The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

XI. Attack on Fort Sinquefield

THE KIMBELL-JAMES MASSACRE. 179 was not in sight.. He was with him when the gun was fired, and was not hurt, and I hat Beem\:! to be the last certainly known of this child. Of his death or of his captivity among the Ind ians nothing was ever heard. Like the disappeara .nce of Ginevra of Modena, all that was ever known was the brief record that he was not. On the first day of September, 1813, that young Kimbell boy passed strangely out from the knowledge of all the white dwellers in Clarke. The young Isham KimbeH, finding himself alone, hurried on towards tbe stockade. Uncertain in regard to its direction, he walked up the inclined body of a prostrate pine to get a better view around him, but hearing Indi::tn voices on the roadway, he hast~ned down from his exposed position. He was soon met, almost exhausted as he now was, by Thomas Matlock and J·ohn O'Gwynn, who had heard the guns and left the stockade to reconnoitre; and they returned with bim to the fort. Of the onslaught at tbe Kimbell home, in the door yard, quick, savage, and merciless as it must have been, there were no witnesses, except the helpless victims and the Muscogees. Tbere was not much scattering of the families after the two men and the four children made their hasty retreat. The savage blows from clubs and tomahaws fell thick and fast. Scalps were removed, the domestic animals were killed, the house was pillaged, and in a short time the Muscogees were out of sight in the densely wooded region that bordered on the creek, leaving, of women and children, all supposed to be dead, fourteen bodies in tile house and door yard. It is 180 THE CREEK WAR. caid above, in a short time, and short it must have been, perhaps not more than twenty minutes, for Ransom Kimbell, away on horseback, hearing the guns, started for his home. He reached it in time only to find the work of death completed, and the Indians, like a destroying cyclone, gone, he knew not where. Seeing the fearful desolation at his lately peaceful home,sick at heart we may weH know, he, too, retired to the stockade. We might suppose that on his arrival there with his grief-laden report, a force would have immediately proceeded to the home spot to care for thedead. But the men were mostly absent at their plantations, and when they came in at night-fall, not knowing the number of the Indian band, nor how soon their stockade would be attacked, they were busy posting pickets and preparing for defense. So the dead were left in the care of God. Night and daykness came, and then a gentle rain. One of the scalped women, Mrs. Sarah Merrill , a daughter of Abner James, although struck senseless by a war club, was not dead. In the night, perhaps with the cool rain drops falling on her, she revived. Her thoughts were soon for her little child. There were two children in the house, of the same size and age, and how, in the darkness, among the bloody, dead bodies, could she recognize her own 1 The dress of one fortunately was fastened with buttons, the dress of the other only with strings.* This the mother well knew. She found her little one, a boy one year of age, and its body was *Authority: Mrs. Mf!XY Bettis. sister of Major W. J. Hearin, in lSS2 a commtlllion tnerchant in Mobile. Mrs. Bettla was born in 1804:, and was a womlln of " remarkable memo17. THE KIMBELL-JAMES MASSACRE. 181 yet warm. She nursed it for a few moments and it revived. Its short hair had saved it from being scalped, and, with her living child in her arms standing with difficulty upon her feet, she, too~ left that fearful spot, where there seemed to be no more life, and started slowly for the fort. At length, almost exhausted, she placed her child in a hollow log, and dragged herself along. In the early morning the inmates of the fort were startled by the slow approach of a feeble, scalped woman. Soon they recognized her, some went immediately for the child, and both mother and child lived. The remaining bodies of the dead were brought up the next day and buried near the...