Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama Part 8

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CANOE FIGHT.

With the affairs already described, Jackson's campaign came to a halt by reason of his want of supplies, and on account of mutinous conduct upon the part of his men. For many weeks the Tennessee army did nothing, but remained at Fort Strother, while the war went on in other parts of the field. For the present, therefore, we leave Jackson, to follow the course of affairs elsewhere.

The autumn having brought with it the necessity of gathering what remained of the crops in that part of the country which lies on the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, the settlers there did what they could to clear the country of prowling bands of Indians. They sent out bodies of armed men in different directions, and under protection of such forces as they could muster, began gathering the ripened corn.

The danger of famine, if the corn should be allowed to perish in the fields, seems also to have aroused General Flournoy from his dream of strict adherence to law and treaty in his treatment of the Creeks. His predecessor, General Floyd, had refused, it will be remembered, to permit General Claiborne to invade the Creek Nation early in the war, when that officer confidently believed that he could speedily conquer a peace by pursuing that course. Flournoy now receded from the position then taken, so far at least as to order Claiborne to advance with his army and protect the citizens while they should gather their crops. He still ordered no resolute invasion of the Creek territory, for the purpose of transferring the seat of war to the soil of the enemy, and putting an end to the strife; but he ordered Claiborne to drive the Indians from the frontier, and even to follow them so far as the towns which lay near the border, instructing him to "kill, burn, and destroy all their negroes, horses, cattle, and other property, that cannot conveniently be brought to the depots."

General Flournoy, like General Floyd, appears to have been somewhat too highly civilized for the business in which he was engaged. Knowing, as he did, that Claiborne was fighting savages who had violated every usage and principle of civilized warfare, who were prowling about in the white settlements murdering every white man, woman, and child whom they could find, and who had committed the most horrible wholesale butchery at Fort Mims; knowing all this, and knowing too that an army from Tennessee was already invading the Creek country from the north, General Flournoy appears to have given Claiborne this half-hearted and closely-limited permission to fight the Creeks upon their own terms and their own soil with great reluctance and with apologetic misgivings. He set forth his conviction that even the little which he was now permitting Claiborne to do toward making the war real on the white side was not in accordance with the usages of civilized nations at war; but excused himself for his departure from those usages by citing the conduct of the enemy in justification of it. A stronger man than General Flournoy would have seen that the Creeks had turned complete savages, that they had begun a savage warfare for the extermination of the whites, and that such a war could be brought to an end only by the destruction of the white people whom he was set to protect, or by the prompt, resolute, and complete subjugation of the Creeks. Seeing this, such an officer would have seen that the Creeks could be conquered only by the invasion of their territory with fire and sword, and with no respect whatever for those rights which were theirs in peace, but which had been forfeited in the war. It seems incredible that General Flournoy, in such circ.u.mstances and with such an enemy to contend with, should have muddled his head and embarra.s.sed his army with nice questions of the rights, duties, and usages of civilized warfare. This was so clearly not a civilized, but an especially savage war, that his hesitation, and the misgivings upon which that hesitation was founded, are wholly inexplicable.

Claiborne was quick to use the small liberty given him to fight the Creeks, while the settlers, from their positions in the stockade forts, were already making frequent expeditions against vulnerable points.

Early in October, a body of twenty-five men, under Colonel William McGrew, went in pursuit of an Indian force, and attacked them resolutely on a little stream called Barshi Creek. The Indians were in considerable force, and despite the courage and determination of the whites the Creeks got the best of the affair, killing Colonel McGrew and three of his men, and putting the rest of the force to flight.

Much better success attended another expedition, which was undertaken about this time, and which resulted in one of the most remarkable incidents of the war, a sort of naval battle on a very small scale, but one that was contested as heroically as the battle of the Nile itself.

This was Captain Sam Dale's celebrated canoe fight, of which a writer has said:

"There has seldom occurred in border warfare a more romantic incident.... History has almost overlooked it, as too minute in its details for her stately philosophy. Yet for singularity of event, novelty of position, boldness of design, and effective personal fort.i.tude and prowess, it is unsurpa.s.sed, if equalled, by any thing in backwoods chronicles, however replete these may be with the adventures of pioneers, the sufferings of settlers, and the achievements of that cla.s.s who seem almost to have combined the life and manners of the freebooter with the better virtues of social man."

When Colonel McGrew's men returned after their unsuccessful conflict with the Creeks, the news they brought greatly incensed the people of Fort Madison, whose friends had fallen in that unlucky action. Believing that the main body of the Creeks was now south of the Alabama River, and fearing that they would destroy the buildings and the crops there, Captain Sam Dale, who had now nearly recovered from his severe wound received at the battle of Burnt Corn, organized an expedition for the purpose of clearing the lower country, if possible, of the hostile bands. The force which volunteered for this service consisted of seventy-two men. Thirty of them const.i.tuted Captain Richard Jones's company of Mississippi yauger men. The remainder were men of the neighborhood, who volunteered for the expedition.

Among these volunteers were three whose partic.i.p.ation in the canoe fight makes it necessary to introduce them particularly to the reader.

One of them was a negro, whose name, Caesar, together with his good and gallant conduct on this occasion, are all that history has preserved with respect to him. Another was young Jeremiah Austill, the youth who carried despatches, as already related, between Colonel Carson and General Claiborne, when that service was most dangerous. The third was James Smith. We may best tell what is known of young Smith in the words of Mr. A. B. Meek, whose volume of sketches, from which we shall quote here, is unfortunately out of print. Mr. Meek writes thus:

"In Dale's command was a private soldier who already had a high reputation as an expert, daring and powerful Indian fighter. Born in Georgia in 1787, this scion of the universal Smith family was now a very stout, finely-proportioned man, five feet eight inches high, weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. Residing near Fort Madison, he took refuge there at the outbreak of the war. His fearless and adventurous character may be indicated by an incident. One day he determined to visit his farm, about eight miles distant, to see what injury the Indians had done. Proceeding cautiously, he came to a house in which he heard a noise, and, stealing up to the door, he found two Indians engaged in bundling up tools and other articles to carry them off. Levelling his gun at them he made them come out of the house and march before him toward the fort. In a thicket of woods the Indians suddenly separated, one on each hand, and ran. Smith fired at one of them and killed him, and, dropping his rifle, pursued the other, and, catching him, knocked him down with a light-wood[3] knot and beat out his brains.... This, and similar deeds of daring and prowess, gave to James Smith a high position among his frontier friends and neighbors."

[Footnote 3: "Light-wood" is a term used in the South to signify richly resinous pine, of the kind sometimes called "pitch-pine" in other parts of the country.]

Mr. Meek writes more fully of young Austill. He describes him as a youth nineteen years of age, dark, tall, sinewy, and full of youthful daring.

The stories of his courageous performances were many, and during the war he won the special commendation of his superiors on many occasions for his bravery and his devotion to duty.

Dale marched from Fort Madison on the 11th of November, with Tandy Walker, a noted frontiersman, for his guide. Marching to the south-east, the column crossed the Alabama River at a point about thirty miles above Mims's ferry, and about twenty miles below the site of the present town of Claiborne.

Dale was thoroughly well acquainted with the habits of the Indians, among whom indeed he had lived frequently for long periods. He was therefore keenly alive to the necessity of unremitting vigilance, and, determined to suffer no surprise, he refused to permit any of his men to sleep during the night after his pa.s.sage to the south-east bank of the river. During the next day he advanced up the river very cautiously, sending Austill, with six men, in two canoes which he had found, while the rest of the force marched through the woods on the bank.

At a place called Peggy Bailey's bluff the first signs of the presence of Indians were discovered. Following the trail well in advance of his men, Dale discovered ten Indians at breakfast. The first intimation these Indians had of the presence of white men on that side of the river came to them in the shape of a bullet from Dale's rifle, which killed one of the party, and caused the rest of them to abandon their provision pack, and flee precipitately through the woods.

Securing the abandoned provisions, Dale marched on a mile or two, but finding no further traces of Indians, he determined to recross the river and scour the country on the other side.

The work of crossing was necessarily slow. Only two canoes were to be had, and the river was nearly a fourth of a mile wide, but little by little the force was paddled across, until only about a dozen of the men remained with Dale on the eastern bank. These men were at breakfast when suddenly they were startled by a volley from the rifles of an Indian force. This force, as was afterward learned, was the advance party of about three hundred warriors. Dale and his handful of men protected themselves as well as they could among the trees, and returned the fire.

Had the savages known the weakness of their force, they might easily have destroyed the little party by making a determined dash; but Dale and his men were so well concealed among the trees and in the bushes, that their enemies, in ignorance of their numbers, did not dare charge them. The nature of the ground served also to favor Dale. The river here had what is called a double bank--that is to say, there were two plateaus, one above the other, each breaking rather suddenly at its edge. These banks, covered with dense undergrowth, served the purpose of rude natural breastworks.

The first a.s.sault was made by about twenty-five or thirty of the savages, who were speedily joined by others, and Dale quickly saw that his position was an extremely critical one. The Indians must soon discover from the infrequency of the fire from the bank that the force there was small, and it was certain that they would make a charge as soon as this should be discovered--a charge which the dozen men there could not possibly withstand. Dale's first thought was of escape across the river to the main body of his little company; but this was clearly out of the question. There was but one canoe on his side of the river, so that to cross at all the little company on the bank must separate, half of it going over at one trip and half at another. If half of them should embark, the Indians, seeing the canoe in the river with its cargo of fugitives would know at once that the band on the bank was unable to resist them, and hence would destroy the men left behind before the canoe could return to bring them away.

Dale called to his men on the other side of the river to recross and render him a.s.sistance, but they seemed to be for the time fairly panic-stricken, so that none of them moved to answer the call. After a time their courage appeared to return, and eight of them manned a canoe and began the pa.s.sage. When the man who led this detachment saw the great superiority of the Indian force, he became panic-stricken again and ordered a retreat, so that even this little attempt to reinforce Dale's tremendously overmatched company failed to bring relief.

Meantime a new danger appeared, coming this time upon the rear. A large canoe holding eleven Indian warriors shot out from the bank a little way up the river and paddled down to Dale's position. Here an attempt was made to land. Should this be accomplished, the fight must end at once in the destruction of the whole detachment on the river bank. To ward off this danger Dale was compelled to fight both ways--to the rear and to the front. He himself, with all of his men but three, kept up not a brisk, but a very destructive, fire in front, picking their men and shooting with all the precision of skilled marksmen; while Smith, Austill, and one other man devoted their attention to the warriors in the canoe, preventing them from approaching the sh.o.r.e.

Being kept thus at a distance, two of the most daring of the Indians in the canoe resolved to risk an attempt to swim ash.o.r.e. Leaping overboard only their heads were exposed, of course; but Smith succeeded in sending a bullet into even that small target, killing one of the swimmers instantly. The other reached the bank, where he was met by Austill, who unluckily tripped and fell into the water, and before he could regain his footing the savage had escaped.

His escape brought matters to a head. Dale knew that this Indian had seen how small his force was, and that he would report its weakness, thereby making an immediate charge certain. He therefore resolved upon a desperate attempt. He called to his men, declaring his purpose to man the little canoe that remained with him, and attack the Indian canoe party. For this perilous service he asked who would volunteer. Smith, Austill, and the negro man Caesar at once offered themselves; and with this little force Dale speedily put his plan into execution. Caesar took the stern of the canoe as steersman, and the three white men grasped their paddles.

The Indians had fired all their ammunition away, else it would have gone hard with Dale when his own and his comrades' guns failed to fire as they did, because the powder in their pans had become wet. When this fact was discovered the two canoes were near each other, and Dale had no thought of flinching from the hand-to-hand conflict which must ensue between himself and his three companions on the one hand, and the nine remaining Indians on the other. He ordered Caesar to bring the canoe alongside the enemy's boat, and to hold it firmly there. As this was done the Indians leaped to their feet, with their war-clubs and knives, ready for the combat. When the boats touched, Dale instantly leaped into that of his enemy, for the double purpose of crowding the enemy close together and giving his own companions abundant room in which to swing their clubbed guns. It was a mere question of brute strength between men determined to club each other to death. Austill was knocked down with a war-club once, but recovered himself. Dale advanced in the boat, knocking over one Indian after another with his rapid blows. A few minutes sufficed to bring the action to a close.

It is said that the last of the Indians was a young warrior with whom Dale had lived and hunted as a friend before the outbreak of the war.

This young Indian and his former friend now confronted each other in the boat. Dale recognized the man with whom he had sat at the camp-fire and pa.s.sed long days in the hunt; he hesitated, and was about to lower his raised weapon when the young savage, calling him by the name he had borne among the Indians, which meant "Big Sam," cried, "Sam Thlucco, you are a man, I am another--now for it!" He spoke in the Muscogee tongue, with which Dale was familiar, and as he spoke he attempted to grapple with Dale, but the active white man was too quick of movement for him.

Stepping back suddenly, he brained his Indian antagonist with a single blow, and the canoe-fight was ended. The nine Indians were corpses, and Dale had not lost a single man, although Austill was severely wounded in the head.

There was perilous work yet to do, however. The brave men in the boat had no thought of abandoning their friends on the bank. Their own guns were broken, and they were under a severe fire from the savages on sh.o.r.e, but in spite of this they cleared the large canoe by throwing the dead Indians overboard, and, with the two boats, paddled back to the bank under a galling fire, and brought off the remainder of the party in safety. If they had not conquered, they had at least baffled the Indians, inflicting considerable loss upon them without suffering any loss in their turn. That night the expedition returned to Fort Madison.

Dale was so typical a frontiersman, so perfect a model of the daring and wily warrior of the border, that as long as he lived he was a man about whom the interest of curiosity hung. A writer who knew him well wrote of him thus:

"In person General Dale was tall, erect, raw-boned, and muscular. In many respects, physical and moral, he resembled his antagonists of the woods. He had the square forehead, the high cheek-bones, the compressed lips, and in fact the physiognomy of an Indian, relieved, however, by a firm, benevolent, Saxon eye. Like the red man, too, his foot fell lightly upon the ground and turned neither to the right nor left. He was habitually taciturn; his face grave; he spoke slowly and in low tones, and he seldom laughed. I observed of him what I have often noted as peculiar to border men of high attributes--he entertained the strongest attachment for the Indians, extolled their courage, their love of country, and many of their domestic qualities; and I have often seen the wretched remnant of the Choctaws camped around his plantation and subsisting on his crops. In peace they felt for him the strongest veneration; he had been the friend both of Tec.u.mseh and Weatherford; and in war the name of 'Big Sam' fell on the ear of the Seminole like that of Marius on the hordes of the Cimbri."[4]

[Footnote 4: From a sketch by General John H. F. Claiborne, published in the Natchez (Miss.) _Free-Trader_, on the occasion of Dale's death in the year 1841.]

CHAPTER XX.

THE ADVANCE OF THE GEORGIANS--THE BATTLE OF AUTOSSE.

When the call was made by General Claiborne upon Tennessee for a.s.sistance, a similarly earnest appeal was sent to Georgia, and the response from that State was equally prompt. The troops raised there were under command of General Floyd, who had been superseded in the command of the Department of the South-west by General Flournoy some months earlier. General Floyd was an energetic soldier, and he quickly found work to do.

It will be remembered that as soon as Red Eagle learned that he would not be permitted to attack and burn Mobile he turned his attention to the country north and east of the Creek Nation, and sent two bodies of his warriors to hara.s.s the borders, one force threatening Tennessee and the other seeking to find some vulnerable point on the Georgia frontier.

Jackson's advance with an overwhelming force and his vigorous blows at Tallushatchee and Talladega compelled the Creeks to abandon their designs upon Tennessee and stand upon the defensive. They saw the full significance of his advance, and knew that he had come not merely to garrison forts and protect settlers, but to carry the war to the heart of the Creek Nation, and to throttle the Creek power in its stronghold.

This was what Claiborne wanted to do by a resolute movement from the south, and there can be little doubt that if he could have had permission to do so he would have saved the Tensaw and Tombigbee settlements from the worst of their sufferings, by making the Creeks the hunted rather than the hunters, precisely as Jackson saved the people of Tennessee by an aggressive policy. The other column, which threatened Georgia, was met in like manner by General Floyd, and with like results.

Floyd's army consisted of nine hundred and fifty militiamen and four hundred friendly Indians, part of them being Cowetas under command of Major McIntosh, one of the half-breeds whom High Head Jim had planned to kill as a preparation for the war, and the rest Tookabatchas under Mad Dragon's Son. Floyd was better equipped than Jackson had been in his first battles, having some small pieces of artillery with him.

Having learned that a large force of the Creeks was at High Head Jim's town, Autosse, on the south-east side of the Tallapoosa River, about twenty miles above the point at which that stream unites with the Coosa, General Floyd marched against them in the latter part of November.

McAfee, who is usually a very careful historian, gives the 28th of September as the date, but this is clearly wrong. Crossing the Ockmulgee, Flint, and Coosa rivers under the guidance of a Jewish trader named Abram Mordecai, Floyd arrived in the neighborhood of Autosse early in the morning on the 29th of November.

His plan of battle was precisely the same as that which Coffee had adopted at Tallushatchee, and Jackson at Talladega--that is to say, he planned to surround the town and destroy the fighting force within; but in this case the scheme miscarried. In the first place, McIntosh and Mad Dragon's Son were ordered to cross the river and cut off retreat to the opposite sh.o.r.e, and they failed to do what was required of them. Whether this was due to the unforeseen difficulties of crossing, as the Indians alleged; or to the reluctance of the Indians to swim the river on a cold, frosty morning, as some historians say; or to a failure of their courage, as was charged at the time--there are now no means of determining, and it is not important. It is enough to know that they did not cross the river as ordered, and hence when the attack was made the bank of the stream opposite the town was unguarded.

This was not the only way, however, in which the original plan of attack was prevented. The real position and strength of the Indian force had been misapprehended, and when, early in the action, this was discovered, General Floyd was obliged to alter his disposition of troops accordingly. The advance was made as soon as there was sufficient light, on the morning of the 29th of November, with Booth's battalion on the right, Watson's on the left. The flanks were guarded by riflemen, and Thomas with his artillery accompanied Booth's battalion. Booth was instructed to march until he could rest the head of his column upon the little creek at the mouth of which the town stood, while Watson was to stretch his column around to the left in a curve, resting its left flank upon the river just below the town. If this could have been done as intended, and the friendly Indians had occupied the opposite side of the river, the encircling of the place would have been complete; but besides the failure of the Indians another difficulty stood in the way. Instead of one town there were two, the second lying about a quarter of a mile further down the river, immediately in rear of the position to which Watson had been ordered.

To avoid the danger of an attack in the rear of his left flank, which might have resulted disastrously, General Floyd sent Lieutenant Hendon with Merriweather's riflemen, three companies of infantry and two of dragoons to attack the lower town, while he threw the remainder of the army, now reinforced by the friendly Indians under Mad Dragon's Son and McIntosh, against the larger upper town.

The fighting began about sunrise, and speedily became extremely severe.

The prophets had enchanted the place, making it sacred ground, and they had a.s.sured the warriors that any white force which should attack them would be utterly exterminated. In this belief the savages resisted the attack with terrible determination, contesting every inch of the ground which they believed to be sacred.