A Brutal Reckoning

Ace scout Monk alerted me to the coming April 25 publication of Peter Cozzens’ A Brutal Reckoning, an account of the Creek War of 1813. Cozzens knows the period — he wrote a highly regarded dual biography of Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa aka the Shawnee Prophet.

The Creek War was a seismic event. The powerful confederacy of the Muskogee people was broken, and the rich lands of western Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were opened up for settlement. Within decades — and with the removal of the tribes on the Trail of Tears — the region conquered in the war would become the heartland of the 19th Century cotton empire. In that sense, you could argue that the conquest of the Deep South put the U.S. on the road to Civil War.

Here’s the caper:

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. What began as a vicious internal conflict among the Creek Indians metastasized like a cancer. The ensuing Creek War of 1813-1814 shattered Native American control of the Deep South and led to the infamous Trail of Tears, in which the government forcibly removed the southeastern Indians from their homeland. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first combat leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House.

In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens vividly captures the young Jackson, describing a brilliant but harsh military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a fraught sense of honor and duty. Jackson would not have won the war without the help of Native American allies, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, together with all the Indians of the American South in the Trail of Tears.

A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

It’s true. Tremendously important, and mostly forgotten. Overlooked even by people who are deeply enmeshed in frontier history.

I’m guilty: The Creek War is one of the most significant Frontier Partisan conflicts in history — and I’ve largely left it unexplored. Don’t know why. I’ve just concentrated my studies farther to the north, along the Ohio River. I reckon I ought to fix that, and I can do so in the context of The Ranger Project. Men like Sam Dale were certainly the equal of Captain Sam Brady or Simon Kenton.

Most of the limited exploring I have done in the southern theater was as a youth when I traced the trail of David Crockett, who fought in the Creek War.

You know the song:

In 1813, the Creeks uprose
Adding redskin arrows to the country’s woes
Now Indian fighting is something he knows
So he shoulders his rifle and off he goes

He fought single-handed through the Indian war
’Til the Creeks was whipped and the peace was in store
And while he was handling this risky chore
He made himself a legend forever more

Well…

“Davy Crockett” might’ve been an intrepid scout who won a war practically single-handed, but the actual David Crockett wasn’t much of a warrior, and his depiction of Frontier Partisan warfare is about as grim as it gets. Here’s the recollection of the 27-year-old Tennessee militiaman in the assault on the Creek town of  Tallushatchee:

When we got near the town we divided; one of our pilots going with each division. And so we passed on each side of the town, keeping near to it, until our lines met on the far side. We then closed up on each end so as to surround it completely; and then we sent Captain Hammond’s company of rangers to bring on the affray. He had advanced near the town, when the Indians saw him, and they raised the yell, and came running at him like so many red devils. The main army was now formed in a square around the town, and they pursued Hammond till they came in reach of us. We then gave them a fire, and they returned it, and then ran back into their town.

We began to close on the town by making our files closed and closer, and the Indians soon saw they were our property. So most of them wanted us to take them prisoners; and their squaws and all would run and take hold of any of us they could, and give themselves up.

I saw seven squaws have hold of one man, which made me think of the Scriptures. So I hollered out that the Scriptures was fulfilling; that there was seven women holding to one man’s coat tail. But I believe it was a hunting shirt all the time.

We took them all prisoners that came out to us in this way; but I saw some warriors run into a house until I counted fourty six of them. We pursued them until we got near the house, when we saw a squaw sitting in the door, and she placed her feet against the bow she had in her hand, and then took an arrow, and, raising her feet, she drew with all her might, and let fly at us, and she killed a man, whose name, I believe was Moore. He was a lieutenant and his death so enraged us all, that she was fired on, and had at least twenty balls blown through her. This was the first man I ever saw killed with a bow and arrow.

We now shot them like dogs; and then set the house on fire, and burned it up with the fourty six warriors in it.

I recollect seeing a boy who was shot down near the house. His arm and thigh was broken, and he was so near the burning house that the grease was stewing out of him. In this situation he was still trying to crawl along; but not a murmur escaped him, though he was only about twelve years old. So sullen is the Indian, when his dander is up, that he would sooner die than make a noise, or ask for quarters.

The number that we took prisoners, being added to the number we killed, amounted to one hundred and eighty-six; though I don’t remember the exact number of either. We had five of our men killed…

Lest one fall into the trap of thinking of the Creek militants as hapless victims of American aggression, it is well to remember that the Creek Nation’s conflict with the U.S. was touched off when militant Red Sticks stormed Fort Mims, Alabama, and slaughtered most of its garrison — plus a whole bunch of civilians, including mixed-race Creeks.

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, which ended the war hard-style, was one of the most sanguinary events in Frontier Partisan warfare — a pitched battle that turned into a rout that saw 800 Creek warriors slain. Forty-nine American militiamen and a few allied Creek and Cherokee were killed outright; more died of wounds later.

A brutal reckoning indeed.