Starvation and desertion sapped his armies before terse, bloody scraps at Emuckfaw Creek and again at Enotachopco Creek. Jackson’s troops won victories, in terms of added terrain and casualties inflicted, but they were bitter and inconclusive. Jackson’s frustrations soared. For example, after the fight on January 29 at Enotachopco Creek, Jackson fumed, “Here I began to perceive very plainly how little knowledge my spies had of the country, of the situation of the enemy, or of the distance I was from them. The insubordination of the new troops, and the want of skill in most of their officers, also became more and more apparent.”
Still, the Red Stick Creeks were bloodied but not beaten. Pushed on the defensive by the constant pressure of attacking American forces and their Indian allies, the Red Stick Creeks moved throughout much of March to fortify what they hoped would be an impregnable stronghold. Nearly a thousand Creek warriors, along with several hundred women and children, took refuge about halfway down the Tallapoosa River, at the sharp bend shaped like a horseshoe. The Red Sticks entrenched themselves behind a maze of eight-foot wooden breastworks, crosscutting portholes, and earthworks. Here on the fortified “peninsula,” their leaders reasoned, they could hold out until the Americans and their Indian allies exhausted their supplies and fought themselves out. But Horseshoe Bend would not off er salvation as the desperate Red Stick Creeks hoped. The bend in the Tallapoosa was a trap. As Jackson quickly understood when he surveyed the situation in the last week of March, these redoubtable natives had “penned themselves up for slaughter.”