The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

Appendix

290 THE OREEK WAR. not care to meet. But perhaps there were stronger reasons. They had learned something of the exaction of justice by the whites in the Meredith and Lott and Duck River tragedies; and now that they had, beyond their own expectation, contrary to the wishcertainly ofsome ofthem, inonesingle day swept off five hundred who could be classed, mostly, as Americans,they were,perhaps,startled, as they looked for\vard to the results. As the chiefs, the leaders, those who knew the Americans best, looked back upon Fort Mims, it seems probable they did not wish any further to incur the vengeance of the whites, they scarcely wished themselves to engage in such another butchery. Reasons of some sort there must have been. why Weatherford, if he was what the historIans claim him to have been, did not lead his warriors across the Alabama. Is it not more than possible that Weatherford, who had joined the war party reluctantly, and many others like him, were already sick of the strife? S. Putnam Waldo, in his memoirs of Andrew Jackson, published in 1818, bears down very heavily on Weatherford. He saysthat after the battle of the Holy Ground, "Weatherford continued to fight with the rage of a fanatic, the fury of a demon, and the diabolical ferocity of a devil incarnate, until saturated with the blood of Americans." Such was not the Alabama Weatherford. He was for a short time at Fort Mims; he defended the Holy Ground so long as he could; and where else did he fight. 1 Weatherford was not thirsting for American blood. After August 30th he waited nearly four months, till CONCLUSION. 291 attacked in his place of fancied security December 23d, without striking a blow. The other question that comes up is this: September having passed and October having passed, and no great acts of hostility having been committed by the war party of the Creeks, was it really needful and was it fitting that such a destructive campaign, almost to the verge of extermination of the war party of the nation, should have been visited upon them in November and December and January and March? Did the Fort Mims tragedy, provoked surely by the Burnt Corn action, justify that fearful retribution ~ And if, when the circumstances are considered, Fort Mirns hardly justified the shedding in return of so much Creek blood, was it justice to require such an amount of land from the Creeks to pay the expenses , as claimed, of that subjugating war ~ Alas I We do not find that golden thread of an even-handed justice. And what did Jackson mean in his letter to Claiborne by those "ulteriorobjects" which he thought might be "within the contemplation of Government ? " There were land claimb, and conflicting claims there had been, in the Mississippi Territory. Georgia had claimed, as granted by Charles II, king of England , all the land between the Savannah and the Mississippi rivers and between latitude 310 and latitude 35°, and this, so far as Charles was concerned, without regard to Indian rights. Congress bought, at length, the claim of Georgia for one million and a quarter of dollars. Was the Government looking forward to securing a more full title to some of this land 1 Since the first set.tlements on the Atlantic 292 THE OREEK WAR. coast it has been true that many of the whites have always wanted the Indian lands, their hunting grounds, even their burial places; they are wanting their very reservations now. Indian wars end in the extinction of Indian titles to land, and it may well be feared that this is an "ulterior" object underlying many of these wars.* We reach now,in our review,havingalready implied it and looked at it,the fact of the war waged against the Oreeks, in which the larger part of their three thousand hostile warriors seem to have perished. And the conclusion reached here is, that the" Oreek War," as waged by the whites against the Creeks, was out of all fair proportion as compared with the "Oreek War" as waged by the Oreeks against the whites. Burnt Oorn, Tallussahatchee, Talladega, the Hillabee massacre, Autossee and Talassee, the Holy Ground, and Tohopeka, outweigh the few aggressive acts committed by the Creeks, before the war opened, the blood shed in Clarke, and Fort Mims. It was surely not all justice that influenced the movements...