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CHAPTER 4

HEROES OF HORSESHOE BEND ...................SPRING 1814

Morning mists still shrouded Horseshoe Bend's colossal log ramparts at 10 o'clock on March 27, 1814. Andrew Jackson had never contemplated anything so formidable as Red Eagle's glowering fortress. He penned his observations of this Homeric bulwark in his journal: "Horseshoe Bend -- or Tohepeka to the Creeks -- is a 100 acre wooded peninsula jutting into the Tallapoosa River. A 350 yard inward curved breastwork of large tree trunks laid horizontally atop one another to a height of 5 to 8 feet with a double row of artfully arranged portholes seals off this neck of land and gives its defenders a deadly crossfire upon any advancing army. It is a place well secured by nature and rendered more secure by art -- an engineering feat unequaled in my experience by white men -- let alone savages."

General Jackson's spies said Red Eagle had amassed over 1,000 wild warriors from the Oakfusky, Newyouka, Hilla-bees, Fish Ponds and Eufaulas, exhorting them to a frenzy inside.

Jackson had 450 troops at Fort Strother and 450 securing Fort Williams to prevent severing of supply lines or getting surrounded. Today he led 2,200 soldiers and 300 Cherokees. Losing this battle was not an option with will-o-the-wisp enlistments where he mustered 130 men one day and 5,000 the next. If ever a field commander could see a war's victory in a single battle, it lay before him in the shifting mists, and by the eternal he would seize it!

Jackson's men dubbed him the "Iron General" after the mutineer's execution. With bone splinters -- which he sent home to Rachel -- piercing his left arm like porcupine quills and Benton's bullet against the bone, he could barely dress himself. Dickinson's ball abscessing his heart had him coughing blood. Dysentery cramped his entrails. He couldn't walk without his cane. "Iron General" indeed! To insure his men'd fight for him, he'd had "fight or die" orders read to them at dawn.

At 10:30 A.M. Jackson ordered his six pound and two pound cannon to breach the wall. Fifty feckless rounds fired from 80 yards barely knocked the bark off, so he had them lob twenty more at random into the compound without visible results. Sporadic musketry returned fire between cannon blasts.

Creek Medicine Men in bird plumage danced jerkily exhorting the sun to kill the invaders. Instead of having them shot, Jackson decided to put the fear o' God in them. He sent his interpreter to demand evacuation of women and children. When refugees fled the fortress, Jackson knew he had shattered their confidence with words, even if his shells had failed to batter down their wall. His aides wondered why he was smiling.

Preparing to attack the fortress from the rear, General Coffee ordered his Cherokees to build log breastworks along the Tallapoosa River bank. He pointed to the foggy Horseshoe Bend peninsula, motioning naked swimmers into the icy water to capture the Red Stick canoes, thwarting Red Stick escape from the rear of their fortress through the river.

Colonel Gideon Morgan and his men clambered into captured canoes led by Cherokee Dick Brown. Torch flaming in the bow of each canoe, they glided across the Tallapoosa, breaching the fortress's unprotected rear beach perimeter without firing a shot. Wending through the brush, they torched Creek wigwams.

Seeing black smoke over Morgan's diversionary force, Jackson ordered his cannoneers to roll their guns to the wall behind the infantry, then shrilled, "Storm the breastworks!"

The 39th Infantry charged, their battle cries smothered by murderous blasts from every gunport. Ramming their rifles through the gunports, they fired -- muzzle to muzzle -- with their enemy's balls welding to their bayonets. Bodies were blown back from both sides of the barrier.

Major Lemuel Montgomery climbed the wall shouting, "Follow..." but a skull-bursting bullet collapsed him onto Ensign Sam Houston scaling the breastworks. Sam lowered his dead comrade, then lunged among the Creeks. A long barbed arrow thunked into Houston's thigh. Young Sam yanked on the arrow till he nearly fainted from agony, but it hung fast.

Sam yelled to his Lieutenant, "Free me of this arrow!" Though the burly fellow pulled like a dray mule, the arrowhead clung in his flesh. Sam seized his sword, "Pull, damn you, or I'll run you through!" Thinking his Ensign mad, the Lieutenant ripped the arrow out. Sam's men hauled him over the wall to the surgeon's makeshift ward of strewn blankets.

General Jackson rode up as the surgeon stuffed rags into Sam's hemorrhaging gash, then bound it tightly. Never having seen the General at such close range, Sam was shocked at how fragile the prodigious warrior was -- like a fine China replica.

Jackson asked, "This officer fit for duty?"

"No!" the surgeon blurted, rushing to tend another.

Jackson peered down his thin nose. "What's your name?"

"Sam Houston, sir."

"Saw you breach that wall under fire. You got plenty o' sand. Press hard on your wound, you'll staunch it. Stay abed."

"Do we prevail?"

"Can't say yet, Ensign."

"Then I must respectfully disobey your order, Sir." Sam grabbed the General's stirrup, pulled himself to his feet and hobbled into the deafening battle.

Jackson marveled to himself, "Courage is all of it! Sam Houston's one officer I'll never court martial for cowardice. Would to God I had an army of them!"

Staring at Horseshoe Bend's smoky barrier bristling rifles bothered Joe Walker far more than getting the order to attack it.

Because of their enormous size and strength, the Walker boys vaulted the wall like flying shadows. Though Joe'd promised himself not to fight for the murderer of John Woods, his brother Joel and the Creeks left him no choice. Joel kept braining Red Sticks with his rifle butt. Joe, often back-to-back with his bearish brother, bashed Creeks senseless, astounded that such a brawl could endure all day.

Creeks in the brush unleashed swarms of arrows. When Joel caught one in his thigh, Joe bulled through the bushes after the archer, but he'd fled.

Returning, Joe shoved the arrow at an angle through Joel's massive thigh, then cut the head off and slipped the shaft back out. "Wanta see the surgeon?"

"Rip that corpse's shirt in strips, and bind my leg! I'll not let the surgeon cripple me when the Creeks can't," Joel growled.

Relentlessly, the Walkers among hundreds of other sol-diers crowded the Creeks against cliffs snarled with fallen trees and brush, then awaited the order to burn them out.

Hand to hand battles surrounded Sam Houston. Stagger-ing among them, Sam sabre-slashed one Creek after another.

Holed up under the part of their breastworks that roofed a ravine, Creeks directed murderous fire at their pursuers.

General Jackson yelled, "Lives of those who surrender will be spared," but begging no quarter, warriors replied with musketry. Jackson commanded, "Charge!" but no man headed into the holocaust.

Sam Houston seized a musket and limped toward them.

Astonished that one cripple would charge, the Creeks allowed Sam within five yards of their barrier before blasting two rifle balls into him. Sam beckoned to his men with his musket as he fell. On hands and knees he crawled toward the enemy.

Jackson screamed, "See those heathens defile that young Houston? Burn them out! Take no prisoners!"

Rifle fire ripped the ravine. Where fierce braves had stood scowling death down minutes before, painted corpses sprawled in swirling smoke.

Joe Walker seized Sam Houston, carrying him to an exhausted surgeon sitting numbly among his dead and dying in the growing darkness. Able to feel both rifle balls in Sam Houston's body, the surgeon clawed one out with his fingers. When he was sure Sam Houston could hear him, the surgeon mumbled, "No need to torture you with the scalpel. Your right arm and shoulder are shattered. You'll not live till morning."

Young Joe Walker grated, "Surgeon's flat wrong, Sam! You were poetry and honor on the battlefield, like you said you'd be. You will see sunrise tomorrow! You're too damn brave to die. I'll roost here with you."

With Joe Walker dozing beside him, Sam hung on through the night. Barely alive next morning, Sam Houston went with other litter cases to Fort Williams.

The Walkers couldn't see Sam off because of their un-speakable chore. The Iron General ordered his men to sever each Creek corpse's nose for an unimpeachable count of enemy dead. Joe'd heard of counting noses, but not like this.

By dusk March 28th, 557 noses were tallied, but at least 300 more uncounted Creeks had been shot in the Tallapoosa and washed down stream. Andrew Jackson was saddened to learn he had 49 dead soldiers, 23 dead friendlies and 154 wounded -- but still deemed Horseshoe Bend the crowning victory of his career. He ordered his dead weighted and sunk in the Tallapoosa, so the Creeks could not mutilate them. Somebody found dead Creek prophet Monahee shot in the mouth by grapeshot. Jackson noted that in his report, adding: "...as if Heaven designed to chastise his impostures by an appropriate punishment. 300 captives were taken -- all but 4 women and children, but Red Eagle was neither found nor taken. I want his head as tribute for the massacre at Fort Mims."

Perhaps Jackson would have to battle the Creeks again at their sacred Hickory Ground, but he'd rest his men beforehand.

While returning to Fort Williams, Jackson ordered Creek villages sacked and burnt, sending his once brazen enemies screaming in all directions. His scorched earth return from Horseshoe Bend forced starving Creeks to throw down their weapons. Joe Walker couldn't believe he was burning lodges of women and children, but orders were orders, and he was not going to stand in front of some wall to save the Red Sticks.

Warriors fled to Florida to join their British patrons, sure their vengeance would one day find this fiendish assassin of the Creek Nation.

On April 5th, after resting the troops for a few days, Jackson captured the sacred Hickory Ground of the Creeks at the fork of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers, collapsing all Creek resistance.

On April 14, 1814, Andrew Jackson wrote his darling Rachel: "I have burnt the Verse Town this day that has been the hot bed of the war and regained all scalps taken from Fort Mims...."

Having brought every Creek tribe along his march to their knees, Jackson lofted the American Flag over the Hickory Ground on April 18, 1814. To dramatize their defeat, Jackson renamed their holy place Fort Jackson. Hostiles surrendered in swarms, accepting the Iron General's terms that they settle north of Fort Williams far from the British orbit in Florida.

On April 20th, Jackson refused to permit the last three Creek Chiefs peaceful surrender until they presented Red Eagle bound hand and foot. Fearing death, they fled Fort Jackson.

Next morning lithe, sad-eyed Red Eagle dressed as a farmer sauntered into Fort Jackson. Meeting Andrew Jackson, Red Eagle said quietly, "I am in your power. Do with me as you will. I am a soldier -- actually of the same blood as you when I am called William Weatherford."

Jackson growled, "Had you appeared trussed up, I'd have known how to treat you!"

"Treat me as a surrendering soldier. I fought bravely. Had I an army, I would yet fight. But I cannot animate the dead. Their bones are at Talladega, Tallusahatchee, Emuckfaw and Tohopeka. Had I been left to fight only the Georgia army, I could have raised my corn on one bank of the river while I fought them on the other. But you have destroyed my nation."

Jackson snarled, "Tell me why I should not provide you the same brutal death, you dealt our babies at Fort Mims!"

"Because you are a brave man, I rely upon your generosity as victor over the vanquished. I will make my Chiefs obey you, granting you absolute power over my fallen nation."

Andrew Jackson's nod agreed his captive could prove useful. Grudgingly he admitted, "It took a cougar's courage to walk into this fort swarming with Americans whose only desire is to gut you. Since we're both Scotch-Irish, I remind you of our ancient Scottish prayer, Lord, grant that I may always be right for Thou knowest I am hard to turn. Though I'm amazed at myself, your eloquence has turned me. Return north with us tomorrow -- you'll be free to farm there. One sortie as a hostile will cost you your head."

"So be it," William Weatherford agreed.

Joe Walker watched in profound disbelief as Red Eagle strolled off down the dusty lane. How could Jackson kill a boy soldier over a petty dispute, then free the butcher of 500 men, women and babies?

****

Jackson marched his men with expiring enlistments home for discharge. Reaching Fayetteville, Tennessee in mid-May, Jackson addressed his soldiers in what was a well plowed field before they trampled it. "Your General salutes and compliments you! You deserve your country's undying gratitude, for within a few months you have annihilated a nation that for 20 years has scourged your peace and that of your people....The bravery you have displayed on the field of battle..."

Joseph Rutherford Walker eyed brother Joel's face aglow with the General's praise. But Joe knew two others should be in their ranks. One was bravest of the brave, Sam Houston, thrown away like a broken toy. The other was John Woods, murdered to make his fellows well behaved murderers. If Joel re-enlisted, that was his business. But Joe was going home. He'd fought the greatest battles of the Creek War, sharing a victory that gave him more questions than answers. He'd hug Marm, keep his mouth shut and try to live out his days without ever killing another man.

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