Tallapoosa

  20

  The Murph settlement, January, 1814

  The week-old Murph baby still had no name.

  “Cousin Josephus back in Virginia,” Cal philosophied, “went six months before they named him.”

  “Hell, Cal,” retorted Saul, “this baby will go nameless her whole life if we can’t come up with something better than Josephus.”

  Adelin thought it wonderful that the baby was a girl. “The women here now outnumber the men,” she gloated. “What do you fellows think of that?”

  No work whatsoever beyond essential chores had been done around the compound since the coming of the baby. Nothing, anyway, except caring for the infant and Soosquana. She was on her feet the day after the birth, and had now returned to full household duties plus the joyous, consuming task of new motherhood. The others would not leave her alone for long. When they weren’t ogling the baby they were volunteering to do something for her.

  Saul had almost lost his fear of handling his daughter. He still lifted her and held her with overbearing care, but Adelin and Soosquana, amused at his caution, congratulated him on his progress.

  “You’re getting better at this, Saul,” encouraged Adelin. “You are going to be a great father.”

  Adelin even coaxed Cal into holding the baby. As Adelin settled her into his lap, Cal sensed that he dare not move an eyelash, lest he risk grave harm. After less than a minute with the baby in his lap, sweat lined his forehead.

  “Some brave backwoodsman you are!” chastised Adelin as she retrieved the baby and laid her back in the sturdy cradle that Soosquana had built. “You’ll face down angry hostiles or march a hundred miles over virgin lands without even thinking about it, but you are a big coward when it comes to women and babies.”

  “Ha! I married you, didn’t I?”

  “It wasn’t the easiest thing you’ve ever done, if you recall. You were almost as scared then as you are of this baby.”

  “Yeah, I reckon that was worse than wrestling a mad black bear.”

  “You’ve never wrestled a bear,” Adelin scoffed. She leaned over and looked into her husband’s eyes. “What do you think, Cal? Would you like one of these?”

  “What!? Whaddya mean? No! Are you daft? Why do you ask? What? You got something to tell?”

  Adelin couldn’t control her laughter. Soosquana, who had been listening across the room, laughed with her. Adelin could only shake her head as she started for the door. “Some day,” she managed, with a shakened Cal following her into the yard. “Maybe some day soon.”

  Debate over the child’s name continued. Saul thought she should have a Muskogi name and pressured Soosquana to select one. She disagreed, with perhaps more head than heart. Her main argument sounded unusually wise and thoughtful.

  “This child will surely not grow up in Muskogi culture, if the Muskogi Nation still exists for her. She will be part of the white man’s world. So she needs a name from the white man’s culture.”

  “But she will always be Muskogi, Soos. We won’t ever let her forget that.”

  “I know. And she will always be proud, as I am proud. But you and yours will be her people. You are my people now also, even as I will forever remain Muskogi. I think she must have an American name.”

  Neither parent would yield, so the friendly stalemate continued for several more days. Life at the compound gradually returned to near normal. The animals were let out for daily exercise. Mounds of firewood accumulated under assault from a busy ax. Several good catches of large catfish were taken from below the shoals.

  Traffic along the river had subsided to near nothing. The few travelers that did come along were Red Stick warriors heading north, but they showed no hostility. No women at all, no children, no families. It seemed that the whole of the Muskogi Nation had gone into hibernation for the winter.

  Finally, one evening at supper, almost two weeks after the baby had been born, Soosquana sought to break the name standoff.

  “Did you know that Adelin has another name?” she asked Saul and Cal.

  Saul looked at her. “What?”

  “Yeah,” said Cal. “You mean her middle name?”

  “Adelin’s other name is Anna,” Soosquana continued. She addressed Saul. “You want me to give the baby a Muskogi name? Adelin is my Muskogi sister, is she not? So I pick Anna as our baby’s Muskogi name.”

  “Can’t argue with reasoning like that, big brother,” offered Cal.

  “Why, Soos, how nice,” said Adelin, thrilled. “I’m flattered, but I’m sure you can . . . .”

  “Anna it is,” persisted Soosquana. “Anna Murph. You like it, Saul?” She smiled happily at him.

  Saul only stared, lost in thought. “Why not?” he finally relented. “Yeah. Anna Murph. I like it, I have to admit. I like it a lot. Does everybody agree?”

  All agreed. The remainder of the meal became a celebration of the life and future conquests of baby Anna Murph . . . American . . . Muskogi . . . of the Tallapoosa River country of the Mississippi Territory.

  21

  Near Enitachopco Creek, January 24, 1814

  The ragtag infantry company arrayed itself across the top of the slope leading down to the creek, a quarter mile below. “Captain, you must hold this line!” Colonel Billy Carroll stressed to the officer in charge. “It’ll take at least a half hour to get the column across. Keep a sharp eye and don’t flinch if hostiles show.”

  Carroll knew that the supply wagons, cannon carriages, and wounded would require substantial time and work to ford the stream. The infantry unit, as a rear guard, must protect the operation. What remained of one cavalry company had been sent ahead to scout the far slope and secure positions atop it. Besides the advance group, the rest of the cavalry, most on foot, scattered through the column to assist with the wounded and in moving along the cannons and supply wagons.

  “Step lively there! Get that wagon across the creek!” yelled General Jackson, not bothering to disguise his impatience and annoyance. He sat on his horse on the opposite bank of Enitachopco Creek, the main tributary of Hillabi Creek, and watched his undermanned, inexperienced, and dispirited army stagger through the narrow ford and up the slope.

  The improvised role of cavalry personnel was made necessary by the depletion of horses. Twenty-three seriously wounded soldiers rode on litters fashioned partially from the hides of horses killed in the fighting of two days before, and dragged by other horses commandeered from cavalrymen.

  Jackson’s plan to attack the Red Sticks at their new stronghold on the upper Tallapoosa had gone as he had hoped until he reached Emuckfau Creek. He had marched his army down the Coosa, turned east through Hillabi country and crossed at this same ford of the Enitachopco on the morning of the twenty-first. Though it was known that at least one Hillabi village lay nearby, the army had encountered no sign of the enemy. Jackson was sure the Creeks knew he maneuvered in the vicinity, but hoped they would not guess his intention.

  Reaching the Emuckfau late in the day, Jackson elected to camp for the night and make his final push down the creek to the Tallapoosa on the morning of the twenty-second, hopefully to break the back of the Red Sticks’ power.

  Jackson reckoned that he could be no more than ten miles from the river. He set out following the course of the creek at daybreak, hoping to finish a victorious campaign by midafternoon.

  Less than a mile along, musket balls and arrows suddenly rained from the slopes above both sides of the stream. Soldiers and horses fell before a punishing onslaught. Men dived for cover in the creek bed and behind trees and logs, and began a steady barrage of musket fire in return. After a short time, the Americans’ superior firepower and marksmanship had neutralized the battle, but they remained pinned down for most of the day. Finally, near dusk, with the Red Stick attack considerably lessened, General Jackson and General Coffee rallied their forces from the creek bed and charged to t
he crests of both slopes. The Red Sticks fled, but they had accomplished their mission. Jackson’s foray had surely been thwarted and his entire campaign seriously weakened. However, many lives had been lost on both sides of the bloody battle.

  General Jackson used the cover of darkness to collect his wounded and his able-bodied forces and to reorganize them. Sapling frames covered with the hides of dead horses made up litters hitched behind cavalrymen’s mounts to transport the seriously injured. Fearing another attack if they stayed until morning, the general decided to retreat before dawn. He camped at midday on a defensible ridge halfway between Emuckfau and Enitachopco Creeks to treat wounds and rest the troops and horses. There he remained until setting out again for Fort Strother on the morning of the twenty fourth.

  General Jackson and his chief scout, a Tennessee backwoods hunter named David Crockett, were positive the Red Sticks had stalked them all the way from the Emuckfau. They feared an attack could come at any time. Looking ahead, they anticipated that the Enitachopco ford offered as likely a site for an ambush as any point on their route. Even beyond there, they would not feel safe until they reached the Coosa.

  “Lieutenant Armstrong!” barked Jackson as he monitored the crossing of the Enitachopco from astride his mount. His mood was ill and angry. “What is the trouble with that limber? I suggest that you get it moving! Understand, Lieutenant?”

  Cannoneers struggled with the massive six-pounder in the mud and sand of the creek bottom, trying to wrestle it across. As if the Creeks were in close communication with the fears of the Americans, at that moment shots sounded from the eastern ridge.

  Red Sticks charged in an all-out frontal attack on the rear guard militiamen. The soldiers, from kneeling and prone stances, fired a withering volley, dropping a score or more of the attackers. They frantically sought to reload, but realizing their barrage had not stopped the Indians’ charge, they backed down the hill, trying to maintain a skirmish line. Then, before the Indians’ muskets, arrows, and threatening red war clubs, most turned and ran. Three hundred painted warriors, screaming threats and curses at a shrill staccato, poured over the lip of the ridge and down the slope in pursuit.

  Indians also attacked from upstream and downstream of the creek, leaving the troops at the bottom of the hill and on the other side of the creek powerless to aid the rear guard. Jackson’s militia suddenly found themselves surrounded on three sides by a fierce, angry foe.

  “Look sharp, men!” yelled Colonel Carroll. “Hold your positions! Load and fire on rhythm! Make certain of your target!” Most of his instructions were lost beneath the clatter of gunfire, boisterous threats of onrushing Red Sticks, and the curses and panicked screams of the militiamen spilling down the hill.

  A soldier fell wounded at Colonel Carroll’s feet, an arrow in his side. Carroll and another soldier fired simultaneously at a Red Stick that had broken ahead of his band and ran full speed at them, swinging his war club. The man died before he landed, his bowels spilling across the ground as he skidded on the muddy creek bank. Colonel Carroll turned his attention up the slope, seeking to reorganize the retreating rear guard.

  The other soldier rapidly reloaded. As he tamped down the musket ball with his ramrod, a loud, shrill yell startled him. He glanced up to sense, more than see, an Indian launch himself straight at him in a dive from five yards away. Instinctively, he pivoted and cocked the musket and pulled the trigger at the same time. Smoke, flame, the flying body, and the warrior’s war club engulfed him all at once. The soldier tumbled backward into the water, the enemy body welded to his. He struggled to throw the dead man from him. The ramrod protruded equally from the center of the man’s chest and from his back. The soldier scrambled to find his musket and to extract himself from the creek, ignoring the deep, nasty gash that gushed blood from the left side of his head.

  Lieutenant Armstrong, the cannoneer commander, still struggled with the six-pounder crew to free the piece from the creek. The limber, the two-wheeled cart by which a two-horse team pulled the cannon carriage, was hopelessly mired in the mud. Colonel Carroll saw their plight and, realizing the importance of the cannon, rallied a company of his infantry to a point up the slope between the creek and the advancing Red Sticks. He directed a systematic pattern of fire, reload, fire, reload, desperately seeking to give the cannoneers a chance to get their weapon into action.

  The soldiers unhitched the carriage from the limber and ran a rope from its tongue to the saddle of a cavalryman’s horse. Armstrong and a half dozen of his crewmen pushed and pulled and struggled until the cleated carriage wheels rolled from the water and up the western slope to a level outcrop thirty yards above the creek. Other cannoneers had seized the position and with their muskets fired over the heads of Carroll’s line of infantry as they grudgingly gave ground back across the creek.

  Privates Constantine Perkins and Craven Jackson leveled the cannon at the ford where most of the Red Sticks would storm across, and made ready to load. To their horror, they discovered that the tools for loading and priming the cannon had been left on the marooned limber and that there was no chance to retrieve them.

  “Damn, what do we do?” anguished Private Jackson.

  Perkins had an idea. “Pass me a cartridge. We’ll make it work.” He unfixed his bayonet and returned it to its scabbard. He stuffed a cartridge of powder wrapped in flannel into the cannon barrel, followed it with a cluster of grapeshot, and turning over his musket, rammed the charge to the back of the breech with the muzzle end of the weapon.

  Craven Jackson followed his cue. With his musket ramrod, he punctured the flannel through the touch hole of the cannon. Then, tearing open a paper powder cartridge, he spilled grains into the touch hole. Someone handed forward a smoldering match cord to ignite the powder.

  The roar of the six-pounder and its shower of grapeshot caught a crush of sprinting Red Sticks at midstream. Dead and wounded bodies littered the creek, its water turning red. The cannoneers cheered, already ramming another grapeshot cartridge down the mouth of the big gun.

  “Defend the cannon, boys!” roared Carroll. He formed his infantrymen in lines under and abreast of the cannon position and continued the musket barrage at the still coming Red Sticks.

  The cannon fired again. Another cluster of bodies splashed into the creek or fell across those that had perished moments before. Then again.

  “Reload!” cried Lieutenant Armstrong after each blast. “Keep firing! Keep that ammunition coming!” He had himself joined the line of cannoneers that passed powder cartridges and grapeshot to the gun crew.

  The Indians still attacked. The cannon crew with their makeshift loading regimen and protective infantrymen held their ground.

  “Damnit!” declared the scout Crockett, loading and firing his musket with skilled precision. “There’s Indians behind every tree. They just keep coming!”

  The Americans gained control of the western bank, thanks to the cannoneers. The Indians could advance no farther than the creek and finally withdrew to positions halfway up the eastern slope.

  General Jackson took advantage of the lull. “Colonel Carroll, advance to the opposite creek bank and establish a defense line,” he ordered. “Then assign details to retrieve the wounded. Lieutenant Armstrong, send a detachment down to the creek and rescue that limber.”

  The column eventually assembled and reorganized at the crest of the ridge above the west bank of the Enitachopco. More than twenty soldiers had been killed at Emuckfau and Enitachopco combined and close to a hundred wounded. The limp back to Fort Strother over more than fifty torturous miles lay ahead.

  Though General Jackson expected to be harassed all the way back to Fort Strother, the remainder of the retreat passed without further incident. The general swore vengeance while he tended his wounds and awaited the badly needed reinforcements still being promised.

  Jackson’s venture with an undermanned force had failed. He had tragi
cally proven that a garrison of only nine hundred volunteer soldiers and two hundred Cherokee allies were sadly inadequate to defeat an Indian nation fighting for their homeland. He needed more militia, lots more, especially trained infantry units. He would need help to free the Alabama country and the Mississippi Territory from the savage Red Sticks and make the land safe for American farmers and hunters. General Jackson anxiously awaited militia reinforcements and the regiment of regulars promised him by Governor Blount.

  22

  The Murph settlement, late January, 1814

  The weather turned cold, very cold. The Murphs had discovered that most of an Alabama winter was relatively mild, but several periods of a few days to two weeks each could be quite bitter. Late January and early February was the usual time for the worst. Following the normal pattern, the current cold front had come on suddenly and dropped daytime temperatures to near freezing and to hard freezes overnight.

  The cold weather provided the right opportunity to go after prize bucks for hides and meat. The Murphs needed them for barter at the trading post next summer. Traders would take every hide, as there was a rich market for fine deerskin back east. There was something special, it seemed, about the unspoiled skins from the virgin Alabama wilderness. The traders would also take a certain amount of smoked venison, so the excess meat above the Murphs’ needs would not go to waste.

  “Cal and I will go again,” Adelin volunteered before Cal had a chance to respond to Saul’s suggestion.

  “I believe I have been commandeered,” Cal conceded.

  “Don’t go too far,” Saul cautioned. “Things seem to have settled down a little now — let’s hope for good — but we need to be careful. There are still too many mad Red Sticks about and too many blood-crazed soldiers.”

  Cal and Adelin hitched George to the empty cart and led him up the road. Their new rabbit-fur parkas warmed them against the icy morning. Less than three miles out they turned down into a hollow where Cal was certain a small herd of superior specimens roamed.