The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

IX. Fort Mims

138 THE CREEK WAR. members of Dale's company. Ballard had fought with great bravery. Just before the final retreat, he was wounded in the hip. He was able to walk, but not fast enough to reach his horse, which in the meantime, had been appropriated by one of the fugitives . A few of the soldiers returned and successively made efforts to mount Ballard behind them on their horses, but the Indians pressed them so closely that this could not be done. Ballard told them to leave him to hisfate and not to risk theirown lives in attempting to save him. At last the Indians reached him, and for some moments, he held them at bay, fighting desperately with the butt of his musket, but he was soon overpowered and slain. Several Indians now sprang forward, scalped him and began to beat him with their war clubs. Two of the retreating soldiers, David Glass and Lenoir, saw this. Glass was afoot, Lenoir mounted. "Is your gun loaded," asked Glass of Lenoir. "Yes," was the reply. "Then shoot those Indians that are beating that man yonder." Lenoir hesitating, Glass quickly spoke, "Then lend me your gun." Exchanging guns, Glass then advanced a few paces and fired at two or three of the Indians whose heads happened to be in a line, and at the discharge one of them fell, as Glass supposed, slain or wounded. This was the last shot fired in the battle of Burnt Corn, which had lasted from about midday until about three o'clock in the afternoon. The Creeks pursued the whites nearly a mile in the open woods and nothing but their inability to overtake them saved the fugitives from a general slaughter. Pickett writes:" The retreat THE BATTLE OF BURNT CORN. 139 continued all night in the most irregular manner, and the trail was lined from one end to the other with small squads, and sometimes one man bv himself. The wounded travelled slowly, and often stopped to rest." Such was the result of the battle of Burnt Oorn, the first engagement in the long and bloody Oreek War. Most of the Oreek pack-horses, about two hundred pounds of powder and some lead was all the success the Americans could claim from this engagement. Their loss was two men killed. Ballard and Glass. Fifteen were wounded. Oaptain Sam. Dale, Lieutenant G. W. Oreagh, Lieutenant William Bradberry, shot in the calf of the leg; Armstrong , wounded in the thigh; Jack Henry, wounded in the knee; Robert Lewis, Alexander Hollinger, William Baldwin, and seven others whose names have not been preserved. The Oreek loss is not positively known. Oolonel Oarson, in a letter to General Olaiborne, written a few days after the battle, states that from the best information it was ten or twelve killed and eight or nine wounded. [25] As to the numbers engaged at Burnt Oorn, we know that the American force numbered one hundred and eighty. General Wood ward, in his Reminiscences, states, on the authority of Jim Boy, that the Oreek force was two-thirds less. He writes. •, Jim Boy said that the war had not fairly broke out, and that they never thought of being attacked; that he did not start [from Pensacola] with a hundred men, and all of those he did start with were not in the fight. I have heard Jim tell it often that if the whites had not stopped to gather up the pack- 140 THE CREEK WAH. horses, and had pursued the Indians a little further, they, the Indians, would have quit and gone off. But the Indians discovered the very great confusion the whites were in searching for plunder, and they fired a few guns from the creek swamp, and a general stampede was the result. McGirth always corroborated Jim Boy's statement as to the number of Indians in the Burnt Corn battle." The above, perhaps, may be regarded, in some measure, as the Creek version of Burnt Corn. If possession of the battlefield may be considered a claim to victory, then Burnt Corn may well be regarded a Creek victory After the battle, a part of the Red Sticks retraced their steps to Pensacola for more military supplies, and a partreturned to the nation. Their antagonists, ColonelCaller's troopers, were never reorganizedafter the battle. They returned home, in scattered bands, by various routes, and each man mustered himself out...