Tallapoosa

  “Set your rangers and Cherokees along the banks where your cavalrymen cannot reach. Have them wait from positions of advantage. Place your horsemen in reserve and as possible pursuit units.”

  “Yes, sir. Eagerly, sir.”

  “And now, gentlemen, I think it imperative that we address the troops. Please have them gather as close as possible at the center of camp. Save the sentries, of course.”

  A half hour later, most of the three thousand sat on one side of the little creek facing their general. Standing before them on the lip of the opposite bank, General Jackson stared without expression for long minutes as he fingered the hilt of the saber at his side.

  “Brave soldiers of Tennessee,” he began as quiet descended over the men. The only other sounds were the soft run of the creek and the occasional whinny of an unhappy horse from downstream. “With the dawn, we march to meet an enemy the size of which and the fierceness of which we have not seen in other skirmishes in this wilderness. Make no error in judgment; these are vicious, blood-letting, murdering savages of top order. They have slaughtered defenseless American citizens, including women and children. They threaten your homeland and your Godly way of life. This is our best chance to destroy the strength of the Creek Nation and I have no doubt you will acquit yourselves handsomely on the field of battle.”

  General Jackson paused. He waited. His hard stare fixed the eyes of the soldiers farthest away, then those at the front, and finally the men seated at the middle of the slope. No one dared speak or move. He continued with a voice harder than his eyes.

  “I expect many feats of courage on the morrow. But you must hear and understand, no acts of cowardice will be tolerated. Any officer or soldier who flies before the enemy without being compelled to do so by superior force will be called to answer before me, God, and a swift trial of your peers. You will be found guilty of cowardice and desertion and” — the final four words were spoken slowly and deliberately — “you shall suffer death.”

  At that, General Jackson stalked to his tent and retired for the evening. Colonel Billy Carroll stepped before the shaken army.

  “Best you see to the cleaning of your weapons and the condition of your gear, and then retire for the night. We arise before dawn and march with first light. Gentlemen, this surely will be an important skirmish, vital to the settlement of this Alabama country. We fight for the future of your fellow citizens of Tennessee. Do yourselves proud; you fight for the defense of your state and your nation. Godspeed, brave soldiers!”

  Virgil Tom Ottis lingered at a small campfire as most of the men broke for their bedrolls and what would be a short and probably fitful night of rest. He took out his vial of ink and the quill stub and peeled a coarse sheet of paper from the roll in his pack. He thought a minute and began to write by the dim fire light.

  Dearest Elsa—I am forced by lack of time and light to keep this letter short. I could not retire for the night without telling you again of my undying love. By the morning we will meet our enemy and will surely defeat them. I then will hurry home and back into your sweet arms. Keep warm, my love, and know that we will soon be together again. Your devoted husband, V. T.

  Virgil Tom returned the ink, quill, and writing board to his pack. He held the single sheet and read it again to himself. When finished, he folded it carefully and placed it with the other letters inside the oilskin under his jacket. He then crawled into his thin bedroll to twist and squirm through a few hours of tortured rest, searching in vain for dreams of Elsa.

  35

  Cholocco Litabixi, the Horseshoe, March 27, 1814, seven p.m .

  Smoke hung heavily over the battlefield. It would linger for days. Death hung heavier. It would haunt for centuries.

  Pale coloration in the western sky was all that remained of day. Darkness had brought an eerie quiet, interrupted occasionally by a soldier’s shout or the clatter of a wagon collecting bodies or the agony of a wounded man. Pine torches flickered all around the field, mixing their glow and odor with the acrid gunpowder smoke settling into the landscape. Creek women and children huddled together in the center of the village of Tohopeka, at the vertex of the bend of the horseshoe. Guarded by the guns of American militiamen, they sat silent, stoical, except for the muffled sobs of a young child. At unequal intervals of a few minutes average, they grimaced at the blast of a single musket shot, which signaled the discovery and execution of another hidden and wounded, or maybe not wounded, Red Stick warrior.

  “Count every one!” General Jackson urged again to the militia details collecting the bodies of Red Sticks. “Don’t miss a one. It’s important.”

  Wagons scoured for the Indian dead and stacked them in small piles in every part of the peninsula to be burned later that night. More dignified details gathered the American fatalities and those of the Cherokees and the friendly Lower Creeks.

  “The total is forty-nine dead of our troops, more than a hundred fifty wounded,” reported Colonel Carroll to General Jackson after he had tallied the counts from all unit commanders. “Some of the wounded won’t survive. Colonel Williams’s regulars and the Cherokees got the worst of it, I’m afraid. The Thirty-Ninth lost seventeen, the Cherokees, including our Creek turncoats, twenty-three. We only count nine dead out of all the militia.”

  General Jackson, at the suggestion of the Cherokee scouts, ordered the American fatalities wrapped tightly, weighted with large stones, and sunk in the middle of the river. “The Red Sticks will return when you are gone and dishonor the graves of their enemies,” the Cherokees told him.

  One soldier wasn’t buried in the river. General Jackson, Colonel Williams, and Colonel Carroll, slightly wounded himself, stood reverently with their hats off watching two privates finish packing the dirt atop a single grave at the base of the hill facing the west side of the barricade. They smoothed the dirt and piled brush atop it to burn, thus hiding any sign of fresh digging.

  “The very best and bravest soldier I’ve ever met,” lamented Williams.

  “Though we had him for too short a time,” asserted Jackson, “he was truly the flower of my army. An intrepid soldier. Would that all Tennesseeans, all Americans honor his example.”

  Beneath the fresh Alabama soil lay Lemuel P. Montgomery, Major, Thirty-Ninth Regiment, United States Army. He had been killed leading the first frontal assault on the barricade. When a two-hour cannonade from the two artillery pieces had made but small dents in the breastworks, General Jackson had ordered the Thirty-Ninth, bayonets fixed and sabers drawn, to lead the charge. Major Montgomery had been the first to scale to the top of the wall and fight to dislodge the Creeks behind the barricade. He caught a musket ball in the head and died almost immediately. Two other young officers of the Thirty-Ninth, Lieutenants Robert Somerville and Michael Moulton, had been mortally wounded but their bodies were disposed of in the river with the other fatalities.

  A small group of regulars, officers and enlistees, stood to the side as Jackson, Williams, and Carroll turned to leave Montgomery’s grave. One of the more youthful officers, an ensign, was soaked with blood.

  “Are you hurt, son?” asked General Jackson. “I’d judge you’ve been wounded more than once.”

  “No, sir. I’m not hurt. But, yes sir, I took an arrow in the thigh and two musket balls in my shoulder. I’ll be fine, General. Kind of you to ask.”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Twenty-one, sir.”

  “Your first action?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re a brave soldier. What’s your name?”

  “Houston, sir. Samuel Houston, from Virginia. Now Tennessee, sir, mountain country.”

  “Yes. Get your wounds tended to, ensign. Be off with you now.”

  General Coffee’s cavalry had backed up the militia and Indian forces on the opposite bank of the river during the battle. The Cherokees in the middle, Lieutenant Jesse Bean’s rangers on t
he island at the western extreme of the bend, and Captain Eli Hammond and his rangers on the east had prevented the Creeks from escaping by way of the river, and had killed scores making the attempt.

  Lieutenant Bean and his men may have seen the most action. After occupying the island, they discovered when the fighting began that the Red Sticks considered it a principal escape route. When the Indians attempted to storm the island to regain it, Bean’s sharpshooters cut them down in a virtual massacre.

  The Cherokees had eventually crossed the river and attacked through the village of Tohopeka. Under the command of Colonel Gideon Morgan, whose Cherokee name was Aganstata, they became impatient after hearing two hours of firing from the vicinity of the barricade. Ignoring General Coffee’s directive to stay put, some Cherokees swam the river and stole canoes, which they used to ferry across enough men for an assault on Tohopeka. That forced the Red Sticks to defend their rear at the same time they desperately fought to repel the frontal attack coming from across the barricade.

  After dark, Coffee led his cavalry companies around the eastern side of the bend. They passed through the Creek village of Niuyaka, ironically named for the failed 1790 Treaty of New York, crossed the river, and rejoined the garrison on the peninsula. Coffee’s horsemen had seen little action, but from his position atop the opposite bluffs, he had been one of the battle’s better positioned observers.

  “My officers assigned to reconnaissance,” he reported to General Jackson, “estimate that at least two hundred, and perhaps three hundred Red Sticks were killed in the river, or on the bank.”

  “How?” Jackson didn’t comprehend so large a number. “Why so many there?”

  “At first they volleyed with our fellows on the other bank and we outgunned them bad. Then when the Cherokees crossed, they seemed to panic and tried to escape, or maybe some were trying to counterattack, and Bean on the island and the rangers on our side of the river had easy shooting. They didn’t have a chance, General.”

  Two hours after dark, funeral pyres began to light the peninsula and add to the stench of an already foul mixture of odors. As the General had ordered, careful counts of the bodies were tallied before they were burned. The number already totaled over five hundred, not counting those lost to the river.

  “General Jackson,” Colonel Carroll reported as the fires blazed, “the body of the main prophet Monahi has been identified. Took a load of grape shot right in the mouth. Two other prophets, possibly.”

  “Menawa?”

  “Haven’t found him yet, sir. At least, no one can identify him.”

  “Damn!”

  At the vertex of the peninsula, a half dozen corpses lay in a heap five yards from the water. Pine straw and dry brush had already been added to the mix to start the flames. The pyre only awaited a torch.

  Under the pile, something twitched. One of the bodies was alive.

  Fifty yards away, three soldiers fussed over another pyre, trying to build up the fire before moving to the next one. They added pine logs into the center and stood back to watch the struggling flame catch into a roar that shot sparks and embers high into the boughs of the tall pines lining the bank of the river.

  At the first pile, a leg stretched free of the heap, eliciting a reflexive, involuntary groan as the man regained consciousness. He didn’t know where he was, but he felt dead. He fought to shake the stupor from his brain. He vaguely remembered a musket ball knocking him down. Did he get back up? Yes, but then he was hit again, and maybe a third time. What am I doing here, he thought, and why am I under all this debris? And what is that awful smell?

  The man tried to move. Something heavy held him down. He saw to his horror that he lay beneath a corpse. He struggled to roll from under and nearly passed out again from the pain. Lying motionless and reopening his eyes, he realized that most of the mound consisted of dead bodies. He had been one of them and still felt the part. Why are we piled up so, he wondered. What is this all over me?

  It was blood, some of it his, some not. It soaked his clothes and caked his skin. He painfully swiped across his face. The slipperiness there was more blood. He tried to ignore it and the nausea it provoked.

  The man’s eyes cleared somewhat and he looked around. A distance away, he couldn’t tell how far, he saw men tending a large fire. Then he realized he lay only yards from the river. Not yet understanding what to do, he lurched when he heard a musket shot. It wasn’t close, but it jarred him to reality. I must get into the water, he reasoned.

  He looked again at the fire. The men walked toward him. One carried a torch; all of them carried muskets. Defying his pain, he rolled as hard as he could to the lip of the bank and eased over the edge, careful not to make a splash. The water was cold but it soothed his wounds, wounds he knew he had but still hadn’t located. He eased through the water along the bank, searching for a safe haven. He found it a few feet away as he backed into a mud bank, a refuge for turtles. He didn’t know if the splash he heard was caused by him or the creatures.

  “Damn turtles!” cursed one of the men as they circled the heap, piling the brush a little tighter. “Have to catch one of the bastards and boil him for breakfast.”

  “Be the best meal we’ve had in weeks,” said another. “Put the torch to it. Let’s finish this wretched job. I’m tired of looking at and handling these damn dead savages.”

  “Glad they’re dead, though,” said a third man. “I like ’em a lot better that way.”

  The fire caught immediately. It needed no coaxing. The men placed logs across the top and checked around the edges to assure that every part of the heap would be burned. They watched it another minute and then walked to the next pile.

  Under the lip of the river bank, the bright glare of the blaze partially lit the face of Chief Menawa, the supreme chief of the Red Stick forces at Cholocco Litabixi. Fortunately for him, the soldiers never looked his way before they moved on.

  In the center of the battlefield, as the body cleanup concluded and treatment of the wounded progressed well, General Jackson and his staff made plans.

  “We’ll camp here overnight,” Jackson decided. “Have the men bivouac where they are. Assign the Cherokees to guard the women and children prisoners and prepare to escort them away tomorrow. Collect all usable arms and secure the artillery pieces. Destroy all else; leave nothing in the field that can be turned to an advantage. Post double sentries at all key points. At first light we canvass the field one more time, set torches to the breastworks and the Indian village, and move out toward Fort Williams.”

  Jackson brightened. “Gentlemen, congratulations. We have won a glorious victory and thereby broken the power of a dangerous enemy. All of America will forever be proud of us.”

  Menawa dared not move for several hours. When a large sapling floating by nudged him awake, he reckoned by the overhead stars that it was the middle of the night. He grabbed a limb, ducked underwater, and resurfaced in the midst of the sapling’s branches. He pushed as cautiously as he could for midstream to catch the current which he knew quickened as the river approached the island, rounded it, and turned to the west to continue downstream.

  Two hours later, Menawa, maneuvering painfully and slowly, had cleared the island undetected, though he had spotted a dozen sentries on the near shore as he floated by. Shortly the sun would rise. He must find a safe hideaway, for the soldiers would be scouring the river. He would surely be spotted in daylight. Too, his wounds needed attention and he must rest.

  A mile ahead, the river widened into an expansive shoal just below the mouth of Emuckfau Creek. He remembered a small cave, hardly more than a vine-covered indentation, just above the water line a few yards into the creek. He would rest there through the day. He thought he could barely make it by dawn.

  36

  Cholocco Litabixi, the Horseshoe, March 28, 1814

  Streams of soldiers and wagons had marched from the field of th
e battle for the Horseshoe since shortly after daybreak. Patrols still scanned the peninsula for bodies and weapons that had been missed in the darkness of night. New fires burned to consume newly discovered corpses, and to destroy the tents and huts of Tohopeka. Billows of fresh smoke covered the southern half of the peninsula. The last of the wagons and soldiers of the cleanup details paraded through the breaches in the log barricade.

  “Final body count, Billy?” asked General Jackson, seated on his horse and looking back on the scene.

  Colonel Billy Carroll studied his notes. “Five hundred fifty-seven, sir. With the estimated two fifty to three hundred not recovered from the river, I’d easily say we got over eight hundred of ’em, probably more than nine hundred.”

  “How many you think escaped?”

  “Surely, less than two hundred. That would bring it to the thousand we thought they had going in. I think it coulda been less than a hundred that got away, possibly.”

  “I want those caught, too. They’ll be back on us if we don’t get them. And they’ll stir up trouble amongst others.”

  The hospital wagons crammed with wounded had been sent out first, with two companies of cavalry to accompany them and to secure the trail. Also the Red Stick women and children prisoners, guarded by half the Cherokees led by Colonel Morgan, were already on the road. The infantry regiments had been filing out for the past hour, and finally the remainder of Coffee’s cavalry formed up ready to serve as the rear guard.

  “All out?” queried Jackson. “Then torch the barricade.”

  Jackson, Carroll, Coffee, and the cavalry rear guard watched the massive log wall burn for a half hour, making certain that it was completely involved so that no remnant of the mighty Red Stick fortress would survive.

  On the road back to Fort Williams, at the first pause to rest the horses, Colonel Carroll visited the hospital wagons to inquire of the wounded.