After the Massacre/Battle at Fort Mims, in August, 1813, militia in what is now Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee scrambled to respond. Andrew Jackson was placed at the head of 2500 Tennessee militia forces. They began constructing Fort Strother on the Coosa River near the Red Stick Creek village of Tallushatchie. Knowing that a sizeable force of Red Stick warriors were assembling in the town, Jackson ordered his friend, Col. John Coffee, to attack the town with a force of about 900 cavalry. Coffee arrived outside the town on November 3, 1813, divided his forces, and sent two companies toward the town as a lure to the warriors inside.
The idea worked. As the Creek men poured out of the village to attack the forward companies, the rest of Coffee's force entered the town, killing and burning indiscriminately. Blood was up and tempers high on both sides. The Settlers were angry over the incident at Fort Mims, the Creeks were angry at the encroachment on their land and the fact that the Settlers were daring to remove them from it. Men and even women stood at the doors of their homes, trying to prevent the killing of their families and the destruction of their village. Davy Crockett, who served as a scout with Coffee's forces later record that "we shot them down like dogs." Another veteran, Richard Keith Call, who would go on to face Osceola in the Second Seminole War, later said:
"The next morning after our march we entered the Indian village, and here I first saw the carnage of the battle field. I saw it in its worst aspect – when the hour of danger had passed, when I could excite no feeling or passion in my breast, to control my sympathy and sorrow for human suffering. It was to me a horrible and revolting scene – the battle had ended in the village, the warriors fighting in their board houses, which gave little protection against the rifle bullets or musket ball. They fought in the midst of their wives and children, who frequently shared their bloody fate. They fought bravely to the last, none asking or receiving quarter, nor did resistance cease until the last warrior had fallen. Humanity might well have wept over the gory scene before us. We found as many as eight or ten dead bodies in a single cabin, sometimes the dead mother clasped the dead child to her breast, and to add another appalling horror to the bloody catalogue – some of the cabins had taken fire, and half consumed human bodies were seen amidst the smoking ruins. In other instances dogs had torn and feasted on the mangled bodies of their masters. Heartsick I turned from the revolting scene. Very different seems the picture in the cool moment of inaction than in the excitement of battle – in the one – passion, the desire to triumph, and vengeance make demons, in the other as the brain becomes more composed, the pulse to beat less quickly, the heart resumes its sway – and it would be a relief to shed tears over the carnage around us – I remember an instant of a brave young soldier, who after fighting like a tiger until the engagement was over, fainted at the sight of the blood he had helped to spill." from Wikipedia.
Davy Crockett recalled an even grimmer memory from the day after this battle. Several Creeks had gathered into a large home or other structure which had been burned around them. Near or below the dwelling was a cellar in which were potatoes. Needing food, Coffee's forces divided up the potatoes and Crockett remembered that they were already cooked by the fires and from the grease of the bodies, but they had to eat the potatoes anyway, as there was no other food around. Coffee lost 5 killed and 41 wounded. Creek casualties weren't tallied up. As horrible as this was, and is, things were about to get a lot worse. Andrew Jackson would now enter the fight.
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