THE UPPER CREEK REDSTICKS AND THE CHICKAMAUGAN CHEROKEE RESISTANCE FIGHTERS WERE ALLIES AGAINST THE US GOVERNMENT. REMEMBER THE BATTLE OF NICKAJACK WAS TO BREAK UP THESE ALLIANCES AS THEY THREATENED THE LAND THIEVING PLANS OF THE US GOVERNMENT YONEGAS. THEY PARTICIPATED TOGETHER AT THE BATTLE OF HORSESHOE BEND AGAINST THE TRAITOROUS RIDGE AND THE NEARLY FULL BLOOD WHITE ROSS AND THE VILLAINOUS JACKSON. REMEMBER THE REDSTICKS, REMEMBER THE THUNDERBOLT WARRIORS WHO FELL AT HORSESHOE BEND. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It is known that Major Ridge made the personal acquaintance of Jackson during these early years. Perhaps it occurred during the days when Jackson's forces were building up at Fort Strother- the days when Jackson, lean of body and thin of face, with red, rough skin, unruly hair, and piercing blue eyes, circulated ceaselessly among his men, his left arm now in his coat sleeve but still nearly useless from the wound he had received in a duel before the campaign. His health was on the mend now, though he still suffered from occasional paroxysms of that intestinal disorder whose distress would cause him to prop his lank body against a sapling trunk, freshly chopped, his arms dangling over the horizontal pole. No suffering seemed to daunt his implacable will; he was a man so tough-grained, so unyielding, that he had earned the nickname of "Old Hickory." He had won the complete confidence of the Cherokees. Jackson's forces continued to build, and when early in March they reached their maximum strength, they numbered five thousand men, mostly militia, hastily raised, with little training or even none, and poorly equipped. But they also included the regulars of the Thirty- Ninth U.S. Infantry, and these, Jackson believed, "will give strength to my arm and quell mutiny."85 The buildup was complete by March 13, and sufficient supplies had arrived from Tennessee so that Jackson felt no longer haunted by the spectre of famine; and on the next morning to the roll of a single drum (for only one drummer could be found in the entire army) the general ordered his forces to march. As almost all of the Cherokees were mounted, they were attached to General Coffee's troop of cavalry and moved forward with the white horsemen. The army forded the river, and pushing through thick forest, marsh, and canebrake, arrived on March 21 at the mouth of Cedar Creek, where the barricades of Fort Williams were hastily thrown up. Major Ridge and many Cherokees accompanied the detachment Jackson sent to scour the surrounding country. On the twenty- second they burned two deserted towns some twelve and fifteen miles down the river; they discovered tracks of several small parties of Creeks, but the enemy proved elusive, and the detachment returned to the fort on the twenty- third without an encounter. Supplies had arrived meanwhile in flatboats down the Coosa, and with the rear of his army secured, Jackson ordered his men forward the following morning with provisions for eight days, leaving a detachment to guard the fort. The advancing columns now consisted of two thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry, plus five hundred Cherokees and a hundred friendly Creeks, the latter including a band of Cowetas under William McIntosh. They cut a passage across the ridge that separated the Coosa Valley from the Tallapoosa; they splashed through marshes more mucky than ever, a hard advance of nearly fifty miles, till on the evening of the twenty-sixth they came to a campsite within six miles of their destination: that is, a sharp bend in the Tallapoosa that formed a peninsula of about one hundred acres known as Tohopeka (or the Horseshoe), where the population of six Creek towns were then enforted for a desperate last stand. The Americans advanced with their Indian auxiliaries early next morning, and by ten o'clock they were in battle position. The Red Sticks had thrown a breastwork of logs across the neck of 'Tohopeka to protect the encampment behind. It was arranged so as to subject any frontal assault to cross fire; hence Jackson proposed to bombard it first with his artillery, two small cannons supplied with grapeshot. Meanwhile he sent the mounted men under Coffee, including all of the Indians, both the Cherokees and the friendly Creeks, to ford the river two miles below and to station themselves along the eastern side of the bend to cut off any Creek retreat. Thus, the enemy was surrounded in the enfortment, the houses visible from where the Ridge and the Cherokees lurked. They could also see a line of canoes moored along the peninsula's shore. Coffee sent up signals as soon as his men had taken their places, and Jackson ordered the cannonade, the guns emplaced on a slight rise some eighty yards from the breastwork. I'he cannons poured grapeshot into the center of the fortification, while the rifles and muskets laid down a blistering fire whenever the Creeks showed themselves behind the logs. The volleys persisted for two hours, with little success. Meanwhile, beyond the river, the Cherokees had grown impatient for action. Covered with a brisk fire, three privates, including Charles Reese, the brother-in-law of The Ridge's brother Watie,* plunged into the river and swam to the Creek canoes where one of them, a warrior named The Whale, was wounded, so they brought back only two canoes, but these were filled to capacity for the return trip, each warrior securing a new canoe. *In time the double 0 was dropped From the spelling of Oowatie's name. In pronunciation the sound of w began to swailow up the sound of double O. "Major Ridge was the first to embark," wrote McKenney; "and in these... boats the Cherokees crossed, a few at a time, until the whole body [as well as Captain William Russell's spies] had penetrated to the enemy's camp." Soon their bullets drove the Red Sticks from out of the huts toward the breastwork that Jackson bombarded, and they set fire to several of the buildings. They themselves advanced in the direction of the barricade, firing on the Creeks who lay behind it. Spurred by the prophets, who danced and howled their incantations, their faces blackened and their heads and shoulders decked with feathers, the Red Sticks battled fiercely; and seeing that the Cherokees and Russell's spies were not strong enough to displace them, Jackson determined to take the breastwork by storm. His men hurled themselves against it. Creek bullets were flattened against the bayonets the soldiers thrust through the portholes. The Cherokees redoubled their attack, diverting the attention of the Creek defenders, giving the white soldiers a chance to swarm across the barricade, Sam Houston among them, cheering on the men behind him. The fight continued for five hours, no Red Stick begging for his life; and when more than half of the Creeks lay dead among the smoldering ruins of their huts, the rest broke and plunged into the river. It was then they found the opposite shore lined with Coffee's mounted men, who poured a deadly fire down on the swimmers in the river, closing all chance of escape. According to McKenney's account: [The] Ridge was a distinguished actor in this bloody drama, and we are told that he was the first to leap into the river in pursuit of the fugitives. Six Creek warriors, some of whom had been previously wounded, fell by his hand. As he attempted to plunge his sword into one of these, the Creek closed with him, and a severe contest ensued. Two of the most athletic of their race were struggling in the water for life or death, each endeavoring to drown the other. [The] Ridge, forgetting his own knife, seized one which his antagonist wore and stabbed him; but the wound was not fatal, and the Creek still fought with an equal chance of success, when he was stabbed with a spear by one of [The] Ridge's friends, and thus fell a hero who deserved a nobler fate.2 Some of the Red Sticks hid themselves behind thick piles of brush and timber, Not wishing to annihilate the Creeks completely, Jackson sent an interpreter in their direction with a message of clemency provided they would surrender. The Red Sticks shouted back in defiance and fired their muskets, shooting the messenger down; whereupon the whites set fire to the timber and, as the Red Sticks fled from the blazing inferno, gunned them down. The firing did not cease till late at night. "The carnage was dreadful," Jackson wrote. The next morning he detailed a squad to count the dead. To make no mistake in the number, they snipped off the nose of each dead Indian as soon as they had counted the body. This practical operation constituted by no means the most barbaric atrocity inflicted upon the bodies, and the greatest responsibility was held by white men rather than by the Indians, who merely scalped the dead. The whites did a brisk business in flaying corpses to make belts, and some committed outrages to secure hide for bridle reins, which, according to an eyewitness, was accomplished in the following manner: "They began at the lower part of the leg, near the heel, and with a knife made two parallel incisions through the skin, about three inches or more apart, running these incisions up the leg and along the side of the back to the shoulder blade and thence across to the other shoulder, and from there down the other side of the back and down the other leg to the heel. The strip between the incisions was then skinned out, and the soldier had a long strap of human skin, which he used as a bridle rein. So in the Creek War all the barbarity was not committed on the Indian side." Meanwhile the work of the squad detailed to count bodies resulted in Jackson's report that, out of 1000 Red Stick warriors, 557 lay dead in the ruins of Tohopeka. Coffee estimated that his men had killed 350 more in the water, leaving only 100 who could have escaped, many of them direly wounded. It was learned later that Menawa, the Red Stick leader at the Horseshoe, had dressed himself in a woman's clothing as soon as he was wounded and had lain in a pile of dead squaws till night came on, when he fled to safety. In contrast with the Creek toll, the Americans had lost only thirty- two in death, with ninety-nine wounded. Of the Cherokees eighteen were dead and thirty-six were wounded, while the friendly Creeks counted but five dead and eleven wounded. Thus stood the casualty figures for one of the most decisive Indian battles on the continent. The power of the Creeks was broken at the Horseshoe. From that day on Old Hickory's fame began to grow, the ground swell of popularity that would sweep him eventually into the White House. And in his first great military success, as he himself acknowledged, the Cherokees played a decisive role, one that Jackson would prefer later to forget. The record prompted Meigs to write: "The Cherokee warriors have fought and bled freely and according to their numbers have lost more men than any [other] part of the Army." And later when Jackson, in the White House, was inclined to forget his debt to the Cherokees, John Ridge publicly reminded him: "The General, as a soldier, has admitted the valour of my honoured father in that campaign." Meanwhile the Americans returned to Fort William. There Jackson discharged the Cherokees in triumph, and they made their way home, a wet ordeal, the rains falling continuously, the rivers and creeks raging, the trails deep with mud. At the same time the cormmander marched south to the junction of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa-sacred ground, according to the prophets, where no enemy could walk and live. Fort Toulouse he rechristened as Fort Jackson. Opposition melted before him, and William Weatherford, supreme military leader of the Red Sticks, came to his headquarters to lay down his arms. General Pinckney reached Fort Jackson April 20 with soldiers from North and South Carolina. In view of the general submission of the Creeks, he pronounced the war at an end and, except for troops needed for garrison duty, he ordered the volunteers from Tennessee to return home. They marched north without delay, crossed the Tennessee River; and at Fayetteville Jackson bade them goodbye in a stirring address. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ AND HOW DID THE YONEGAS REPAY THE CHEROKEES? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ The Cherokees, including The Ridge, had since reached home, only to find that their country had been despoiled and ravaged during the passage through it of white volunteers from east Tennessee. The militia, disorderly and irresponsible, had stolen horses, killed hogs and cattle, destroyed corncribs and fences, and taken corn and maple sugar, even clothing from the Indian residents. Indeed, the Cherokees found their homes and families had suffered more at the hands of their white allies than from their enemies, the Creeks. Cherokee Tragedy, Thurman Wilkins, The Mac Millan Company, 1970 Reprinted under the "http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html" Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law.