ited States, but Red Sticks were seen thronging to
Pensacola and returning with arms and ammunition. The whites of the
Mobile and Tombigbee country, then part of Mississippi Territory,
organized for defence, waylaid a party returning from Pensacola, and
were at first victorious, then defeated, in the so-called Battle of
Burnt Corn. Thoroughly alarmed, the settlers now took refuge in
stockades and forts. The military authorities of the United States made
ready to defend Mobile, but recently seized from the Spaniards. At Fort
Mims, near the point where the Alabama and Tombigbee form the Mobile,
five hundred and fifty-three men, women, and children were pent up in an
ill-planned inclosure, defended by a small force under an incompetent
though courageous officer named Beasley. On the morning of August 30,
1813, Beasley was writing to his superior, General Claiborne, that he
could hold the fort against any number of the enemy. At that very moment
a thousand warriors lay hidden in a ravine but a few hundred yards from
the open gate of the stockade. Their principal leader was William
Weatherford, "the Red Eagle," a half-breed of much intelligence and
dauntless courage. At noon, when the drums beat the garrison to dinner,
the Indians rushed to the attack. At the end of the hot August day there
remained of the fort but a smouldering heap of ruins, ghastly with human
bodies. Only a handful of the inmates escaped to spread the horrible
news among the terrified settlers. Swift runners set off eastward,
westward, and northward for help. A shudder ran over the whole country.
The Southwest turned from the remoter events of the war in Canada to the
disaster at home. "The Creeks!" "Weatherford!" "Fort Mims!" were the
words on everybody's lips, while the major-general of the Tennessee
militia still lay helpless from his shameful wound.

From Mississippi on the west, from Georgia on the east, and from
Tennessee on the north, volunteer armies were soon on the march for the
Creek country. Tennessee, indeed, sent two different bodies of men. One
came from East Tennessee, commanded by General John Cocke; the other
came from West Tennessee, and at its head, pale and weak, his arm in a
sling, his shoulder too sore to bear the weight of an epaulette, was
Andrew Jackson. He had issued his orders from his bed. When a member of
the legislature, come to discuss the expedition with him, expressed
regret that he would not be able to lead it, the sick m