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Andrew Jackson, American
Conquistador
The Creek War and the Conquest of Alabama
Brain Bufalo
November 19, 2018
General Andrew Jackson assembled his staff at the top of a small hill in what
eventually became the state of Alabama, on March 27, 1814. For the last six months,
the General's favored Tennessee Volunteer Militia had battled the Red Club Creek
warriors through a bitter winter.
1
When not fi ghting the Red Clubs, Jackson battled his
militia from mutinying and returning home. After the Volunteers had nearly marched
back to Tennessee due to disputed enlistment terms, lack of clothing, and meager food
supplies, Jackson rode out in their path and threatened to shoot anyone who
attempted to leave. This resolve by Old Hickory cowed his men to return to their posts.
Through heavy recruiting, the General now faced his elusive enemies with nearly 3,000
regular army and militia troops.
The fortifi ed Red Club village lay nestled at the toe of an inland peninsula
created by the
fast-moving
Tallapoosa River the Americans called Horseshoe Bend.
Between Jackson's force and the village, the Red Clubs had cleared the forest and
used the timbers to erect a fortifi ed wood and dirt barricade. The barrier angled inward,
funneling any troops through a gauntlet of fi re from the gun ports that were distributed
along the wall. Approaching the fortifi cation with a direct assault was a deadly
prospect.
2
For nearly a week, defenders poured in from surrounding villages,
numbering nearly 1,000 hardened warriors. Most of these Red Clubs had fought the
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1
Red Club or Red Stick is used to defi ne the warriors of the Upper Creeks. I have chosen to
use Red Club as it describes their terrifying weapon of choice, large wooden clubs with
embedded blades. Red Sticks also offers confusion as the Creeks used a practice of using
sticks, painted red for times of war, in bundles of specifi c numbers to days until a battle or
attack was to be made to coordinate the villages warriors.
2
Lucille
Griffi th,
Alabama: A Documentary History to 1900
(
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press
,
1968
)
,
113.
militia in pitched guerrilla-style battles, avoiding any commitment of forces that would
result in decisive victories for Jackson's militia.
Throughout his campaign in the Old Southwest, Jackson utilized a strategy of
encircling his enemies, either having the element of surprise or simply superior
numbers, which proved marginally successful. On November 3, 1813, Jackson ordered
cavalry commander and personal friend, General John Coffee, to attack villages deep
in Creek territory. The mounted militia quietly encircled the village of Tallushatchee and
proceeded to massacre 186 Creeks, caught in utter surprise. The legendary Davy
Crockett, one of the Tennessean Volunteers who had his "dander up" and answered
Jackson's call to fi ght the Red Clubs, remarked, “we now shot them like dogs."
3
Six
days later, Jackson himself nearly exacted a crushing defeat of the Red Clubs as he
encircled their outnumbered warriors at the Battle of Talladega. The Red Club warriors
slipped through a gap in the militia assault, again ruining Jackson's hopes to fi nish the
campaign quickly.
The General again deployed his forces to encircle Tohopeka and turn their
advantageous fortifi ed position into a deadly killing fi eld.
4
The war had left little
ammunition and powder and the situation was grim in the Red Club village. Despite
this, the warriors hoped they could defend against the General's forces. The most
faithful gained courage from their prophets casting magic barriers around the village to
strike down any attackers. Red Club pragmatists drew motivation from the purity of
their cause to drive out the invading whites. With each side poised for the coming
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3
Howard
T.
Weir.
"
A Paradise of Blood: The Creek War of 1813-14.
"
(
Yardley, PA:
Westholme
Publishing, 2016.
), 372, ebook, Apple Books.
4
Jackson outnumbers his opponent by the largest margin and with the best outfi t of troops the
General fi elded in battle: nearly 3,000 troops to the Red Club's 1,000.
battle, the ramifi cations of the Creek War echoed throughout the United States for
decades to come.
Unbeknownst to the U.S. forces on the precipice of battle was the nuanced and
complicated cultural tensions, primarily incensed by poor government policies and
encroachment by their fellow citizens, had drove events to coalesce to the war now
raging in the Alabama wilderness. The defenders of Tohopeka and the Creeks laying
siege had been neighbors or even family after a civil war ripped the Nation apart. At the
heart of the Creek civil war was the quickly changing values brought to their shores by
Europeans that had began to supplant their traditional Muscogee Creek ways.
Exploited through the years, Europeans had taken advantage of the differences in
culture, superiority in technology, and immunity from diseases. As a result pressure on
the Creeks, and all Native Americans in the region, had increased to address the
changing cultural and political norms they faced. As the United States shed
its
English
governance, the new nation continued the practices of "civilizing the savages," a plan
that can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson's presidency.
5
Native American's
treatment during this time was brutal and harsh, clearly summed up by Jackson's own
words in his Second Annual Address to Congress:
The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States,
to individual States, and to the Indians themselves
...
By opening
...
the south to
the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the SW frontier and
render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without
remote aid.
.
.It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with
settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to
pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will
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5
“From Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, 27 February 1803,”
Founders Online,
National Archives, last modifi ed June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/
Jefferson/01-39-02-0500. [Original source:
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, vol. 39,
13
November 1802–3 March 1803
, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2012, pp. 589–593.]
retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps
cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the
influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
6
Americans,
land-hungry
and exploding in population, pushed for expansion
west. As historian Lucille Griffi th states: "The Americans moved in because they
wanted land which they saw being unused. It was a sin and a crime…for the heathen
to be controlling idle land that Christians wanted to farm."
7
These settlers justifi ed the
expansion as part of the agricultural development which was a hallmark of early
America. This American involvement in the Creek Civil War was perpetuated by the
Creek Nation as a political and military force that threatened the stability of the region.
Further complicating the situation, the War of 1812 had brought Great Britain and her
ally, Spain, to threaten the United States. The Old Southwest was faced with British
armed Red Club warriors, adding to the threat they posed and reinforced the need for
swift intervention. More importantly, Jackson's personal intervention in the affairs of the
Native Americans served as a clear example of his desire to rid the region for American
settlement. Jackson's involvement in the conflict previews his policies of expansionism
into Native American lands which resulted in their forced removal on the Trail of Tears.
Predating the Creeks, the population of what is later Alabama, was the Mound-
Builder societies that fi rst encountered the Spaniard, Hernando de Soto as he
mercilessly hacked his way through the region in 1539. Their technological superiority
notwithstanding, the plagues they brought from Europe effectively destroyed the
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6
"Transcript of President Andrew Jackson's Message to Congress 'On Indian
Removal' (1830)
,
"
accessed November 4, 2018,
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?
flash=true&doc=25&page=transcript
.
7
Griffi th, "Alabama," 101.
ancient civilizations throughout the Old Southwest and left a much diminished, but
more recognizable Native American population in their place. While de Soto
succumbed to a fever and died near Arkansas or Louisiana near the Mississippi River,
his legacy of European violence and brutality established the precedent for relations
between the two cultures. Those tensions continued to rise into the eighteenth century
as settlers expanded into traditional Creek hunting grounds. Reprisal attacks by Creek
warriors furthered the cycle of violence. These continued to escalate and each side
was convinced the other was on the verge of
all-out
war. Through it all, the language
and cultural barriers remained with little effort for remediation. The differences between
European ideals of property and law, held little meaning to the Creeks who shared
amongst each other freely, as
Robert G. Thrower explains:
…the Creeks possessed few material goods in the fi rst half of the eighteenth
century. The primary emphasis was upon community, not individuality.
Selfi shness was a concept unheard of, as one white trader married to a Creek
woman discovered when she insisted on distributing all his trade goods freely
to her kin.
8
The unifi ed and powerful Creek Nation the whites envisioned was in reality, a
loose confederation of villages and chiefs that held council among themselves. Many
of their decisions were reactions to the brewing events as young warriors, seeking
prominence and scalps, attack the region's settlers as acts of bravado. Creek leaders
reacting to these incidents, sent war parties to execute the perpetrators to appease the
whites and maintain the peace. But leadership changes were common as different
chiefs curried favor in counsel. Further complicating matters, male traders who traveled
to the region took Creek wives as a way to gain protection and establish local
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8
Robert G
.
Thrower “Causalities and Consequences of the Creek War: A Modern Creek
Perspective,”
in
Tohopeka : Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812
, ed. by Kathryn E.
Holland Braund
(Tuscaloosa
: Pebble Hill Books, 2012
)
. eBook Collection, EBSCOhost.
connections to sell their wares. The children of these marriages formed the mixed-
blood leadership ranks inside the Nation during the
Creek War
. As this generation grew
accustomed to plantation life and amenable to the benefi ts of emulating their white
neighbors, they gained standing in both their new white community and the Lower
Creek tribes. Conversely, they continued to distance themselves from the traditional
Upper Creeks. During his presidency, Jefferson’s goal was to sell goods to the Native
Americans and “
when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they
become willing to lop th[em off] by a cession of lands
.” The stated intention was to tie
the various tribes that subscribed to the U.S government’s policies to ensure they were
wholly dependent and indebted. Adopting agriculture and raising livestock was
intended to create fi rm ties to the whites. By adopting agriculture and horticulture, male
Creeks now took on roles that had traditionally been devoted to the women of the tribe
and provided another point of contention with the Upper Creeks.
The U.S. plan to anglicize the Creeks was led by Benjamin Hawkins. Appointed
by President George Washington in 1796, Hawkins was sympathetic to the Creeks. His
actions earned him both adoration and hatred by both sides as his impact on the fate
of the Creeks was instrumental. Hawkins took up residence on the Georgia border with
the Creek Nation, which placed him nearest the Lower Creeks. He established a
plantation to grow crops and raise cattle, all supported by slave labor as an example to
train and encourage relations with his Lower Creek neighbors. Author
Benjamin Griffi n
Jr. describes how, “Hawkins fenced in two hundred acres and tried to ‘introduce
regular husbandry to serve as a model and stimulus for the neighboring towns who
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crowd the public shops here, at all seasons, when the hunters are not in the woods.’
"
9
However, the Upper Creeks, with their vast hunting grounds and continued close ties to
their Native traditions, saw no need to convert. The Upper Creeks viewed work
traditionally; tending to crops and raising livestock were viewed as tasks for women
and children, not meant for warriors. This affront on traditional gender roles was
unsettling. Combined with the zealous westward expansion and the tipping of the
balance of Creek political power towards the Lower Creeks formed the fi rst split
between factions inside the Nation. Hawkins, though he had their best interests at
heart and was an avid defender of the Creeks, had an unintentional direct impact on
sundering the Creeks. This was not enough to cleave these two sides, that came from
a former son of the Creeks, Tecumseh.
Despite brewing tensions, a war was not predestined. Not until the Shawnee
warrior, Tecumseh, traveled south from the Ohio Valley and incited the Creeks with his
vision for a unifi ed pan-Indian nation to stand against the Americans spreading into
their lands. Tecumseh encouraged Creeks to reject white ideals of property, to stop
drinking alcohol, and to return to their traditional ways. His message resonated deeply
with the Upper Creeks that had not benefi t from both the proximity and adoption of
agriculture and European values. Tecumseh also injected a new religious element that
spread through the Upper Creeks, emboldening them with magical powers of
protection against their foes. This religious fervor granted their leaders a new form of
political power and helped unify their people against the Lower Creeks and their
American allies.
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9
Benjamin W.
Griffi th.
1988. “McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders.” Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1988. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed
April 25, 2018), 5.
Tecumseh's mission was not the fi rst attempt to unify the
Native Americans
against the Europeans who started settling the Eastern Seaboard. Pontiac, an Ottawa
chief, raised forces in the aftermath of the French and Indian War (1763), in an effort to
unify the tribes to combat the British and curb their expansion into tribal lands.
Pontiac's devastating attacks on the
western
-
most
British forts pushed the English
back to the Atlantic. The fast-moving raids extended the Native Americans' supply
lines. The pace changed as Pontiac's forces advanced and turned into extended
sieges of the remaining forts, turning the route into a quagmire. The British mustered a
counter-attack that pushed Pontiac's forces back and the protracted nature of combat
over such distances forced him to negotiate for peace.
10
While Pontiac might not have
succeeded in his plans for a pan-Indian confederation, the outbreak of violence made it
clear the British government needed to stem the tide of settlers flowing over the
Appalachians heading west into Indian lands. The Proclamation Line of 1763 was
enacted and ended any further westward expansion. The Colonists, after fi ghting the
French for these lands, included this grievance in their message to the King when they
declared independence in 1776. Thomas
Jefferson, listing the transgressions of the
King in the Declaration of Independence, stated, "[h]e has endeavoured to prevent the
population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of
Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the
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10
Virginia, Mary E.
Pontiac (Tribal Chief)
.
(
Salem Press Encyclopedia
, 2015), 2p.,
https://
ezproxy.montevallo.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=ers&AN=99110071&site=eds-live.
The British contract Black Dog, a member of
the Peoria Indians and allies in Pontiac's alliance, to assassinate Pontiac. His death starts an a
tribal conflict.
conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
11
As the colonists become
Revolutionaries, the British enlisted their former Indian enemies in the fi ght and
encouraged the Native Americans to take up arms. British regiments, augmented by
Native Americans,
were
renowned for their brutality during the Revolution, a point of
contention Jefferson also cited in the Declaration. After the peace treaty was signed,
the Americans were free to rush past the Proclamation Line, enthusiastically claiming
the forbidden lands in the west.
The Great Comet of 1811 ominously preceded Tecumseh's arrival to the Creek
Nation. The event was signifi cant to the superstitious Creeks and only added to the
gravity was welcomed by the council. Tecumseh's journey south from the Ohio Valley
was only moderately received by the tribes that met the western border with the U.S.
After a rousing speech to the Creeks, Tecumseh was able to convince many tribal
leaders, notably many of the Upper Creeks, to join his cause of forming a pan-Indian
alliance. Tecumseh's arguments were still not enough to convince some hold-outs
who
argued their close ties to the U.S., economic benefi ts, or simple pragmatism was
reason enough to go to war with the U.S. Most of the naysayers were Lower Creeks.
However, for Upper Creeks, Tecumseh's message was a call to arms and a promise to
be armed by the British. Finding a receptive audience for his message and planting the
seeds for the religious revolution that accompanied his efforts, Tecumseh's departure
was also fortuitous. One holdout chief,
Pushmatha
, criticized Tecumseh and his
mission. The Shawnee warrior responded with, "
You do not believe the Great Spirit has
sent me. You shall believe it. I will leave directly and go straight to Detroit. When I get
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11
Thomas
Jefferson
. “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives and
Records Administration, 25 Sept. 2018, www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-
transcript.
