RED EAGLE'S STRATEGY.
When Red Eagle established his camp at the Holy Ground, from which
Claiborne drove him, his purpose was to provide for resistance by
concentrating the warriors of the nation after the manner of civilized
armies. The Indian practice of breaking into small, roving bands and
concentrating only when some special occasion arose, was in favor among
the Creek chiefs, but Red Eagle was too capable a soldier not to see how
fatal this practice must be in the end. After the massacre at Fort Mims
it was his wish to keep his army together and operate with persistent
vigor against Mobile if he could gain Spanish consent, and if not,
against Georgia and Tennessee. If he could have done this, there can be
little doubt that he would have driven Jackson from Fort Strother during
the days of starvation and mutiny, by bringing a strong force forward to
the attack. His influence had been greatly weakened, however, by his
attempt to restrain the demoniac fury of his men at Fort Mims, and in
spite of all that he could do, his army dissolved into small wandering
bands before he could strike an effective blow. The warriors were still
willing enough to serve under his command whenever occasion for an
immediate fight should arise, but he could not restrain their natural
tendencies, or convert them from their practice of desultory warfare to
a policy of systematic operations. Hence Jackson had time for his long
struggle with his mutinous men, and escaped the destruction which must
otherwise have threatened him for want of an efficient army.
Seeing how impossible it was to convert the savage Creeks into a
cohesive body of civilized troops, and to use them as an aggressive
army, Red Eagle sought to do the next best thing--namely, to establish
strong posts at certain strategic points, collect his warriors around
them, and moving out from them, as occasion should offer, strike sudden
blows at advancing columns of whites.
In pursuance of this policy he fortified the Holy Ground, from which
Claiborne drove him on the 23d of December, as has been related in a
former chapter. The Holy Ground was only one of Red Eagle's strategic
points, however. He established the post at Emuckfau, against which
Jackson marched with the slender success already described, and a still
more important one a few miles away--at Tohopeka, or the Horse Shoe.
This Horse Shoe is a peninsula formed by a sharp bend in the Tallapoosa
River, enclosing about one hundred acres of ground, high in the middle
and marshy along the river-bank. This peninsula, together with an island
in the river, Red Eagle selected as the central stronghold of the
nation, and he strengthened it by every means in his power. Of that,
however, we shall have occasion to speak more fully hereafter; just now
we are concerned only with Red Eagle's general disposition of his
force.
When Jackson advanced from Fort Strother and Floyd from the
Chattahoochee River, the wisdom of the Indian commander's arrangements
was made manifest. From his central positions he was able to send five
hundred warriors against Jackson; for notwithstanding the assertions
frequently made that Jackson was outnumbered at Emuckfau and
Enotachopco, it is apparently a well-established fact that the Indian
force there was only five hundred strong, while he himself led a larger
force against Floyd's larger and better organized army. He was thus able
to defeat the plans of both generals, getting the best of both, and
compelling both to abandon the objects with which they had set out. He
struck them in detail, after the best modes of grand tactics, and his
plan of operations bears the test of the soundest military criticism.
His first purpose was to strike the two armies separately; his second to
interpose his own forces between them, so that if he should be forced
back toward the point of convergence of the two lines of march his own
divided force would be united before his enemies could form a junction
with each other. This was thoroughly good grand tactics; it was
precisely the course which any trained military commander in like
circumstances would have adopted.
It would perhaps be too much to say that Red Eagle either overcame his
two skilled opponents in battle or outgeneralled them in his strategy;
but it is not too much to say that he read their purpose, and thwarted
them, or that he fairly matched their tactics with his own, and
inflicted upon them in battle at least as severe damage as he himself
suffered. They outnumbered him in both instances; their men were
civilized and organized, while his were savages without organization,
discipline, or training; they had artillery to aid them and he had none,
many of his men having no better arms than bows and war-clubs; yet he
managed so firmly to resist their advance as to turn both of them back
in worse condition than they left him. Shall we hesitate to recognize
this man as a thoroughly capable military commander, who, with very
imperfect means and against tremendous odds, acquitted himself well? It
would be idle to speculate upon what Red Eagle might have accomplished
if he could have had means equal to those of his enemies; but it is only
just to recognize his genius as it was shown in what he did with the
inadequate means at his command. He was an Indian and the commander of
savages; but he was a patriot, who fought for what he believed to be the
interest of his country, and he fought with so much skill and so much
courage as to win the admiration and even the friendship of Jackson,
whose manly spirit recognized a brother in the not less manly spirit of
the Creek chieftain.
Red Eagle's success was necessarily but temporary. It was not in the
nature of things that he should win the war, although he might win a
campaign. He had matched the Creek Nation against the United States, and
the contest was a hopelessly unequal one. For him to overcome one army
and drive it back, broken and discouraged, was only to make certain the
coming of another army, stronger and larger, against him. He knew this
perfectly, and he had known it probably from the beginning. He had never
intended to make the unequal match in which he was engaged; he had meant
to lend the strength of the whole Creek Nation to an English army of
invasion, and as we know had tried to avoid the contest when he learned
that it must be fought by a part of the Creeks only, and without the
expected assistance from without. Having entered the war, however, he
was determined to fight it out, with all his might, to the very end. In
order that his resistance might be as determined as possible, and that
the whites might be made to pay a high price for their ultimate victory,
he was now gathering men from every available quarter, and strengthening
his fortified posts, in which he intended to make his last desperate
stand. He had persuaded the warriors of the Ocfuske, Hillabee, Oakchoie,
Eufaulahatchee, New Yauca, Fishpond, and Hickory Ground towns to join
his forces, and they were now at the Horse Shoe. The end of the war was
drawing near, but a fierce battle remained to be fought before the power
of the Creeks could be broken.