Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 06.djvu/23

 JACKSON

JACKSON

six days, meantime writing to the governors of Georgia, Tennessee and Louisiana, to Generals Cocke, Wliite and Flourney, and to the Indian agents and to friendly Indian chiefs for provis- ions for his famishing army. Colonel Coffee had kept his mounted men busy, marching 200 miles in twelve days, and collected 400 bushels of corn with which lie returned to the Tennessee. They left Fort Deposit, October 25, -and Jackson marciied into the enemy's country, gathering supplies as he went and burning the Indian vil- lages. On Nov. 3, 1813, General Coffee attacked the Indian camp, Tallusc hatches, thirteen miles from Jackson's camp, and killed 186 braves, be- sides many of the squaws and children, taking eighty-four of the non-combatants prisoners. Not one of the warriors escaped to tell the news. General Jackson, in sending the news to Gov- ernor Blovint, said : " We have retaliated for the destruction of Fort Mims." After the battle an infant Indian was found on the field alive in the arms of its dead mother. This boy General Jack- son caused to be nourished, and he brought him vip in his own family, giving him the name Lincoyer. He was educated with the planters' sons and lived to be seventeen years old, when he died of phthisis. On Nov. 8, 1813, General Jackson, wnth eight hundred horsemen and twelve hundred infantry, crossed the Coosa river and fought the battle of Talladega for the purpose of releasing one hundred fifty-four friendly Creeks. In the engagement, which was directed on the part of the Creeks by Bill Scott, two luindred ninety-nine of the savages were killed, and of Jackson's attacking force fifteen were killed and eighty-six wounded. Tlie delay of General Cocke in furnishing supplies was en- tirely due to want of transportation, as water in the streams was too low^ to float the lioats. The suffering of his own troops in camp awaiting tliese supplies was as great as that of Jackson, who was seventy-five miles distant at Fort Strother. While Jackson was making terms of peace with the Hillibee towns, General AVhite, by order of General Cocke, attacked them and killed sixty warriors, burned the town and cap- tured two hundred fifty women and children. Tliis unfortunate affair, for which he was not re- sponsible, embittered the Indians against Jackson, who accused him of perfidy, and they fought him with renewed fury. His troops, half starved, be- gan to threaten mutiny, and it required his great- est efforts to keep the insubordinates down. On Dec. 10, 1813, their one years service expired, and notwithstanding they had received a full supi)ly of commissary stores, they determined to return home. General Cocke's division, now at Fort Strother. was likewise disaffected. Jackson urged that the men had been at home pursuing

their own vocations for at least lialf the time, and had not been in actual service over six montlis. In this dilemma Jackson ordered General Cocke to march the disaffected troops back to the settle- ments and then to dismiss them, and recruit a new force to serve six months. He entreated the sol- diers to re-enlist in the new army in vain, and Gen- eral Coffee's division of cavalry marched home al- most in a body, rioting and wasting as they went. Governor Blount ordered a new levy of 2.500 men for three montlis' service, and General Cocke was directed to obey Jackson's orders and recruit a new division in East Tennessee. On Jan. 1.5, 1814, Jackson had at Fort Strother nine hundred raw recruits and several hundred friendly In- dians. With this force he conducted raids into the Indian country with varied success, ending with the battle with the Oakfuskas on the 22d- 24th of January, 1814, in which two hundred savages were killed, and of Jackson's army eighteen wei'e killed and seventy wounded. Be- fore the end of February, Jackson had an army of 5000 men within an hour's march of Fort Strother, but it was far into March before need- ed provisions for an active campaign arrived.

' The decisive battle against the Creeks, and the one in which the power of the American Indian was broken, was fought by General Jackson at Tohopeka or Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallajjoosa river, where nearly nine hundred Indian warriors were killed and five hundred squaws and childi'en made prisoners. In this battle Ensign Saiu Houston was wounded while leading his platoon. Not an Indian asked for quarter nor would accept it, and the last to succumb were driven from their fortress to death by fire kindled in the underbrush. The remnant who escaped made their waj" to Florida, but the chief remained to tell the tale of carnage, to show his scars, and to intercede for the starving women and children. This was Weathei'sford, the friend of Tecuniseh, the chief of the war party in southern Alabama, the leader of the efforts of wiser counsel to stay the massacre of Fort Mims, and the daring rider who leaped with his horse and escaped over the bluffs into the Alabama. He entered Jackson's tent, presented his captor with a newly-slain deer, drank a glass of brandy, and received the terms on which the Creeks could obtain peace and protection. On April 20, 1814, Gen. Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, assumed command of Fort Jackson, the South Carolina troops re- lieved those from Tennessee, and the neyt day Jackson's army returned home. On April 26 General Jackson went from Fort William to Nashville, where he called upon Governor Blount and announced the end of the war and the speedy return of the army. On May 31, 1814, Andrew Jackson was appointed major-general iii the U.S.