The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

I. The Choctaw-Muscogee Tribes

INTRODUOTION. Amerioan history, as oonnected with Indian border warfare, the authors of this work believe will be given more accurately and fully than has ever been done before. They propose to do justice to the Indians and justice to the whites. For this portion of history they hope to make this work an authority. And for this they suggest the possession of some special fitness; H. S. Halbert is a member of the State Historical Societiesof Alabama and Mississippi. He was born in Alabama, and was, in a great measure, educated by the late Dr. J. H. Eaton, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He spent a portion of his early manhood in Indian campaigns on the western frontier, where he became familiar with the sight of the wild warrior with his bow and quiver, his paint and feathers; and thel'e he conceived an abiding interest in the strange history and destiny of the American Indians. He has also been not a little among the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. After four years of service in the Confederatearmy, he was for a number of years engaged in teaching in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama . While pursuing his profession in the two latter states he devoted much of his leisure to historical researches. He visited the homes and interviewed some surviving soldiers and contemporaries of the Creek war of 1813 and noted down their varied recollections, thereby collecting much new materia.l for the history of that war. He was especially fortunate in securing from theseaged survivors a full account of the attack on Fort Sinquefield, of which only a meagre sketch is recorded in the histories of Meek and Piokett. INTRODUCTION. For a number of years past he has been engaged in educational work among the Ohoctaws of Mississippi ,with whose language. customs,and traditions he is familiar. From theimmediate descendants of some of Pushmataha's warriors he bas been enabled to rescue from oblivion a numberof incidents in the career of that noted Mingo, and many facts in regard to Tecumseh's Southern visit. He has, in short, been interested largely for years in studies and investigations connected with the Southern Indians, and has visited in person and examined with care the Burnt Corn and Holy Ground battlefields. The Alabama Historical Reporter for January, 1885, said: "Mr. H. S. Halbert is now doing more than any man in the South, perhaps, in collecting everything connected with the Southern Indians in the shape of history, tradition, romance, legend, etc." T. H. Bull had an early home in the state of Georgia, before 1833, not fat' from the Savannah River, and learned some of the custom8 and ways of the South; but in 1837, when eleven years of age, his home was transferred to the then almost untenanted solitudes of Northwestern Indiana (where the great prairie region of the West joined the woodland growth that extended to the Atlantic) and to the banks of a beautiful lake in the region then but lately occupied by the Pottawatomie Indians, some thirty-six miles from the old Fort Dearborn of Lake Michigan, some seventy-two miles from the Tippecanoe battle ground. He gained in those years of boyhood some knowledge of the Indians-Indians that had been associated with French missionaries and with fur traders-as he saw them in their wig- INTRODUCTION. wams, on their ponies, in their large birch-bark canoes, and when returning from the chase, and took a deep interest in Indian history and in pioneer and hunter life. His young footsteps followed the wild game and his rifle secured it where his almost immediate predecessors had been Indian hunters. From 1851 to 1855 he resided as a teacher in Olarke county, Alabama, and was there again no small part of the time in 1859 and 1860, and from 1874 to 1883. With the region around the old Fort Sinquefield he became thoroughly familiar, examined carefully the location of Fort Madison and Fort Glass, saw the location of Fort White, and became well acquainted with all that early center of white settlement and of once crowded stockades. Eggleston relies much upon Meekfor localities and for facts in Clarke county, saying that he was familiar with that region. But neither Meek, nor even Pickett, seems to have had any personal knowledge of that fifteen hundred square miles of area now constituting Clarke county, Alabama. No other writer on this portion...