A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814

7. A Country Given Up

General Claiborne struggled to retaliate militarily against the Redsticks, while defending his honor in the press. He and his counterparts in Tennessee and Georgia, Andrew Jackson and John Floyd, had long planned a three-pronged invasion of the Creek nation if a provocation should occur. This bold, surprise attack into U.S. territory against federalized militia ending in a massacre of civilians more than quali¤ed as a legal basis for war against the Redstick Creeks. But major practical problems faced these three state and territorial Volunteer generals. Volunteers were called up for varying terms of service. Some served for twelve months, but militia enlistment often lasted just three months (and in some cases only 60 days), which left little time for equipping, training, and bringing force to bear against the enemy before an army dissolved with the expiration of enlistment. Service-grade weapons, equipment, and supplies were hard to come by everywhere in a United States ill-prepared for war on multiple fronts. And coordinating plans between American armies on opposite sides of the Creek nation proved extremely dif¤cult. Limited communications were maintained across that hostile terrain by a few daring express riders who risked their lives to carry dispatches and orders on the Federal Road and the many less-traveled paths crisscrossing an interior Southeast hostile to Americans. Among the ¤rst to carry the terrible news of Fort Mims to Benjamin Hawkins in Georgia was Barney O’Riley, an Irish-Creek métis, who rode into the Creek Agency on September 16, more than two weeks after the battle. Word had somehow reached O’Riley in the Lower Creek towns along the Chattahoochee , perhaps by way of a coastal ship calling near the mouth of the Apalachicola River. A second express delivered a packet of letters overland from Judge 8 Trying Times, 1813–1814 Toulmin and General Claiborne on the twenty-¤rst, followed by the arrival of a third rider, Zachariah McGirth, on September 26.1 For two decades McGirth had led a liminal existence, straddling two worlds before ¤nding a comfortable niche with his métis wife and their children in the Tensaw. Witnessing ¤rsthand the destruction wrought by the Redsticks at Fort Mims con¤rmed in him the belief that all his family had died. As he steered his ®atboat that night through the Spanish moss–festooned waterways of the delta, leaving in his wake the emotional ruins of a life lived with Indians , McGirth must have committed his entire being to the destruction of his enemies. At Fort Stoddert he signed up for this most hazardous of duties, although he did not intend to commit suicide. As a longtime resident of the Creek nation, an “Indian countryman,” McGirth knew well how to survive in this treacherous landscape. “To preserve his life & ful¤ll his of¤ce,” McGirth’s relative Robert James recalled, “he painted himself like a hostile warrior & shaved his head. Mounted upon a good horse with 3 pecks of shelled corn for his animal & 2 quarts of cold ®our for himself, this fearless man solitary & alone persued his journey.”McGirth successfully completed the ride to Georgia and back at least four times, carrying communications in late September and late October 1813 and again in January and May 1814. On his ¤rst mission he learned from Hawkins that his wife and daughters still lived, as captives of the Redsticks. He would survive to free his family and see his enemies vanquished .2 Guerrilla Warfare in the Forks As American leaders gathered forces for an invasion and Redstick leaders forti ¤ed defensive strongholds, skirmishing continued in the contested lands on either side of the lower Alabama River. This ground formerly farmed by the Tensaw métis and their American neighbors still held tempting ¤elds of unharvested corn and sweet potatoes needed desperately by refugees on both sides of the con®ict. Several hundred Redstick warriors and their families (led at least nominally by William Weatherford) occupied this region in late September and early October, systematically gleaning abandoned ¤elds and dispatching canoe loads of victuals to towns upriver. This force intermittently clashed with white farmers and their African slaves intent on the same task, with losses to both sides. As Claiborne prepared to move north, the pace and scale of con-®ict abruptly rose. 160 / Chapter 8. Redstick tactics involved harassment of American militia units in the Forks. When a party of 25 mounted militiamen commanded...