The Creek War of 1813 and 1814
392
The Creek War of 1813 and 1814
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Overview
The first edition of Halbert and Ball's Creek War was published in 1895, and a new edition containing an introductory essay, supplementary notes, a bibliography, and an index by Frank L. Owsley Jr., was published in 1969. This standard account of one of the most controversial wars in which Americans have fought is again available, with introductory materials and a bibliography revised to reflect the advances in scholarship since the 1969 edition. This facsimile reproduction of the 1895 original provides a full and sympathetic account of the Indians' point of view, from the earliest visit of the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh to the southern tribes in 1811, through the buildup of apprehension and hostilities leading to the fateful battles at Burnt Corn, Fort Mims, and Holy Ground.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817383701 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 07/07/2010 |
| Series: | Library of Alabama Classics |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
Read an Excerpt
The Creek War of 1813 and 1815
By H. S. Halbert, T. H. Ball
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1995 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8370-1
CHAPTER 1
THE CHOCTAW-MUSCOGEE TRIBES.
THE Creek War of 1813 and 1814 is remarkable from the fact that all the branches of what ethnologists style the Choctaw-Muscogee stock of Indians were involved therein and took a part, on one side or the other, of that bloody conflict. As these tribes acted a prominent part in the early history of the Gulf States, a brief notice of their topographic location and ethnic affinites may, perhaps, be of interest to the general reader.
From incontrovertible linguistic evidence, it is certain that the habitat of the tribes composing the Choctaw-Muscogee family was much the same in the days of De Soto, in 1540, as it was in more recent historical times. If the Creeks, or any or all their congeners, ever migrated from Mexico, it must have been centuries before the advent of the Spanish invader. Whatever may be thought of Le Clero Milfort's migration legend, the fact stands that De Soto found towns bearing Muscogee names in Alabama. Dr. A. S. Gatschet, the distinguished Indianologist, after a thorough study of the dialects of the Choctaw–Muscogee tribes, has subdivided the family into four branches.
The first and most prominent of these branches is the Creeks or Muscogees proper, whose settlements were upon the Coosa, the Tallapoosa, and the Chattahoochee. During the entire existence of the Creek Confederacy in Alabama, those living on the Coosa and Tallapoosa bore the appellation of Upper Creeks, whilst those on the Chattahoochee were known as Lower Creeks. The Seminoles of Florida are only a body of seceded Muscogees.
The second branch is the Hitchitees, whose towns were on the Chattahoochee, and who, living nearer the Lower Creeks, were assigned to that political division of the Creek Confederacy. The Mickasukees of Leon county, Florida, are an offshoot of the Hitchitees and speak the same language. The Apalachees, who were a numerous and powerful people in Florida in the days of De Narvaez and De Soto, spoke a language closely related to that of the Hitchitees. The last remnant of the Apalachees were living in Louisiana, in 1830, numbering forty six souls—perhaps, now, all extinct.
The third branch is the Alibamos and Coshattees, (less correct form Coosawdas,) whose homes were mostly situated on the Alabama River, just below the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa. Politically, these two tribes belonged to the Upper Creeks. When the French abandoned Fort Toulouse, in 1763, many of the Alibamos followed them across the Mississippi into Louisiana. These seceders eventually settled in Polk county, Texas, where they have a settlement to this day. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, many of the Coshattees also emigrated west and finally settled near the Alibamos. The language of both tribes is substantially the same. The Alibamos that remained in their native seats occupied, at the outbreak of the war of 1813, six villages, viz: Wetumka, situated on the Coosa, Muklasa, on the Tallapoosa, Ecunchattee, now a part of the city of Montgomery, Towassa on the same side of the river, three miles below Ecunchattee, Pawoktee, two miles below Towassa, and Autaugee, four miles below Pawoktee, but on the north bank of the river and near the mouth of a creek of the same name. The language of the Alibamos approximates nearer to the Choctaw than to the Muscogee, and their tribal name is undoubtedly of Choctaw origin and signifies Vegetation-gatherers, i.e. gatherers of vegetation in clearing land for agricultural purposes. Alba, vegetation, amo, gather. From this tribe, the Alabama River received its name, and the state, from the river. Alibamo is the correct form of the word, having, as noted above, the prosaic signification of vegetation-gatherer; for modern research has forever annihilated the romance of Here we rest. The Coshattees, the kinsfolk of the Alibamos, lived, in 1813, on the northern bank of the Alabama River, three miles below the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa. The present American town of Coosauda occupies the site of the old Coshattee town.
The fourth or western branch of the Choctaw–Muscogee stock of Indians are the Choctaws and Chickasaws, whose homes were mostly in the present state of Mississippi, the Choctaws occupying the central and southern, and the Chickasaws, the northern part. Both tribes speak the same language. The country between the Tombigbee and the Black Warrior, from time immemorial, had been disputed territory between the Choctaws and the Creeks, though Choctaw settlements, more or less transitory, always existed on the east side of the Tombigbee.
There is no doubt but the territory of the Choctaws, in the days of De Soto, extended farther to the east than in more recent times. The people of the town of Mauvila, destroyed by De Soto, were of Choctaw lineage, as is evidenced by the name of their chief, Tascalusa, Black Warrior. Mauvila, too, may be the Choctaw Moelih, a plural of action, signifying to row, to paddle, to scull, and the inhabitants of the town, as we may conjecture, may have received this name, the rowers, in consequence of their riparian situation, which necessitated a constant use of boats in navigating the river. Mobile, a French abbreviated corruption of Mauvila, is called by the modern Choctaws, Moil-la, a form bearing a close resemblance to both Mauvila and Moelih. The people of the province of Pafallaya were also Choctaws—a fact attested by the name itself—Pafallaya, by elision from Pashfallaya, the long-haired.
The Chickasaws, who occupied not only North Mississippi, but also a part of Northwest Alabama, were a more martial people than their Choctaw kindred. No enemy, white or red, ever defeated them in battle. They made a fierce resistance to the invasion of De Soto and their subsequent wars with the French have added a luminous chapter to the annals of the Southwest.
But not all the peoples living within the territorial bounds of the Choctaw-Muscogee tribes were of kindred blood. Living within and forming a component part of the Creek Confederacy were some allophylic elements. The Uchees, who claim to be the most ancient inhabitants of the country and whose language has no affinity with any other American tongue, were, in the eighteenth century, incorporated into the Confederacy and enrolled as Lower Creeks. In like manner, among the Upper Creeks, were enrolled many Shawnees, a people of the Algonquin stock. Sawanogee, on the Tallapoosa, was a Shawnee town, subject to the Creek laws. A remnant of the celebrated Natchez tribe also lived among the Upper Creeks, having a village on Tallahatchee Creek, a tributary of the Coosa.
Of the Choctaw-Muscogee tribes, the Creeks, or Muscogees proper, stood preeminent over all the others, not only for prowess in war, but for political sagacity. The beginning of their famous Confederacy is lost in the depths of antiquity. The Muscogees, it seems, having gained, in ancient times, a supremacy over the contiguous tribes, adopted the custom of receiving into a political system tribes that they had subjugated in war, or else, broken or fugitive tribes that applied to them for protection. A district was forthwith assigned to the new allies, who were allowed to retain the use of their own language and customs, but were required to furnish aid for the maintenance and defense of the Confederacy. Towards the close of the eighteenth century a tradition was current among the Creeks that the Alibamos were the first tribe received into the Confederacy, then the Coshattees, then the Natchez, and last, the Uchees and Shawnees.
When the French first came in contact with the Southern Indians, early in the eighteenth century the Creek Confederacy already had a vigorous existence. Its power continually strengthened, until, in the early years of the nineteenth century, it stood forth, able to confront, for near ten months, the trained armies of the Federal Government and to threaten even the very existence of the numerous American communities within the present states of Mississippi and Alabama.
CHAPTER 2CAUSES OF THE CREEK WAR.
THE part of Alabama, with which, mainly, this work has to do, has had a peculiar history and also some peculiar inhabitants. It may be well to rehearse briefly this history.
Every well informed American knows that Spain at first claimed and afterwards held Florida by "right of discovery," and its northern boundary was undefined ; that Georgia, as the last of the thirteen colonies, was settled by the English in 1733; and that the French came down the Mississippi as early as 1682, and claimed from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. In 1763 France ceded to Great Britain nearly all her claims east of the Mississippi and Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain. The English divided Florida into two provinces, calling one East and the other West Florida. The latter extended as far north as latitude 32° 28', which was the southern boundary of the English province called Illinois. As early as 1700-1699—the French commencing settlements on Mobile Bay, claimed what is now Alabama, and they held it for sixty-four years. They made some settlements up the Mobile and Tensaw rivers. In 1777 Anglo-Saxon or American settlements commenced along these rivers and up the Tombigbee. In 1783 West Florida went again into the possession of Spain, and the Spanish officials did not retire south of latitude 31° until 1799. During the War of the Revolution, and so long as Spanish rule continued, this river region attracted settlers from the Carolinas who were not satisfied with American independence. But after 1800, following the royalists or tories, came also the loyal and true American pioneers. The flags of three nations therefore, of France, of England, and of Spain, had waved over the waters of these rivers before the stars and stripes, in 1799 were here unfurled.
Before proceeding further in the history we may look at some of the peculiar inhabitants.
Of this whole south-eastern portion of the country a characteristic feature was, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the residence of white traders in every large Indian town, and at points well adapted for commerce and for intrigue. At Fort Toulouse on the Coosa river, established by the French in 1714, Captain Marchand was at one time commander. He was killed there in 1722. He had taken as a wife a Muscogee or Creek maiden of the Clan of the Wind, called the most powerful clan of the Creek nation. He had a beautiful daughter called Sehoy Marchand.
There came from a wealthy home in Scotland a youth of sixteen to see the wonders of this land. His name was Lachlan McGillivray. He landed in Carolina, joined the Indian traders about 1735, saw at length the young Sehoy Marchand, "cheerful in countenance, bewitching in looks, and graceful in form," then herself about sixteen years of age, married her, some say about 1745, when he had gained some property, spent nearly fifty years as Indian trader and Georgia royalist in the American wilds, left his Indian children and his plantations, when the British left Savannah, about 1782, and returned to his native land, taking with him "a vast amount of money and movable effects." But of his Indian children, part Indian, part Scotch, part French, one, Alexander McGillivray, became noted, wealthy, and powerful. He was well educated at Charleston. He returned to the Indian country, took control of the Creek nation, received from the British the rank and pay of a British colonel in the War of the Revolution, in 1784 went to Pensacola and made a treaty with Spain as being "Emperor" of the Creeks and Seminoles, in 1790 at New York made a treaty with the American government receiving the rank of brigadier general with a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year, and afterwards was appointed by Spain Superintendent-General of the Creek nation with a salary of two thousand dollars a year, which was increased in July, 1792, to thirty-five hundred. He was at the same time a member of a wealthy commercial house. He died in Pensacola February 17, 1793. One of his sisters, the beautiful and talented Sophia McGillivray, married Benjamin Durant, who was of Huguenot descent, who came from South Carolina and as early as 1786 was settled on the Alabama River. Another Indian trader, Charles Weatherford, some say from Scotland, some say from England, married a half sister of Alexander McGillivray, the daughter of a chief of pure Indian blood, who had been formerly married to Colonel Tate, at one time a British officer at Fort Toulouse. We find here therefore the names of Tate, Durant, Weatherford, and McGillivray, as members of connected families of mixed blood, talented, wealthy, influential, with whom, as individuals, in the Creek-War history we shall become further acquainted. A number of other noted border men there were who need not here be named. But one more name should not be omitted.
General Le Clerc Milfort, a well educated Frenchman, was among the Muscogees from 1776 to 1796, and he also married a sister of Alexander McGillivray, who was sometimes called Colonel and in later life General McGillivray. Milfort was for some time a noted war chief among these Indians. He returned to France and published at Paris in 1802 a work known as "Gen. Milfort's Creek Indians." It does not appear that he left among the Indians any descendants
Mention has already been made of the settlement of this part of the early West Florida, which became a part of the Mississippi Territory as that was organized in 1798 as far south as the thirty-first parallel of north latitude and extending north, as has been stated, to latitude 32° 28'. Spanish and British plantations had been along these rivers where indigo was largely cultivated, Spanish grants of land had been made to settlers, and French, Spanish, and British royalists had all become, in some sort, Americans.
In 1799, May 5th, Lieutenant McLeary, for the United States, took possession of the old Fort St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River, the Spanish garrison marching out and descending the river below latitude 31°, the boundary line, this parallel, then having been but recently surveyed. In July of that year Fort Stoddart was established, three miles below the union of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, five by water, and about six above the Spanish line. Here was built a stockade with one bastion. Already, in Spanish times, quite a settlement had been made on Lake Tensaw, just east of the Alabama and the Cut Off and Nannahubba Island, largely by tories, where was opened "the first American school" in what became Alabama, John Pierce teacher, probably in 1799. Says Pickett: "There the high-blood descendants of Lachlan McGillivray—the Taits, Weatherfords, and Durants—the aristocratic Linders, the wealthy Mims, and the children of many others first learned to read. The pupils were strangely mixed in blood, and their color was of every hue."
These early white settlements, including those of mixed blood, were on lands which the Indians had ceded to the British and Spanish authorities, and which, when Washington county was formed in June, 1800, belonged to the United States. Says Judge Meek: "The various treaties of the French, British, and Spanish with the Indians made this region the resort of the first emigrants. The experiences of this backwoods life, for more than twenty years, were quite as singular and wonderful as those of Boone and Kenton in Kentucky, or Sevier and Robertson in Tennessee."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Creek War of 1813 and 1815 by H. S. Halbert, T. H. Ball. Copyright © 1995 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTSEditor's Acknowledgments
Editor's Introduction
Editor's Introduction to the 1995 Edition
Preface
Introduction
I. The Choctaw-Muscogee Tibes
II. Causes of the Creek War
III. Tecumseh Among the Chickasaws and Choctaws
IV. Tecumseh Among the Creeks
V. The War Cloud Gathering
VI. The Stockades
VII. Inter-Tribal Councils of the Creeks and the Choctaws
VIII. The Battle of Burnt Corn
IX. Fort Mims
X. The Kimbell-James Massacre
XI. Attack on Fort Sinquefield
XII. The Night Courier
XIII. Incidents of the War in the Fork
XIV. Choctaws and Chickasaws Join the American Army
XV. The Bashi Skirmish
XVI. Beard and Tandy Walker
XVII. The Canoe Fight
XVIII. Battle of the Holy Ground
XIX. The War in the Indian Country
XX. Closing Events, 1814
Conclusion
Appendix
Editor's Notes
Editor's Bibliography
Editor's Index