Beyond Fort Mims

by Lauran Paine

  The withdrawal of this force was undertaken after the dead were buried where they had fallen, and horse-drawn travois were constructed to transport the wounded. Every yard of the retreat was observed by Indians.

  Crockett and the other scouts covered the sides and the rear. They found no Indians.

  When the command came to Enotachapco Creek, which was running high, and after about half the command reached the far shore, the Indians attacked. Their particular targets were the artillerymen. Davy Crockett with other scouts who had been in the rear covering the retreat arrived on lathered horses with a party of howling Creeks chasing them.

  At the height of this fight two officers deserted, crossed the river below the area of combat, and were not seen again. They had evidently judged the action correctly. The army could not withdraw and could not finish crossing the creek. The Indians who had chased Russell’s scouts had been reinforced. They not only had the initiative but the divided command could neither unify nor retreat.

  Later Davy said because gunners were being shot as they tried to man their guns and the Indians were in great numbers on both sides of the creek, there was no other alternative than to fight as long as it was possible. He and other men in buckskin dug in and sniped. Anyone standing erect did not survive.

  This Battle of Enotachapco Creek was fought in late January of 1814. It ended with one of those bizarre abrupt Indian withdrawals.

  A unique factor in this engagement undoubtedly encouraged the victorious Indians to break off the fight. That occurred when Crockett’s band of scouts manned one six-pound cannon with devastating effect.

  Casualties at Enotachapco were twenty volunteers killed and seventy-five wounded. This time the Indians did not carry off their dead, which numbered one hundred and eighty-nine.

  Indian casualties were so high they were rarely afterward capable of mounting massive attacks. In fact, before Jackson’s withdrawal southward, he fought and won the final large battle of the Creek War. This conflict occurred at Horseshoe Bend where the Indians had created a massive log and earthen rampart. In this fight Red Eagle commanded the Red Sticks. He had been accumulating a force of Indians for some time. His fortification was strong, capably manned by more than a thousand Indians, and was amply provisioned. Jackson’s force consisted of three thousand troops with artillery. That large a force could not elude detection nor did it. Jackson’s force arrived before the fortifications in March, 1814, a few weeks after the Battle of Enotachapco and while the general had been in the process of beginning his march toward New Orleans. He had reason to get the Creek War over quickly. Jackson despised the British and wished nothing more than to fight them.

  Nevertheless, his preparations at Horseshoe Bend showed no evidence of haste. Jackson’s first move after the two warring parties faced each other was to offer sanctuary to women and children, which the Indians accepted. Then on March 27, the attack began, and, while it lasted, the fighting, noise, and smoke created an atmosphere no witnesses would ever forget.

  The Indians had only bows and arrows and small arms. They fought like tigers and were nearly obliterated. Before the fighting subsided, between eight hundred and nine hundred Indians had been killed. Five hundred women and children survived in captivity.

  Red Eagle’s loss was fatal to his cause although he personally survived. General Jackson said, “The carnage was terrible.” Casualties for the United States were fifty-one killed and one hundred and forty-eight wounded.

  So the Creek War was effectively ended at Horseshoe Bend although separate and individual skirmishes, ambushes, and snipings would continue. The reason for this was simple. The peace treaty of August 1814 had the hostiles agree to cede their country and withdraw from the southern and western parts of what became in 1819 the state of Alabama. However, the southern Creeks had not been part of the negotiations nor had they agreed to, much less signed, the treaty. They had been and remained absolutely opposed to any ceding of Indian land.

  Notwithstanding, General Jackson could consider his interior lines secure after Red Eagle’s defeat. The staggering Indian losses made it clear they would never again be able to meet invaders in large numbers. Jackson was now free to march into Louisiana where he brushed aside skirmishers and routed a meager Spanish garrison, declared martial law, had his command reinforced by volunteers from Kentucky and Tennessee, and was prepared to give battle by mid-December of 1814.

  His army consisted of about five thousand men. After several probing tests of strength, the British commander, Sir Edward Packenham, advanced his force of eight thousand men at dawn on January 8, 1814 in close order against Jackson’s earthworks of which cotton bales formed a considerable bulwark. This battle, which Americans called the Second War of Independence, employed the identical tactic of the original War of Independence. General Packenham sent his veterans of the Napoleonic War in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder, against Jackson’s force of marksmen protected by hastily erected, crude but excellent fortifications.

  Packenham’s army was cut to pieces. British losses were three hundred killed, twelve hundred and fifty wounded, and five hundred captured. American losses were fourteen killed, thirty-nine wounded, and eighteen captured. Jackson’s triumph was called the most astounding victory of the war.

  It emphasized something else—the abysmal lack of communication between the northern part of the country and the southern part. On December 24, 1814 a peace treaty had been signed at Ghent in Belgium, ending the war. The Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the war had officially ended.

  However, while Andrew Jackson was a national hero and would become the seventh president of the United States and the British were gone, the Creeks, Cherokees, and their allies, especially those who opposed and defied Red Eagle’s peace after his resounding defeat at Horseshoe Bend, remained hostile to whites.

  Unrelenting and sporadic fighting continued. The untamed wildernesses of Tennessee, Alabama, and their environs reinforced Kentucky’s colloquial name among frontiersmen as “the dark and bloody ground.”

  In Davy Crockett’s part of the country, the change was in many ways worse than it had been when Indian armies numbering in the thousands fought pitched battles with the whites. Now, the fighting was unpredictable, attacks were by stealth, ambushers left dead victims and vanished without a sign.

  At this time a tragedy struck Davy Crockett from which he would never completely recover. His wife Polly fell ill and died of malaria, leaving Davy with three young children, the youngest a baby. His youngest brother who was married with children of his own moved to the Crockett cabin, and Davy at least had a woman in the house to care for his youngsters.

  It was a time in his life he would be unable to handle very well. He knew death firsthand, but this kind of death, of Polly, his redheaded wife, the love of his life, left him desolate, and the care of his children, while a solace of sorts, could do nothing about the grief and loneliness.

  He was thirty-two years old when he erected a cairn of stones over Polly’s grave. He hunted, farmed a little, visited the pond where he and Polly had bathed, and had afterward dried in the sun.

  Even with the help of his brother and his sister-in-law with children of their own the cabin was still too full of memories. He took his children and moved west, to Shoal Creek, near the farm of a war widow named Elizabeth Patton who had two children. Davy had known her husband. They had fought together at Tallushatches. In time he decided for his own sake as well as for the sake of his children he would remarry. Davy went about his courtship, it was said, as sly about it as a fox when he is going to rob a hen roost.

  Once David Crockett and Elizabeth Patton were married, they had five children between them. Over the years they had children of their own. When the youngsters got into a fight, Davy would call to Bess, “Your children and my children are whipping hell out of our children.”

  It was a good union, but as time passe
d newcomers in wagons arrived to select land and build cabins, something Davy was not unaccustomed to. His old restlessness returned. He decided to explore a tract of land the government had recently obtained from the Chickasaw Indians. He left home with three friends to explore this new land. One companion was bitten by a water moccasin and was left with a friendly farm family while Crockett and his remaining two friends went on their way.

  They reached the Chickasaw country and found that, although the government had deed to the area, not many Indians were willing to leave territory they had lived in for hundreds of years. Nor was it just the Chickasaws. Unregenerate Creeks and Cherokees also lived in this primitive country. For the latter two bands of tribesmen the appearance of white men was reason for hostility.

  Davy and his friends were experienced frontiersmen. They rightfully assumed from the sullenness of the Indians that regardless of a piece of paper that transferred title of their territory to the whites this was their ancient homeland and trespassers—whites or others—were not welcome. This was made clear in an unusual way.

  Davy began to run a fever. Whatever the cause—probably malaria—within a few days he was too ill to travel, nor did it help that the saddle animals ran off, heading for home, and were not recovered.

  He was lying beside the trail, perspiring heavily, shaking and hot to the touch when a pair of Indians appeared. They offered to help him to the nearby cabin of a man named Jones. Because the distance was about a mile and Davy could barely walk, one Indian carried his rifle and his companion supported Davy until they reached the Jones cabin. Here, the Indians, who were hunters, left, and Jesse Jones, a reclusive frontiersman who also wore buckskin trousers and hunting shirt, cared for Davy, who had bouts of high fever and delirium.

  Recovery was slow and time-consuming. During his period of recuperation, Davy and Jesse Jones would sit on the cabin’s porch, smoking their pipes and talking. They had much in common—both had fought in the Indian wars, both were great storytellers, both had a sly sense of humor, and had lived by hunting most of their adult lives.

  One afternoon an Indian friend of Jones’ came by the cabin to say a band of horseback soldiers were coming. Davy asked how many. All the Indian could do was make the Wibluta sign for “many.” He also said they were coming to find and take away some Indians accused of murdering whites and stealing horses.

  After the Indian had hurried on toward his village, Jesse Jones told Davy he had heard of the killings some time before and knew for a fact the Indians the soldiers were coming for had not murdered the people nor stolen their horses.

  “Senecas did it,” he said, renegade Indians from up north. He had been visited by them on their way northward. They had taken his provisions and his horse, but had spared his life. They had the branded horses and considerable plunder including white men’s coats, hats, even a parasol along with rifles and pistols.

  Davy asked how far the Indian village was.

  Jones raised an arm, gesturing easterly. “Six, eight miles.”

  Davy was briefly silent, then because he knew what soldiers did to Indian villages, he told Jesse Jones the Indians should be warned.

  He and Jesse Jones struck out. The older man was unsure about Davy’s being able to cover the distance. The countryside was overgrown, mountainous with treacherous footing. Davy was not entirely recovered from his illness, but, if he was nothing else, he was resilient, tough as a boiled owl, and determined. Never during his lifetime did anything as exasperating as illness prevent him from doing things he was convinced should be done.

  The Indian messenger who had stopped by the Jones cabin had already reached the village, which was in turmoil. By the time Davy and his companion reached it, preparations were being made to abandon the village and take to the forest.

  Jesse Jones leaned on his rifle, watching the excitement, and shook his head as he spoke to Davy. “They’ll abandon their hogs ’n’ chickens, their cattle, their stores of grain. You know what the soldiers’ll do, don’t you?”

  Davy knew. “Kill the animals, eat what they want, leave the rest dead, then burn the settlement. You sure these Indians had nothing to do with the raid you told me about?”

  “Dead certain for a blessed fact. I know redskins as well as you do. They was Senecas from Pennsylvania. I grew to manhood in their country.” Jesse almost smiled at Davy. “I expect the reason they didn’t kill me was because I knew their language.”

  For a moment Jesse Jones was quiet, then he added, “A hunnert scairt Indians with squaws an’ pups an’ two white skins. The army’ll make a massacre and, unless we step lively, we’ll be part of it. Soldiers just naturally shoot anyone wearin’ moccasins. Davy, it’s time we leave. Nothin’ can stop what’s goin’ to happen.”

  Davy left Jones to his fatalistic ruminations, sought the agitated spokesman for the Indians, and told him there might be a way to avoid a massacre.

  The Indian considered Davy in stoic silence until a powerfully built, large half-breed spoke rapidly and forcefully to the spokesman, who turned to the big half-breed and those around him and spoke to them in a harsh voice. He then asked Davy what could be done.

  Davy spoke bluntly. “Stop the preparations to leave. Make your people go back to their cabins. Tell them to act like they don’t know the soldiers are coming. Tell them to act like nothing is wrong. Tell the bucks to leave their guns inside.”

  A surly, very dark Indian said, “That will make it easier for the soldiers to kill us.”

  Davy had a ready answer to that. “They’ll kill you anyway. If you run, they’ll hunt you down like rats … women, children, old people, and warriors. If you pretend not to know they are coming, if you do not offer to fight them, it might not be a massacre. If they come shooting, then we fight them.”

  The surly dark man’s eyes widened. “We? You fight with us?”

  Davy nodded.

  The spokesman sent the dark man to tell the others they were not to flee; they were to do as the white scout said. It was the spokesman’s order.

  Davy returned to Jesse Jones, told him what he had done, and Jones eyed Davy with strong skepticism. “You know how they do it? Make a sneaky big surround an’, when everything’s ready, they charge the village, shootin’ and yellin’.”

  Davy took Jones back where the spokesman and other Indians stood. The entire group watched the surly, dark man and his companions trying mightily to reverse the preparations for flight. In many instances they had to use force and even then people hesitated before obediently going to their cabins, but not all the warriors left their weapons out of sight.

  The Indian who had brought the message after stopping at the Jones place approached Davy. Like the other Indians, after a hundred years of living near whites, he spoke passable English. He said, “If soldiers shoot, we will tear you apart and trample your guts.”

  Chapter Four

  Trespassing

  Jesse Jones volunteered to scout for soldiers. He took the large half-breed with him and the surly, dark Indian.

  Davy remained with the spokesman whose councilors hovered. Davy lighted his pipe. The Indians tried hard to follow Davy’s example of unconcern. The people also did their best to appear normal at their chores. A close inspection would certainly have detected the stiffness, the unnatural quiet, the repetitive work of women and men, but Davy was satisfied that in general and from the distance of the surrounding forest the appearance of normality would be convincing.

  The dark, surly Indian returned shining with sweat and troubled. Jesse Jones had sent him to warn that the mounted soldiers were less than a mile westward.

  Davy sent the news bearer back to Jones. The Indians counseled in their own language, of which Davy understood enough to know that they were unwilling to risk the lives of their women and children. He spoke English to the spokesman, who listened but not without an expression of apprehension. He was, however, comm
itted to Crockett’s scheme and told his tribesmen it was too late to do otherwise than sit, wait, and act normal.

  The second time a messenger came from Jesse Jones it was the large half-breed Indian. He said the soldiers had scouts out. Jesse wanted to know if Davy wanted captives. Davy did and sent the big Indian back to say he not only wanted captives but preferably white ones.

  He knocked his little pipe empty with the Indians around watching everything he did. He later confided to Bess that a man couldn’t get any closer “to shaking hands with God” than he had on that particular day.

  Jesse Jones came into the clearing with his two companions and three soldiers who had been detailed to mind the horses after the soldiers dismounted to prepare their surround. All of the captives were white but there was a distinction. Two of the captives were enlisted men; the third man was a lieutenant. His name was Rufus Lee. He had been detached from the 39th company of mounted infantry. He was a rawboned, lanky man, tanned and weathered, clearly an old campaigner.

  When he saw Davy sitting with the Indian leader, his expression of defiance changed. When he and his companions were halted and told by Jesse to sit on the ground, Lee addressed Davy Crockett. “Do you remember me from Black Warrior’s Village? I remember you real well.”

  Davy did not remember the officer but nodded as he said, “Who’s commanding your soldiers?”

  Lee’s gaze did not leave Crockett’s face when he replied. “Captain Sam Houston. Do you remember him? He did right proud at Horseshoe Bend.”

  Davy remembered Houston. What he remembered was that Houston, a large, shaggy-headed man, fought like a tiger and gave no quarter.