Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/420

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
404
COLONIZATION

could be no peace with the Indians. These are the causes that called forth Black-Hauk from the Ouisconsin, with the Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes; that roused the Little-Turtle, with his Miamies, and many other chiefs and tribes, to inflict bloody retribution on their oppressors, but finally to be compelled themselves only the sooner to yield up their native lands. These are the causes that, operating to the most southern point of the United States, armed the great nations of the Seninoles, the Creeks, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees; and have made famous the exterminating campaigns of General Jackson, the bloody spots of Fort Mimms, Autossee, Tippecanoe, Talladega, Horse-shoe- bend, and other places of wholesale carnage. At Horse-shoe-bend, General Jackson says—"determined to exterminate them, I detached General Coffee with the mounted and nearly the whole of the Indian force, early in the morning (March 27, 1814), to cross the river about two miles below their encampment, and to surround the Bend, so that none of them should escape by crossing the river."

"At this place," says Drake, "the disconsolate tribes of the South had made a last great stand; and had a tolerably fortified camp. It was said they were 1000 strong." They were attacked on all sides; the fighting was kept up five hours; five hundred and fifty-seven were left dead on the peninsula, and a great number killed by the horsemen, in crossing the river. It is believed that not more than twenty escaped! "We continued," says the brave General Jackson, "to destroy many of them who had concealed themselves under the banks of the river, until we were prevented by the night!"