and his brother, the
Prophet. These were sons of a Creek mother and a Shawanee brave. By
relationship, and by the rude eloquence of the former and the mystic
arts and incantations of the latter, they brought into confederacy with
Northern tribes--which they had organized as allies of the English in a
last hope of destroying American power in the West--almost the entire
Creek nation. These savages, though at peace under treaty and largely
supported by the fostering aid of our Government, began hostilities
after their usual methods of indiscriminate massacre and marauding
destruction, regardless of age or sex or condition, against the exposed
settlers. The latter sought refuge as they could in the rude stockade
stations, but feebly garrisoned. At Fort Mims, on the Alabama River,
nearly three hundred old men and women and children, with a small
garrison of soldiers, were captured in a surprise attack by a large body
of warriors, and all massacred in cold blood. This atrocious outbreak
aroused the country, and led to speedy action for defense and terrible
chastisement for the guilty perpetrators. The British officers offered
rewards for scalps brought in, as under Proctor in the Northwest, and
many scalps of men and women murdered were exchanged for this horrible
blood-money.

In October, 1813, General Jackson led twenty-five hundred Tennessee
militia, who had been speedily called out, into the Creek country in
Alabama. A corps of one thousand men from Georgia, and another of
several hundred from the territory of Mississippi, invaded the same from
different directions. Sanguinary battles with the savages were fought by
Jackson's command at Tallasehatche, Talladega, Hillabee, Autosse,
Emuckfau, Tohopeka, and other places, with signal success to the
American arms in every instance. The villages and towns of the enemy
were burned, their fields and gardens laid waste, and the survivors
driven to the woods and swamps. Not less than five thousand of the great
Ocmulgee nation perished in this war, either in battle or from the
ruinous results of their treachery after. Nearly one thousand of the
border settlers were sacrificed, one half of whom were women and
children or other non-combatants, the victims of the malignant designs
and arts of British emissaries. The chief of the Creeks sued for peace,
and terms were negotiated by General Jackson on the 14th of August,
1814.

From his headquarters at Mobile, in September, 1814, Gener