The power of the Red Stick Creeks, indeed the Creek nation itself in a larger sense, was broken at Horseshoe Bend. As the blood of more than eight hundred Red Stick warriors soaked the Tallapoosa and its shoreline, “friendly” Creeks hoped to salvage the peace. Jackson, it was true, dealt harshly with his enemies, but he usually remembered his friends. These Creek Indians and other tribes hostile to the Red Stick cause had aided Jackson’s army throughout his war effort in Alabama, and they hoped to have a hand in accommodating the growing pressures of American white settlement while preserving something distinctive of their own culture and heritage. Jackson proved willing to grant the beaten Creeks peace, but his price was very high.
Alabama’s First Creek War reached its zenith on March 27, 1814, at the sharp bend in the Tallapoosa River. At nearly 180 degrees, this stark turn in the river inspired its popular name Horseshoe Bend, for on a map it resembled a horseshoe. Okfuskee chief Menawa—along with about one thousand Red Stick Creeks from upper Creek towns such as Eufaula, Okfuskee, Newyaucau, Fishponds, and Oakchaya—waited with more than 350 women and children for the attack from Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson and his combined forces of white militiamen, regular soldiers, and Indian volunteers. (Jackson had allies among the Cherokees and Creeks who were not part of the Red Stick faction.) Jackson’s army camped northwest of Horseshoe Bend, where Menawa and other leaders gathered their warriors and families for protection—protection that proved tenuous. In the early hours of March 27, Jackson decided to divide his army. While he dispatched Brig. Gen. John Coffee and his force of nearly 1,300 infantry and cavalrymen south a little over two miles to cross the Tallapoosa downriver and flank the newly built village of Tohopeka, Jackson lead two thousand soldiers in a frontal assault directed squarely at the breastworks along the neck of the horseshoe. Jackson’s line went from the northwest toward the southeast and meant to smash the Red Sticks between the hammer of infantry and anvil of Coffee’s mounted riflemen. After shelling the Creek line for most of the morning, the Americans launched their assault just after midday. The results were brutal, swift, and unforgiving. “The event could no longer be doubtful,” Jackson described the carnage in a public letter to Willie Blount. “The enemy, although many of them fought to the last with that kind of bravery which desperation inspires, were at length routed and cut to pieces. The whole margin of the river which surrounded the peninsula was strewed with the slain.”
The power of the Red Stick Creeks, indeed the Creek nation itself in a larger sense, was broken at Horseshoe Bend. As the blood of more than eight hundred Red Stick warriors soaked the Tallapoosa and its shoreline, “friendly” Creeks hoped to salvage the peace. Jackson, it was true, dealt harshly with his enemies, but he usually remembered his friends. These Creek Indians and other tribes hostile to the Red Stick cause had aided Jackson’s army throughout his war effort in Alabama, and they hoped to have a hand in accommodating the growing pressures of American white settlement while preserving something distinctive of their own culture and heritage. Jackson proved willing to grant the beaten Creeks peace, but his price was very high. Comments are closed.
|
Becoming Alabama:
|