The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread to discuss The Creek War (The Battle of Horseshoe Bend).

The War of 1812, March 27, 1814

In the early 1800s, the Upper Creek Indians (the Red Sticks) of present-day Georgia and Alabama were deeply troubled by the continuing encroachment of white settlers onto their lands. Tribal leaders counseled restraint and also urged neutrality in the developing rift between the United States and Britain. In 1811, however, the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh visited the southern tribes and urged formation of a confederation to end the diminishment of Indian lands and ways of life. He won many ardent supporters among the younger warriors.

When war erupted in 1812, a series of raids was launched against frontier farms and settlements, and losses were heavy. This regional sidelight to the War of 1812, known as the Creek War (1813-14) located in Attalla, reached crisis proportions in August 1813. Fort Mims, a small outpost north of Mobile, was overrun; warriors ignored pleas for restraint from their leader Red Eagle (also known as William Weatherford) and slaughtered more than 300 settlers and militia men.

Word of the "Fort Mims Massacre" was received by the ailing Andrew Jackson in Nashville. He was recuperating from a gunshot wound suffered in a brawl with Thomas Hart Benton. Jackson managed to raise a Tennessee militia force of more than 2,000 men and supplemented it with another 1,000 Lower Creek and Cherokee warriors. Beginning in the fall of 1813, Jackson's ill-trained force engaged the enemy in a series of indecisive battles. He stiffened the spines of his unreliable soldiers by executing several men who had panicked under fire. That action exerted an immediate salutary effect on the militia, but it would later be used by his critics in a number of political campaigns.

The campaign's conclusive battle was fought on March 27, 1814. It occurred near an Upper Creek village on a horseshoe-shaped bend in the Tallapoosa River near present-day Alexander City, Alabama. Jackson permitted the native women and children to cross the river to safety before he attacked. Then his men nearly wiped out the enemy force. Jackson wrote later that the carnage was "dreadful." The Upper Creek lost more than 550 killed, while Jackson's combined forces lost only 49.

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend was significant in several ways:

The power of the Upper Creek was broken and the brief Creek War came to a close. The tribe was forced to relinquish more than 23 million acres of their homeland and move farther west. Unfortunately for them, their suffering was not over; they would be pushed into the present western areas of Arkansas and Tennessee, and finally in the 1830s to Oklahoma, a land that held no appeal for their starkly diminished numbers.

Extremely rich lands taken from the tribes in Georgia and Alabama were quickly opened to white settlers. The area rapidly became a prime source of cotton, the engine of the Southern economy, and helped to revive the flagging institution of slavery.

Jackson's reputation began to take on legendary status during the Creek War. When his militia unit was disbanded, he received a commission as a major-general in the U.S. Army. Without authorization, he led his forces across the international boundary into Florida and seized a Spanish fort at Pensacola (November 1814). His superiors were infuriated, but the frontiersmen roared their approval. Soon thereafter, Jackson achieved national fame in a heralded victory over the British at New Orleans (January 1815).

Source: United States History

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h112...

Other Links:

1814- Battle of Horseshoe Bend

http://www.historycentral.com/1812/Ho...

Source: Historycentral.com

Horseshoe Bend by Robert V. Remini

http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/im/im0...

Source:

by Robert V. Remini

Battle for the Southern Frontier: The Creek War and the War of 1812

by Mike Bunn (no photo)

Synopsis:

This comprehensive book is the first to chronicle both wars and document the sites on which they were fought. It sheds light on how the wars led to the forced removal of Native Americans from the region, secured the Gulf South against European powers, facilitated increased migration into the area, furthered the development of slave-based agriculture and launched the career of Andrew Jackson.

An upcoming book:
Release date: December 15, 2015

A Paradise of Blood: The Creek War of 1813-14

by Howard T. Weir (no photo)

Synopsis:

In 1811, a portion of the Creek Indians who inhabited a vast area across Georgia, Alabama, and parts of Florida and Mississippi, interpreted an earth tremor as a sign that they had to return to their traditional way of life. What was an internal Indian dispute soon became engulfed in the greater War of 1812 to become perhaps the most consequential campaign of that conflict. At immediate stake in what became known as the Creek War of 1813-14 was whether the Creeks and their inconstant British and Spanish allies or the young United States would control millions of acres of highly fertile Native American land. The conflict’s larger issue was whether the Indian nations of the lower American South—the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw—would be able to remain in their ancestral homes.

Beginning with conquistador Ferdinand DeSoto’s fateful encounter with Indians of the southeast in the 1500s, A Paradise of Blood: The Creek War of 1813-14 by Howard T. Weir, III, narrates the complete story of the cultural clash and centuries-long struggle for this landscape of stunning beauty. Using contemporary letters, military reports, and other primary sources, the author places the Creek War in the context of Tecumseh’s fight for Native American independence and the ongoing war between the United States and European powers for control of North America. The Creek War was marked by savagery, such as the murder of hundreds of settlers at Fort Mims, Alabama—the largest massacre of its kind in United States history—and fierce battles, including Horseshoe Bend, where more Indian warriors were confirmed killed than in any other single engagement in the long wars against the Indians. Many notable personalities fought during the conflict, including Andrew Jackson, who gained national prominence for his service, Sam Houston, War Chief William Weatherford, and Davy Crockett. When the war was over, more than twenty million acres had been added to the United States, thousands of Indians were dead or homeless, and Jackson was on his way to the presidency. The war also eliminated the last effective Native American resistance to westward expansion east of the Mississippi, and by giving the United States land that was ideal for large-scale cotton planting, it laid the foundation for the Civil War a generation later. A Paradise of Blood is a comprehensive and masterful history of one of America’s most important and influential early wars.

Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815

by Frank Lawrence Owsley Jr. (no photo)

Synopsis:

Using American, British, and Spanish documents, many previously unknown, Frank Owsley's study establishes the Creek War and the struggle to control the Gulf borderlands as integral parts of the War of 1812. The war between the United States and a large part of the Creek nation is usually studied as local or regional history. These documentary sources, however, show the larger picture. They show Spain to have been a major influence in the Creek War and indicate the extent to which the British were aiding the Indians and using them to redirect American troops. On the other hand, Andrew Jackson, in charge of the American forces on the Gulf Coast, emerged from the conflict as a first-rate military commander. His victories on the Gulf gave the West a leader and aided in shifting political power from the eastern seaboard to the South and West.

Owsley concludes that the victories in the Gulf region were of sufficient magnitude to justify the claim that the War of 1812 was not a draw but a decisive American victory and that had there been a general of Jackson's caliber on the northern frontier, the United States might have had a clear-cut victory there. As a result of the war, the United States held its claim on Louisiana, annexed the Mobile district, forced Spain out of Florida, and broke the power of the southern Indians, thus opening vast lands for settlement from the new nation on the eastern seaboard.

Another upcoming book:
Release date: July 14, 2014

Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans

by Tom Kanon (no photo)

Synopsis:

Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815 by Tom Kanon tells the often forgotten story of the central role citizens and soldiers from Tennessee played in the Creek War in Alabama and War of 1812.

Although frequently discussed as separate military conflicts, the War of 1812 against Great Britain and the Creek War against Native Americans in the territory that would become Alabama were part of the same forceful projection of growing American power. Success in both wars won for America security against attack from abroad and vast tracks of new land in "the Old Southwest.” In Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815, Tom Kanon explains the role Tennesseans played in these changes and how they remade the south.

Because it was a landlocked frontier state, Tennessee’s economy and security depended heavily upon the river systems that traversed the region; some, like the Tennessee River, flowed south out of the state and into Native American lands. Tennesseans of the period perceived that gaining mastery of these waterways formed an urgent part of their economic survival and stability.

The culmination of fifteen years’ research, Kanon’s work draws on state archives, primary sources, and eyewitness accounts, bringing the information in these materials together for first time. Not only does he narrate the military campaigns at the heart of the young nation’s expansion, but he also deftly recalls the economic and social pressures and opportunities that encouraged large numbers of Tennesseans to leave home and fight. He expertly weaves these themes into a cohesive narrative that culminates in the vivid military victories of the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the legendary Battle of New Orleans—the victory that catapulted Tennessee’s citizen-soldier Andrew Jackson to the presidency.

Expounding on the social roles and conditions of women, slaves, minorities, and Native Americans in Tennessee, Kanon also brings into focus the key idea of the "home front” in the minds of Tennesseans doing battle in Alabama and beyond. Kanon shows how the goal of creating, strengthening, and maintaining an ordered society permeated the choices and actions of the American elites on the frontiers of the young nation.

Much more than a history of Tennesseans or the battles they fought in Alabama, Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815, is the gripping story of a pivotal turning point in the history of the young American republic.

Thank you Jerome.

Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812

by Kathryn E. Holland Braund (no photo)

Synopsis:

"Tohopeka" contains a variety of perspectives and uses a wide array of evidence and approaches, from scrutiny of cultural and religious practices to literary and linguistic analysis, to illuminate this troubled period.

Thanks for the Native American adds

Forging a Cherokee-American Alliance in the Creek War: From Creation to Betrayal

by Susan M. Abram (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Creek War of 1813–1814 is studied primarily as an event that impacted its two main antagonists, the defending Creeks in what is now the State of Alabama and the expanding young American republic. Scant attention has been paid to how the United States’ Cherokee allies contributed to the war and how the war transformed their society. In Forging a Cherokee-American Alliance in the Creek War, Susan M. Abram explains in engrossing detail the pivotal changes within Cherokee society triggered by the war that ultimately ended with the Cherokees’ forced removal by the United States in 1838.
 
The Creek War (also known as the Red Stick War) is generally seen as a local manifestation of the global War of 1812 and a bright footnote of military glory in the dazzling rise of Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s victory, which seems destined only in historic hindsight, was greatly aided by Cherokee fighters. Yet history has both marginalized Cherokee contributions to that conflict and overlooked the fascinating ways Cherokee society changed as it strove to accommodate, rationalize, and benefit from an alliance with the expanding American republic. Through the prism of the Creek War and evolving definitions of masculinity and community within Cherokee society, Abram delineates as has never been done before the critical transitional decades prior to the Trail of Tears.
 
Deeply insightful, Abram illuminates the ad hoc process of cultural, political, and sometimes spiritual transitions that took place among the Cherokees. Before the onset of hostilities, the Cherokees already faced numerous threats and divisive internal frictions. Abram concisely records the Cherokee strategies for meeting these challenges, describing how, for example, they accepted a centralized National Council and replaced the tradition of conflict-resolution through blood law with a network of “lighthorse regulators.” And while many aspects of masculine war culture remained, it too was filtered and reinterpreted through contact with the legalistic and structured American military.
 
Rigorously documented and persuasively argued, Abram’s award-winning Forging a Cherokee-American Alliance in the Creek War fills a critical gap in the history of the early American republic, the War of 1812, the Cherokee people, and the South.

Red Eagle and the Wars with the Creek Indians of Alabama 1812-1814

by George C. Eggleston (no photo)

Synopsis:

Red Sticks, White Sticks and the war in Alabama.

The Creek Indian War, also known as the Red Stick War, took place between 1813-1814 and has been considered by many historians as part of the War of 1812. The Creek-or Muscogee-Indians of Alabama were effectively waging a civil war among themselves. One militant faction, the so called Red Sticks, proposed an aggressive return to the traditional life of their forebears and an end to treaties with and concessions to pioneer settlers represented by the United States government. The White Sticks, opting for peace, inevitably took the opposing view. Although the conflict began as one between the indigenous Indians, American forces, under the soon to be famous Andrew Jackson among others, were drawn into the conflict because much of the animosity was focused on pioneer settlements. The conflict started in the usual manner of American Indian Wars-with the murder of settler families.

The inevitable revenge and retribution that followed-and an escalation of the kind of merciless savagery the Americans had come to expect-culminated in the massacre of 500 settlers, friendly Indians, mixed blood Creeks and soldiers at Fort Mims in an attack led by the Red Stick war leader, Red Eagle. Other forts were also attacked. Panic spread through the region exacerbated by the inability of the Federal government to provide ready aid since it was engaged against the British and their Indian allies to the east. As a consequence much of the fighting was undertaken by militias from Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi supported by White Stick allies.

National hero, Davy Crockett, also served in this conflict. The war ended in a victory for the Americans and put Andrew Jackson on a path to the presidency and the White House. It was a disaster for the entire Creek Indian tribe-irrespective of their allegiances-who paid for the conflict through the confiscation of vast tracts of their traditional lands.

An upcoming book:
Release date: April 25, 2023

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South

by Peter Cozzens

Synopsis:

The Creek War was one of the most tragic episodes in Indian history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on U.S. soil. What began as internal division between the Creek Indians metastasized like a cancer, weakening the tribes’ control, and allowing the government to forcefully remove Indians from their homes. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House. In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens vividly captures the young Jackson, describing a harsh military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a near perverse sense of honor and duty. Jackson never would have won the war without the help of Native American scouts who crossed over enemy lines, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, just as Jackson infamously did to the Cherokees many years later.

Spanning decades of conflict involving white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and Spanish, the Creek War brought white settlers to Alabama, Mississippi, and western Georgia, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

My goodness, Jerome! What a powerful book! Tremendous review, by the way! My TBR List is approaching the stratosphere … does Goodreads have a limit on this???
Regards,
Andrea

Jerome, thank you for the adds. And Andrea - thank you for your comments and posts.