The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

VIII. The Battle of Burnt Corn

120 THE CREEK WA.B. CHAPTER VII. INTER-TRIBAL COUNCILS OF TH~} CREEKS AND THE CHOCTAWS . THE Creek confederacy, in undertaking wal' against the Federal Government, was entering upon a conflict, tha.t, for disparity of numbers and resources, never had a parallel in the annals of sav&.ge warfare. However little the ignoraut and deluded warriors may have reflected over the magnitude of this undertaking, the wiser of their chiefs knew that the confederacy, even with British and Spanish aid, could not successfully cope with the Federal power, unlestl they secured the alliance of the powerful nation of the Choctaws on their western border. Many efforts were made to accomplish this object. It was at some period in July that a. council was held between the two nations, at or nearthe present town of Pushmataha, in Choctaw County, Alabama. The Choctaws were chiefly represented by Pushmataha , Moshulitubbee, and Ruanna Mingo. It is not known what Creek chiefs represented the confederacy . During the conference there were regular communications between the Choctaws and the whites, then in the fort at Winchester. About mid- \vay between the two places, lived a citizen, a white man, named Robert McLaughlin. Every event occurring at the council was conveyed to MeLaugh- INTER-TRIBAL COUNCILS. 121 lin by a Ohoctaw messenger, and thence by McLaughlin through a white messenger to the whites at Winchester. The council lasted several days, the Oreeks urging the Ohoctaws to join them in war against the whites, the Ohoctaws, on the contrary, contending for peace and appealing to their national tradition that they had never shed the blood of white men in war and they must not begin it now. Pushmataha was the principal speaker on the part of the Ohoctaws. It is said that he spoke the greater part of two days endeaToring to dissuade the Oreeks from war. The council at last terminated with the Or1leks bent on war, and the Choctaws firmly resolved that they would not co-operate with them in the impend· ing conflict. A tradition states that another attempt was likewise made by the Creeks to secure the alliance of at least a portion of the Choctaw people by means of a conference which Weatherford and another Muscogee chief, named Ochillie Hadjo, had with Mingo Moshulitubbee. But it, too, resulted in failure. It can not now be determined whether this conference occurred before or after the inter-tribal cotlncil, of which we have given some account above. Both history and tradition agree that much interest was manifested by the Choctaws in the war impending with the Creek confederacy, and that they were resolved to maintain their peaceful relations with the Americans. During this exciting period, before the actual clash of arms had begun, councils were held at various places in the Ohoctaw nation, in which the most noted Mingoes made talks expressing their sympathy for the American cause 122 THE OREEK WA.N. and urging upon their warriors the duty of living at peace with the whites; and in every council was iterated the national tradition that the Ohoctaws had never shed the blood of white men in war. No apprehension of Ohoctaw hostility was felt by the frontier people living along the Ohoctaw border, in the old counties of Wayne and Hancock. It is true that there were two forts built in Wayne county, Patton's Fort, at Winchester, and Roger's Fort, seven miles above. But the whites had taken temporary shelter in these forts, not on account of their Ohoctaw neighbors, with whom they lived daily in perfect concord, but from the fear of a possible inroad from the dreaded Oreek warriors to the east of the Tombigbee. But the case was somewhat different in the fork of the Tombigee and Alabama, where the people lived on the border of the Oreek nation. Some solicitude prevailed there, for a brief period. among the new settlers in regard to Ohoctaw fidelity. The older settlers, however, who had been acquainted with the Ohoctaws for many years, did not share in this solicitude, but were confideht ·that the Ohoctaw people would not deviate from that long-tried and unwavering friendship, which they had ever manifested toward the Americans. Had the Ohoctaws united with the Oreeks at the inception of the war of 1813, as has been truly said, in less than thirty days, the whole Southern frontier would have been drenched in blood; and the...