• • •
Here John Ross begins to play a larger role in our story, for the Cherokee Regiment joined in the campaign to torch villages. In November 1813 the regiment joined a force of Tennesseans approaching a Creek town called Hillabee. The attackers apparently did not know, and did not pause to find out, that the Creeks of Hillabee had already resolved to give up the war, and had sent a peace envoy to General Jackson at Fort Strother. The Creeks were completely surprised by white and Cherokee attackers who slaughtered many villagers without losing a man. This massacre may have persuaded other Creeks that they would never be permitted to surrender. Many, their villages burned and their food destroyed, were concentrating at a fortified camp in a sharp curve of the Tallapoosa River, the curve called Horseshoe Bend. This was the encampment that Jackson’s army approached on the morning of March 27, 1814.
Jackson gave orders to position his troops on the battlefield. The Cherokees would not charge directly at the Creek encampment; the general had a more suitable purpose in mind for them. Instead, some of Jackson’s white troops faced the camp, taking possession of a small hill overlooking it. The hill was no more than thirty to forty feet higher than the camp, but high enough for the soldiers to behold the obstacle that awaited them. The river bend “resembles, in its curvature, that of a horseshoe, and is thence called by that name among the whites,” Jackson wrote afterward. The Creeks had built their camp inside the peninsula:
Nature furnishes few situations as eligible for defence; and barbarians have never rendered one more secure by art. Across the neck of land which leads into it from the north, they had erected a breastwork of the greatest compactness and strength, from 5 to 8 feet high, and prepared with double rows of portholes very artfully arranged.
From these portholes, Jackson declared, the Creek defenders could fire outward “in perfect security,” defending an area inside the wall that Jackson estimated at eighty to a hundred acres. The wall was constructed of two rows of heavy logs, placed about four feet apart. Between the logs the Creeks had packed clay. Jackson hoped to blast a hole in this barrier with two cannons his troops had dragged through the forest all the way from Fort Strother. Their crews rolled them up to the little hill, just 125 yards from the nearest portion of the wall. The guns jerked backward on their wheels, white smoke rolled out of the muzzles, and the sound of their fire echoed across the river valley, but the first shots either buried themselves in the wall or bounced off.
And yet Jackson’s letter about the impressively defensible territory, and “barbarians” who “never rendered” a position “more secure by art,” was misleading. He wrote those words after the battle, in a letter that newspapers reprinted and that historians have quoted ever since. In truth Horseshoe Bend was an appalling choice of locations to defend. The whole history of warfare argued against it. To walk the Horseshoe Bend battlefield today is to be horrified by the small distance between the battle lines: Jackson’s artillerymen could look down on the defensive wall from higher ground. More important, the outnumbered Creeks drew themselves into a confined location where they could be targeted and killed whenever Jackson could gather a large enough force. They might instead have survived for years as guerrilla fighters (as Creeks who did not concentrate in the Horseshoe went on to do, working out of sanctuaries in Spanish Florida). The hit-and-run attack was a customary Indian style of warfare, yet these determined traditionalists broke with tradition. Possibly hoping to protect women and children from the white horsemen, they performed a fatal imitation of the white man’s art of war. If confronted by a superior force, they would be trapped for a massacre as surely as the white settlers at Fort Mims.
Not only that. The Red Sticks inside the Horseshoe were a nearly spent force, desperate members of a society near collapse. Men, women, and children had gathered there seeking shelter from marauding horsemen. It was less a citadel than a refugee camp for survivors of Andrew Jackson’s ruthlessly effective warfare—those who had not yet been set on fire atop a potato cellar, for instance. The Indians’ condition would still be evident generations after the battle, when archaeologists digging up the Creek village inside the fortress found artifacts that were scarce and poor, not much beyond “gun parts and ammunition” as well as “ceramics and glass.” Their trade with the outside world had been disrupted, and their meager possessions reflected “the destitute condition of a people whose homes had been recently burned.” These were the people who peered through the portholes of their wall and saw Jackson’s two cannons open fire.
Where were Ross and the Cherokees as the cannonade began? They were sealing the trap. Jackson sent John Coffee’s horsemen, along with the Cherokee Regiment and other friendly Indians, to move behind the Horseshoe, on the far side of the river. If the Creeks should attempt to retreat across the river, they would be shot as they paddled their canoes across. Here the Cherokees and white horsemen waited as the bombardment began, but after two hours, some could wait no longer. Three Cherokees, led by a man known as the Whale, swam across the Tallapoosa and into the Creek camp. The Whale was wounded and unable to return; the other two Cherokees stole Creek canoes tied up by the waterside and paddled them across to their comrades—who swiftly filled the canoes and paddled them back, forming a party of marauders behind the enemy lines. There is no evidence that Ross crossed the river, although the party is known to have included Major Ridge, the upscale planter who was in time to become Ross’s vital ally and mentor. The Cherokees fought courageously and caused confusion in the Creek camp.
Jackson, perceiving from the high ground that his Cherokees were inside the Horseshoe, still refrained from ordering his white troops against the obstacle of the wall, but “when I found those engaged in the interior of the bend, were about to be overpowered, I ordered the charge.” The regulars of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, including the young ensign Sam Houston, raced across the little patch of open ground between them and the wall. They fired inward through the Indian portholes—apparently just as badly designed as the portholes at Fort Mims—and scaled the wall to begin brutal hand-to-hand combat. Struck by a barbed arrow in the thigh, Houston compelled a comrade to yank it out and continued fighting. Many Creeks were killed where they stood. Others retreated toward their second line of defense, a tangle of felled trees inside the Horseshoe. Still others fled toward the river, taking shelter beneath the bluffs below the white men. When Jackson sent a man down a bluff to demand their surrender, the Creeks fired on the emissary. Jackson’s men set fire to the underbrush, and then shot Red Stick fighters as they fled the flames. Creeks who tried to swim away across the Tallapoosa became target practice for the Cherokees and Coffee’s horsemen on the far shore.
Decades later, John Ross would write a letter to Andrew Jackson, reminding him of the day they served together in arms against the “unfortunate and deluded red foe,” a “portentous day” that was “shrouded by a cloud of darkness, besprinkled with the awful streaks of blood and death. It is in the hour of such times that the heart of man can be truly tested and correctly judged.” Perhaps Ross was right that it was a moment to judge the hearts of men. But Andrew Jackson had no time for such poetic thoughts. Shortly after the engagement he described the slaughter of the Indians in a letter to his wife, Rachel:
It was dark before we finished killing them—I ordered the dead bodies of the Indians to be counted, the next morning, and exclusive of those buried in their watry grave, who were killed in the [river] and who after being wounded plunged into it, there were counted, five hundred and fifty seven.
To ensure precision and avoid double counting, white soldiers cut off the noses of dead Indians as they went. It was harder to count those Indians dead in the river, but some of John Coffee’s men affixed their signatures to a statement guessing that beyond the 557 bodies on land, an additional 300 Creeks were “buried in their watry grave.” Given the exaggeration that has always attended body counts of enemies in wartime, this guess was almost certainly too high. Some Creeks were known to
have escaped, including Menawa, a wounded Creek leader, but a great many Creek males were slaughtered at Horseshoe Bend, leaving 350 women and children to be taken prisoner with only 3 men. An American soldier said the Tallapoosa had become a “River of blood,” writing that it was “very perceptably bloody” even at “10 O’clock at night.” It seems unlikely that a river of the Tallapoosa’s volume could truly have been so affected, but the letter did reflect the soldier’s state of mind.
It fell to John Ross, as one of the few literate Cherokees, to compile a report on the Cherokee Regiment’s wounded and dead. He listed the injuries company by company, such as the men of “Capt Speirs Company.”
Capt. Jno. Speirs
Severely
Thos. Proctor
Killed
The Mouse
Killed
The Broom
Killed
The Squirrel
Do.
The Woman Killer
Killed
Jno. Helterbrand
Killed
Tolonah
Killed
Wachakeskee
Do.
Club Foot
Sleightly
Whiteman Killer
Mortally
Black Prince
Severely
The Seed
sleightly.
“Do.” was a common abbreviation for “ditto,” which Ross used when the word “killed” became tiresome to repeat. He noted a total of eighteen Cherokees killed and thirty-six wounded. About one of every twelve Cherokees was injured or dead, a significant toll for a single day’s fight, which underlined their vital role. The toll among the much larger white force—26 killed, and up to 107 wounded, depending on the count—was comparatively light, although it is still jarring to read the final two sentences of a letter that John Coffee wrote after the battle to his wife:
Having now nearly compleated our business here, I shall soon turn me towards home when I hope to enjoy the remainder of my life with you in quiet—my love to our little daughter—and all friends—
Lemul Montgomery was killed in battle at the charge against the breast works by a ball through his head—
The blunt way the soldiers discussed death in letters to their families suggests that violence, particularly involving Indians, was an ordinary feature of frontier life—and also that in their campaign of vengeance men had become desensitized. Years afterward, historians recorded the memories of elderly veterans, like the one who testified that “many of the Tennessee soldiers cut long strips of skin from the bodies of the dead Indians and from these made bridle reins.” Another veteran said that “when the Horse Shoe village was set on fire,” a very old Indian continued pounding corn on a mortar as if oblivious to the battle around him, until a white soldier “shot him dead, assigning as his reason for so doing that he might be able to report when he went home that he had killed an Indian.” Another soldier struck a boy “five or six years of age” with the butt of his rifle, later explaining that he killed the child because he “would have become an Indian some day.”
What did Jackson think of such atrocities? The soldiers’ commanding general would become known in later years as an “Indian hater,” though the evidence suggests Jackson’s views were more complex. It was true that Jackson’s army killed almost everyone they could in the Horseshoe. It was also true that he depended on natives as part of his army, and that some, like Major Ridge, gave him the greatest respect. When the fighting was over, Jackson remembered his promise to give Indians the same pay and benefits as white soldiers. Three years after the war, learning that widows of Cherokee soldiers were not receiving death benefits, he appealed on their behalf to the War Department: “I did believe they were to be considered in every respect on the same footing with the militia … I made this promise believing it was Just,” he said, insisting that the families of the Cherokee dead must now be “placed in the same situation of the wives & children of our soldiers who have fell in Battle.” The contradictions are breathtaking. He wrote this remarkable letter urging equal benefits for a racial minority while visiting the Cherokee Nation in 1817, during an attempt to negotiate a treaty obtaining substantial Cherokee land for nothing. Even that treaty contained contradictions; profoundly unfair as it was, it included a provision offering individual farms along with U.S. citizenship to some Cherokees who wished to claim it. Three hundred eleven heads of families took the offer. Though he was deeply prejudiced, it is more relevant to say that Jackson was violently opposed to anyone who stood in his way. When people posed no threat to his interests, he allowed himself to act on impulses of fairness that he otherwise suppressed.
It was the Red Sticks’ misfortune to stand in Jackson’s way, and Jackson showed no regret for the devastation he had inflicted. Days after Horseshoe Bend, one of his letters made its way to the public, becoming in effect a press release. It was published in the National Intelligencer, an influential Washington newspaper. As printed, Jackson’s account of the battle only briefly mentioned the Cherokees, noting their casualties but not the Cherokee attack that triggered the final assault. The letter did include Jackson’s testimony that the Creeks fought bravely, but were “cut to pieces” until the battlefield was “strewed with the slain,” including a Creek spiritual leader who had been “shot in the mouth by a grapeshot, as if heaven designed to chastise his impostures by an appropriate punishment.”
Jackson would soon demonstrate that he had a punishment in mind that was far more important to him than blood.
Within a few weeks after the battle Jackson had sealed his conquest by marching to the Creek heartland. He occupied the ruins of a fort there, which was renamed Fort Jackson in his honor, and brusquely demanded the unconditional surrender of Creek chiefs who came professing peace. He also demanded that they bring him William Weatherford, the rebels’ war leader, as a prisoner. Weatherford saved them the trouble by boldly marching into Jackson’s camp alone, gaining an audience with the general, and frankly admitting that he was surrendering only because he had no troops left. Jackson was so impressed that he let Weatherford go free.
Weatherford’s surrender became part of the mythology of the Creek War, a moment of closure in the later style of Lee at Appomattox. The reality was different. The comparison would be better if, after General Lee surrendered in 1865, other Confederate soldiers retreated into the hills and fought on for many years. That was roughly what happened with the Red Stick rebels in 1814. They were devastated at the Horseshoe but not eliminated. Weatherford was virtually the only rebel leader who surrendered. Others fled southward through the woods, crossing the border to Spanish Florida, where they were soon receiving arms and supplies from British ships offshore. These rebels would emerge to conduct raids on white settlers for many years.
The refusal of most Red Sticks to give up caused some awkwardness when Jackson organized peace talks in July, at Fort Jackson, under the shade of his marquee. The Creeks were dignified and had no reason to be hostile. Nearly all were Jackson’s allies, for the enemies had not come. This proved no obstacle for Jackson. He demanded land from all the Creeks, enemies and allies alike. The cession he dictated was roughly in the shape of the letter “L.” The horizontal leg ran along the whole length of the border with Florida, and cut off the Creeks from any possible contact with Spanish territory. The vertical leg rose through the center of what is now Alabama, and cut off the Creeks from tribes and white settlers farther west. Aside from strategic considerations, the region to be surrendered consisted of twenty-three million acres of saleable real estate.
One account records the Creek leader Big Warrior rising to remind Jackson that he had gone into battle agains
t the Red Sticks. “I made this war, which has proved so fatal to my country, that the treaty entered into a long time ago with father Washington might not be broken. To his friendly arm I hold fast.” But Washington’s friendly arm was long gone, and Jackson had instructions from Washington, DC. The chiefs could accept his terms or flee to Florida. When, on August 6, Big Warrior appealed for a settlement to be delayed until the Red Sticks were actually defeated, Jackson wrote the Creek leaders a letter. He said his land grab was necessary to separate loyal Creeks from Red Sticks.
Brothers—You say, that when they are all conquered, we will settle—that the war is not over. I answer—we know the war is not over—and that is one reason why we will run a line between our friends and our enemies… . The safety of the United States and your nation requires, that enemies must be separated from Friends… . Therefore we will run the line—our friends will sign the treaty.
Jackson was making peace not with enemies but with friends, and was warning Big Warrior that if he failed to sign, he would cease to be a friend. The chiefs yielded, marking Jackson’s first great step in the removal of the Indians from the Southeast. The Creeks once had been the most powerful and most centrally located of the region’s native nations. Now they were isolated, and their power was destroyed.
After the sad Creek chiefs approved the Treaty of Fort Jackson on August 9, 1814, their war was largely over. Jackson’s would continue. Rewarded for his victory with a permanent major generalship in the U.S. Army, he rebuilt his force again over the summer, accepting more recruits, putting down more mutinies, and having more soldiers shot. Running desperately short of funds to supply his troops, he wrote for help to friends in Nashville, who appealed to a bank for $50,000. He briefly invaded Spanish Florida, chasing British troops, and then arrived at New Orleans in time for the main British invasion that winter. But John Ross would not be among the defenders at the Battle of New Orleans at the start of 1815, for by then he and the Cherokee Regiment had gone home. There was a divide in Jackson’s forces, between the men who became his absolute loyalists and remained with him to the end, and those whose loyalty was conditional—who followed him into battle when they felt it was right, but also insisted upon their right to leave. John Ross was among the conditional men. He left a few weeks after the carnage of Horseshoe Bend. He was home well before the signing of the Treaty of Fort Jackson, though as a reader of newspapers and gatherer of intelligence, he followed the negotiations and grasped their importance. The next time Ross came to the attention of history it would not be in the service of General Jackson, but in defiance of him—and in defense of Cherokee lands.
Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab Page 5