fortunately without effect. The
savages in the canoe had exhausted their powder, and Dale's party would
have had an advantage in this but for the fact that their own powder had
become wet as they were getting into their canoe. The fight must be hand
to hand, but they were not the men to shrink from it. When the boats
struck, the Indians leaped up and began using their rifles as clubs.
Austill, who was in the bow of Dale's boat, received the first shock of
the battle, but Cæsar promptly swung his boat around, and grappling the
other canoe held the two side by side during the whole fight. Dale's
boat was a very small one, and he to relieve it sprang into the Indian
canoe, thereby giving his comrades more room and crowding the Indians so
closely together as to embarrass their movements. The blows now fell
thick and fast. Austill was knocked down into the Indian boat, and an
Indian was about to put him to death when Smith saved him by braining
the savage. Austill then rose, and snatching a war club from one of the
Indians used that instead of his rifle. Eight of the savages were slain,
and Dale found himself face to face with the solitary survivor, whom he
recognized as a young Muscogee with whom he had been for years on terms
of the most intimate friendship, and whom he loved, as he declared,
almost as a brother. He lowered his up-raised rifle to spare his friend,
but the savage would not accept quarter. He cried out in the Creek
language, which Dale understood as well as he did English.
"Big Sam, you are a man, and I am another! Now for it!" and with that
the two joined in a struggle for life. A blow from Dale's gun ended at
once the canoe fight and the life of the young brave, who, even from his
friend, would not accept the mercy which his nation was not ready to
show to the whites. It is said that to the day of his death Dale could
not speak of this incident without shedding tears.
Dale and his comrades had still a duty to do and some danger yet to
encounter. The party remaining on the bank was in imminent peril, and
must be rescued at all hazards. The little canoe was not large enough to
carry them all, and so the big one must be cleared of the dead Indians
in it, and the heroes of the canoe fight accomplished this under a
severe fire from the bank. Then jumping into the captured boat, they
paddled to the shore, and taking their hard pressed comrades on board,
crossed under fire to the other side, whence they marched to Fort Glass,
twelve miles away, having dealt the savages a severe blow without losing
a man. Austill was hurt pretty badly on the head, and a permanent dent
in his skull attested the narrowness of his escape.
This battle was waged within sight of the root fortress, the drift pile
being indeed the cover from which the Indians fought. Tom, as we know,
went to the look-out at the beginning of the fight, and he remained
there to the end in the hope that the fortune of battle might possibly
bring the whites within call, and thus afford the little refugee band a
chance of escape. No such chance came, however, and sadly enough the
two boys, for Joe was also in the look-out, watched the passage of the
last of Dale's men across the stream, half a mile below.
"Mas' Tom," said Joe, "dem folks gwine right straight to de fort."
"Yes, of course," said Tom. "What of it?"
"Nothin', only I wish I could go wid 'em, and tell 'em Mas' Sam's here
sick."
"So do I, Joe, but we can't go with them, and it's no use wishing."
"I reckon 'tain't no use, but I can't help wishin' for all dat. When
folk's got der own way dey don't wish for it. It's when you can't git
your way dat you wish, ain't it?"
Tom was forced to admit that Joe was right, and that in wishing to be
with the retreating party he was not altogether unreasonable.
The two boys sat there, looking and longing. The savages had disappeared
almost as suddenly as they had come, and presently Joe sprang up,
saying.
"Dar's de little canoe lodged in the bushes, an' I'se gwine to fasten
her to the bank anyhow, so's we'll have her if we want her."
What possible use they could make of the canoe, it had not entered
Joe's head to ask perhaps, but he tied the boat in the bushes
nevertheless and secreted the paddle in the drift pile. He then visited
the place where Dale's men had been surprised at breakfast, and brought
off the pack of provisions which Dale had captured that morning from the
savages and had himself abandoned in his turn. The pack was a
well-stored one, and its possession was a matter of no little moment to
the boys, whose bill of fare had hitherto embraced no bread, of which
there was here an abundance in the shape of ash cake.
"Mas' Tom," said Joe that evening, "do you know my master?"
"Mr. Butler? Yes, certainly."
"Well, if anything happens to poor Joe, and if you ever gits to de fort
an' if Joe don't, an' if you sees my master dar you'll tell him Joe
never runned away anyhow, won't you."
"Yes, I'll tell him that Joe."
"Even if the Ingins ketches me an' you dunno whar' I'se gone to, you'll
tell him anyhow dat Joe never runned away from him or from you nuther,
won't you, Mas' Tom?"
"Of course, Joe. But there won't be any chance to tell him anything
about it unless we all get back to the fort, and then you can tell him
for yourself. He thinks you are dead, of course, and doesn't dream that
you ever ran away. You'll get back safely if the Indians don't catch
you, and if they catch you they'll catch all of us, so I won't be there
to tell your master about you."
"Dun no 'bout dat," replied Joe. "Dey mought catch Joe 'thout catchin'
anybody else, an' 'thout you nor nobody knowin' nothin' 'bout it, and
Joe wants you to promise anyway dat you'll stick to it to de las' dat
poor Joe was no runaway nigger, nohow at all. Kin you do dat for me,
Mas' Tom?"
"Certainly, Joe," said Tom laughing, "I promise you."
"Will you git mad if Joe axes you to shake han's on dat, Mas' Tom? I
wants to make sartain sure on it."
Tom laughed, but held out his hand, convinced that the poor black boy
was out of spirits at least, if not out of his mind.