HOW CLAIBORNE EXECUTED HIS ORDERS--THE BATTLE OF THE HOLY GROUND--RED
EAGLE'S FAMOUS LEAP.
General Claiborne construed as liberally as he dared the order from
General Flournoy which permitted him to drive the Creeks across the
border, and to pursue them as far as the neighboring towns. He adopted
the frontier notion of nearness when deciding whether or not a
particular town that he wanted to strike was sufficiently near the
dividing line between the white settlements and the Creek Nation.
His orders were to establish a fort at Weatherford's Bluff, and to
remain in that neighborhood until he should be joined by Jackson's army
and the Georgia troops, who were now advancing under command of General
Floyd.
The force with which he advanced to execute this order was a motley one.
There were three hundred volunteers, who were the main reliance of the
commander. There was a small dragoon force, composed of good men.
Pushmatahaw, the Choctaw warrior, with his followers accompanied the
expedition, and a small force of militiamen completed the little army.
Arriving at Weatherford's Bluff on the 17th of November, Claiborne
proceeded without delay to build a stockade fort inclosing nearly an
acre of ground, within which he built three block-houses, while for
defence against an assault from the river side of the encampment he
established a battery on the bank. The work, when finished, was
christened Fort Claiborne, and from it the present town of Claiborne on
the same spot inherited the commander's name.
Here, on the 28th of November, Claiborne was reinforced by the Third
Regiment of United States Infantry, under command of Colonel Russell,
and in order that concert of action might be secured, he wrote hence to
General Jackson at the Ten Islands, reporting the situation of affairs
on the southern side of the field, and informing the Tennessee
commander, of whose starvation he had heard, that abundant supplies of
food awaited his coming.
His activity knew no bounds. He sent trustworthy messengers to Pensacola
to learn the situation of affairs there, and ascertained through them
that the British were there with a considerable fleet and abundant
supplies both for the Indians and for their own troops, whose presence
there threatened a descent upon Mobile or New Orleans. He wrote at once
to Governor Blount, of Tennessee, informing him of these facts. He sent
messengers also to Mount Vernon, instructing Colonel Nixon, who
commanded there, to garrison Fort Pierce, a little post a few miles from
the ruins of Fort Mims, and suppress a recently awakened activity among
the Indians in that quarter.
The alertness of Claiborne's intelligence and his unwearied devotion to
duty made him an especially fit man for the important charge that was
laid upon him. A close study of his career shows him to have been indeed
so capable a man in military affairs, that we may fairly regret that his
field of operations was too small and too remote from the centres of
American life to permit him to secure the fame which he fairly earned.
General Claiborne was not thinking of fame, however, but of making
fierce war upon the Creeks and reducing them to subjection. He knew that
Red Eagle with a strong force was at Econachaca, or the Holy Ground, and
he determined to attack him there. The Holy Ground was one hundred and
ten miles from Fort Claiborne, and it could not be, with any strictness
of construction, considered a "neighboring" town; but the order which
restricted Claiborne's excursions into the Creek Nation to the
neighboring towns was couched in terms which did not admit of precise
definition, and as he really wanted to march to the Holy Ground, the
gallant general determined to regard it as a place within his immediate
neighborhood. He did not know, in truth, precisely where it was, and
there were neither roads nor paths through the woods to guide him to it,
but he believed, with Suwarrow, the Russian commander, that a general
can always find his enemy when he really wants to do so, and in this
case Claiborne very earnestly wished to find and to fight Weatherford.
Accordingly he prepared to march. He was in poor condition for such an
undertaking certainly, his force being weak in numbers, ill assorted,
and in fact rather unwilling to go. Nine of his captains, eight
lieutenants, and five ensigns sent him a written remonstrance against
what they believed to be the mad undertaking. These officers directed
their commander's attention to several ugly facts with respect to his
situation. They reminded him that the weather was cold and inclement;
that the troops were badly shod and insufficiently supplied with
clothing; that there was scarcely a possibility of feeding them
regularly upon so long a march into the literally pathless forest; and
finally that the term of service for which many of the men had enlisted
would soon come to an end.
The remonstrance was earnest, but perfectly respectful. The officers who
signed it assured General Claiborne that if he should adhere to his
determination they would go with him without murmuring, and do their
duty. As there was nothing set forth in the remonstrance which Claiborne
did not know or had not duly considered already, it made no change in
his mind. He set his motley army in motion, determined to take all
responsibility, dare all dangers, and endure all hardships for the sake
of accomplishing the purpose which he had so long cherished, of carrying
the war into the centre of the Creek Nation. How heavy the load of
responsibility which he thus took upon himself was, and how firm his
courage in assuming it must have been, we may understand when we reflect
that defeat in his attempt would certainly have subjected him to a
charge of criminal and reckless disobedience of orders in undertaking
such an expedition at all. No such charge was ever preferred, because
officers are not usually haled before a court-martial for winning
battles.
The force with which he set out consisted of the Third Regiment of
United States troops, under Colonel Russell; a squadron of cavalry,
commanded by Major Cassels; one battalion of militia, led by Major
Smoot, whom the reader will remember as one of the leaders at the battle
of Burnt Corn; Colonel Carson's Mississippi volunteers, and
Pushmatahaw's Choctaws, to the number of one hundred and fifty, making a
total of about one thousand men. Dale was a captain now in Smoot's
command, and accompanied the expedition in that capacity.
The march was begun early in December, through a country without roads,
infested with Indians whose force could never be guessed, and in weather
which was extremely unfavorable. Toilsomely the column advanced
north-eastwardly, or nearly so, to a point eighty miles from Fort
Claiborne, in what is now Butler County, Alabama. There Claiborne took
the precaution to build a stockade fort, which he named Fort Deposit,
and placed within it his baggage, his artillery, his supply wagons, and
his sick men.
Leaving this fort with a garrison of one hundred men, Claiborne marched
on toward the Holy Ground, which lay some thirty miles away. His men
speedily consumed the three days' rations of flour which they had drawn
before beginning the march from Fort Deposit, and when the army arrived
at the Indian stronghold its supply of pork, the only remaining article
of food, was nearly exhausted. Whatever was to be done must be done
quickly, in order that the troops might not starve before reaching Fort
Deposit on the return march.
The Holy Ground was a newly-established town, upon a spot chosen by Red
Eagle because of its natural strength as a defensive position. It lay
upon the eastern bank of the Alabama River, just below what is now
Powell's Ferry, in the present Lowndes County, Alabama. The site of the
town was a high bluff overlooking the river, and protected on the land
side by marshes and deep ravines.
Here Red Eagle had gathered his forces in considerable strength, and
hither had fled the remnants of various defeated bodies of Creeks, with
their women and children. The prophets Sinquista and Josiah Francis, who
were present, declared the soil to be sacred, and assured their comrades
that no white troops would be permitted by the Great Spirit to cross the
swamps and ravines which surrounded it.
Red Eagle, having more faith in defensive works than in supernatural
interferences at the behest of his prophets, whose characters he
probably understood pretty accurately, added to the natural strength of
the place by picket and log fortifications, making it as difficult to
assault successfully as he could.
In this central camp of refuge there were as many as two hundred houses,
and during the two or three months which had elapsed since the town was
established many of the prisoners taken by the Indians in battle had
been brought hither and murdered. When Claiborne advanced to attack the
place, preparations were making in the public square for the burning of
a number of unfortunate captives, among whom were one white woman, Mrs.
Sophia Durant, and several half-breeds.
Claiborne arrived on the 23d of December, and made his dispositions for
the assault without delay. He advanced in three columns, leading the
centre in person. The Indians, as soon as they learned of Claiborne's
approach, made preparations for defence. They carried their women and
children across the river and concealed them in the thick woods on the
other side.
The savages made the first attack, falling violently upon the right
column of Claiborne's force under Colonel Carson. The onset was repulsed
after a brief engagement, the Indians becoming panic-stricken for some
reason never explained, and retreating. Weatherford led the attack, and
for a time contested the field very stubbornly; but his men failing in
courage in spite of all that he could do, he was powerless to maintain
his ground.
Major Cassels, who with his squadron of cavalry had been ordered to
occupy the river bank, failed to do so, and fell back instead upon
Carson's regiment; and that gallant officer, seeing the gap thus
produced, advanced his line and occupied the ground. Meantime, however,
the mischief had been done. Cassels's failure had left a road of escape
open to the Indians at the critical moment, and hundreds of them fled
and swam the river to the thick woods on the other side.
When the Indian line broke and the retreat began, the nature of the
ground, crossed as it was by ravines and dotted with marshes, made any
thing like vigorous and systematic pursuit impossible. Perhaps their
consciousness that escape by flight was easy helped to induce the
Indians to abandon the struggle when they did. However that may be, they
fled, and Weatherford could not rally them. Seeing himself left alone,
with no followers to maintain the struggle, he was forced to choose
between flight and capture. Flight, however, was not now by any means
easy. He was mounted upon a superb gray horse which carried him in his
flight with the speed of the wind, but he was not long in discovering
that Carson had closed the gap through which he had hoped to escape.
His enemies were on every side of him but one, and on that side was the
high bluff. The story of what he did, as it is commonly told, is a very
marvellous one. A bluff about one hundred feet high at the Holy Ground
is shown to travellers, who are told that Red Eagle, seeing no other way
of escape, boldly dashed spurs into his horse and forced him to make the
fearful leap to the river below! As the story is usually told in print
it is somewhat less marvellous, but is still sufficiently so to serve
the purposes of a popular legend. It is that a ravine passed through the
upper part of the bluff, reducing its height to about fifty feet, and
that Red Eagle made a leap on his horse from that height. This version
of the story is so gravely told in books that are not romances, that the
author of the present volume once cited it in print in justification of
an incident in a work of fiction, believing at the time that the legend
was well authenticated. In examining authorities more carefully, as he
was bound to do before writing of the incident in a serious work of this
kind, he finds that the leap was much less wonderful than has been
represented. Mr. Pickett, in his History of Alabama, gives us the
following account, which he assures us he had from Red Eagle's own
lips:
"Coursing with great rapidity along the banks of the Alabama, below the
town, on a gray steed of unsurpassed strength and fleetness, which he
had purchased a short time before the commencement of hostilities of
Benjamin Baldwin, late of Macon County, [he] came at length to the
termination of a kind of ravine, where there was a perpendicular bluff
ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the river. Over this with a
mighty bound the horse pitched with the gallant chief, and both went out
of sight beneath the waves. Presently they rose again, the rider having
hold of the mane with one hand and his rifle firmly grasped in the
other. Regaining his saddle, the noble animal swam with him to the
Autauga side."
The battle over, Claiborne found his loss to be one man killed and six
others wounded. Thirty Indians were found dead on the ground. The number
of their wounded is not known. Claiborne destroyed the town, with every
thing in it.
The army was now reduced almost to starvation, their only food being a
little corn, which they parched and ate as they could. An alarm having
been given by a party of men who were sent up the river in pursuit of
fugitives, however, Claiborne marched in that direction during the night
of December 24th, and pitched his tent on Weatherford's plantation,
where he ate his Christmas breakfast of parched corn. Having destroyed
all the buildings in the neighborhood, Claiborne's work in this region
was done, and he hastened back to Fort Deposit, where he fed his troops
before beginning his return march to Fort Claiborne. The army had been
nine days without meat.
The term of service for which Carson's volunteers had enlisted had now
expired, and as soon as the column arrived at Fort Claiborne the men
were mustered out. In a letter to the Secretary of War, Claiborne
reported that these men went home nearly naked, without shoes, and with
their pay eight months in arrears. Their devotion to the cause, as it
was shown in their cheerfulness and good conduct during their toilsome
march, was, in view of all the circumstances, highly honorable to them.
Leaving Colonel Russell in command of Fort Claiborne, General Claiborne
returned to Mount Vernon, partly because he had fully accomplished all
that his orders from Flournoy permitted him to do, and partly because
the discharge of his Mississippi volunteers had reduced his army to
sixty men, and even these had but a month longer to serve!
Colonel Russell was no sooner left in command at Fort Claiborne than he
instituted proceedings designed to fix the responsibility for the
sufferings of the men during the campaign and for the blunder at the
Holy Ground where it belonged. He ordered a court of inquiry in each
case, but Major Cassels was permitted to escape censure on the ground
that his guide had misled him. For the failure of the food supply the
contractor was held responsible, as it was shown that General Claiborne
had given him strict orders to provide abundant supplies for the
expedition.
In order that the story of the Fort Claiborne army may be finished here
before returning to the Ten Islands and following Jackson through his
more important part of the campaign, we may depart for the moment from
the chronological order of events to tell the story of an unsuccessful
attempt which Colonel Russell made to invade the Creek Nation from Fort
Claiborne, in the February following the events already described.
It was Colonel Russell's purpose to march to the Old Towns on the
Cahawba River, and thence to attack the Indians wherever he could find
them, establishing his base of supplies at that point. He provided a
barge, loaded it with food for the troops, and putting Captain Denkins
in command of it, with a piece of artillery as his armament, he directed
that officer to ascend the Alabama River to the mouth of the Cahawba
River, and thence to make his way up the Cahawba to Old Towns, where the
army would meet him. Then, with his regiment reinforced by an infantry
company from the neighborhood of Fort Madison under command of Captain
Evan Austill, and a cavalry company commanded by Captain Foster--the two
forming a battalion under the lead of Sam Dale, who was now a
Major--Colonel Russell marched to the appointed place of rendezvous.
There he learned that the barge had not arrived, and as he had marched
with but six days' provisions his situation was a critical one. To
hasten the coming of the barge he despatched a canoe manned by
Lieutenant Wilcox and five men in search of Captain Denkins. This party,
while making its way down the river, travelling at night and hiding in
the cane on the banks by day, was attacked by Indians. Lieutenant Wilcox
and three of his companions were made prisoners, the other two escaping
and making their way through many hardships to the settlements, where
they arrived in a famished condition.
Captain Denkins had passed the mouth of the Cahawba River by mistake,
and had gone a considerable distance up the Alabama River before
discovering his error. When he did discover it, he knew that it was now
too late for him to think of carrying out his original instructions. He
knew that before he could possibly reach the Old Towns, the army would
be starved out and compelled to retreat.
He therefore determined to return to Fort Claiborne. On his way down the
river he discovered the canoe, and found in it Wilcox scalped and dying,
and his two companions already dead.
Meantime Colonel Russell had waited two days at the Old Towns for the
coming of the barge, and then, being wholly without provisions, began
his return march, saving his army from starvation by killing and eating
his horses on the route.