David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [60]
While Crockett enjoyed his respite at home away from the death and destruction of war, Jackson and his troops continued to pursue and battle the Creeks until their deathblow, on March 27, 1814. Consequently, Crockett missed taking part in the most decisive engagement of the entire Creek campaign. On that date, Jackson and his Tennessee militia, augmented with regular infantry and a contingent of Cherokees and allied Creeks, crushed the hostile Red Sticks at Tohopeka, a fortified stronghold at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River in the heart of Creek country.1 The battle raged all day, but the Creeks, behind the breastworks, could not stem Jackson’s forces.
One of the first soldiers to scramble over the wall into the village was a bold lieutenant from Tennessee named Sam Houston. He was an adventurous young man who had run away from home at sixteen and was adopted into a Cherokee chief’s family. Houston spent a year living with the Cherokees, who gave him the name Colonneh—“the Raven.”2 In 1813, Houston was teaching in a log schoolhouse not far from the Tennessee town of Maryville, where he was known to have purchased powder and shot for his Indian friends. Badly in debt and pleased his beloved Cherokees had allied with the United States in the fight against the British and the Creeks, Houston received his mother’s blessing and joined the army. He left with the gold ring and musket she gave him and a silver dollar enlistment bonus in his pocket.3
At Horseshoe Bend, Houston was shot in the groin with an arrow, which he asked a fellow lieutenant to remove. When the man tried but failed, Houston brandished his sword and bellowed out a threat, causing the perplexed officer to rip out the barbed arrow and along with it a hunk of flesh and a torrent of blood. Ordered by Jackson to remove himself from the battle, Houston soon took up a musket and returned to the fray, only to be struck twice by bullets to his shoulder and arm. Despite the loss of blood, Houston somehow survived, but the wound from the arrow never completely healed and bothered Houston for the rest of a long and illustrious life.4
As doctors worked on Houston at Horseshoe Bend, the volunteers and regulars fought on until they had slaughtered almost the entire enemy force. No quarter was asked for and no quarter was given. The Red Sticks fought on in desperation. Finally, the killing stopped at nightfall, with more than nine hundred Creeks dead on the ground or floating in the river. Jackson’s victorious combined force, including friendly Creek and Cherokee allies, amounted to about seventy dead and two hundred wounded.5 Jackson ordered his slain soldiers to be sunk in the river so they could not be scalped. In the meantime, some of the victorious troops sliced off the tip of each dead Creek’s nose to keep an accurate body count, while others cut long strips of skin from the backs of the corpses to be dried and made into bridle reins.6
The Battle of Horseshoe Bend earned the dubious distinction as the most devastating defeat of native people in the history of North America. “The carnage was dreadful,” Jackson, not known for his sympathy for Indians, wrote on April 14 to his wife, Rachel, at the Hermitage. He went on to describe the engagement as “this day that has been the hot bed of the war, and has regained all the Scalps, taken from Fort Mims.”7 Jackson and his soldiers had not forgotten the cry “Remember Fort Mims!” Likewise, the Creek people never forgot Horseshoe Bend, where they had felt the brutal blade of “Sharp Knife.”
Over a month later, on May 28, as a reward for his success against the Creeks, Jackson was commissioned a major general