y beyond a hundred and sixty miles of wilderness, but Jackson
would not wait for supplies. He plunged ahead, living somehow on the
country, until his men, beginning to break under the strain of
starvation and other hardships, declared open mutiny. But Jackson
cursed, threatened, argued them into obedience again and again. When
such persuasions failed, he planted cannon to sweep their lines and told
them they would have to pass over his dead body if they refused to go
on.

The failure of other bodies of troops to support his movements and a
discouraged Governor of Tennessee could not daunt his purpose. He was
told that the campaign had failed and that the struggle was useless. To
this he replied that he would perish first and that energy and decision,
together with the fresh troops promised him, would solve the crisis.
Months passed, and the militia whose enlistments had expired went home,
while the other broke out in renewed and more serious mutinies. The few
regulars sent to Jackson he used as police to keep the militia in order.
The court-martialing and shooting of a private had a beneficial effect.

With this disgruntled, unreliable, weary force, Jackson came, at
length, to a great war camp of the Creek Indians at a loop of the
Tallapoosa River called Horseshoe Bend. Here some ten hundred picked
warriors had built defensive works which were worthy of the talent of a
trained engineer. They also had as effective firearms as the white
troops who assaulted the stronghold. Andrew Jackson bombarded them with
two light guns, sent his men over the breastworks, and captured the
breastworks in hand-to-hand fighting in which quarter was neither asked
nor given. No more than a hundred Indians escaped alive, and dead among
the logs and brushwood were the three famous prophets, gorgeous in war
paint and feathers, who had preached the doctrine of exterminating the
paleface.

The name of Andrew Jackson spread far and wide among the hostile Indian
tribes, and the fiercest chiefs dreaded it like a tempest. Some made
submission, and others joined in signing a treaty of peace which Jackson
dictated to them with terms as harsh as the temper of the man who had
conquered them.

For his distinguished services Jackson was made a major general of the
regular army. He was then ordered to Mobile, where his impetuous anger
was aroused by the news that the British had landed at Pensacola and
had pulled down the Spanish flag. The splendor of t