Friday Reprise: William Weatherford of the Creek

We've covered the Creek War of 1814 in an earlier post, including the courage of Creek Leader William Weatherford (1781-1824) in surrendering to Andrew Jackson by walking unarmed and alone into his camp.  Now, we'll focus more closely on this extraordinary man who is still an Alabama legend.

William Weatherford was born into the complicated network of the Wind Clan's Sehoy dynasty.  His mother was Sehoy III, the daughter of Sehoy Marchand and a subsequent husband Charles Weatherford, a well-to-do Scottish trader.  Among his cousins were Creek leaders Alexander McGillivray and William McIntosh.  His nephew, David Moniac, whom we've also run across, would become the first Native cadet to graduate West Point.  William Weatherford was connected both in White society and in Creek, but his heart rested with his mother's people.  He excelled at the qualities expected of a young Creek man of high status, including stick ball, riding, weapons, hunting and leadership.  According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, his Native names were either Hoponika Fulsahi (Truth Maker) or Billy Larney (Yellow Billy).  The name Red Eagle (Lamochattee) was a later intervention.  However, several websites of Weaterford and Sehoy descendants refer to him as Red Eagle.  As it may be that he was given several names at different stages of life, Red Eagle might have been one.  His family would know best. 

Red Eagle's first exploit was as a member of the Creek War party who captured William Augustus Bowles, in 1801.  Both Alexander McGillivray and Benjamin Hawkins, the United States Indian Agent, believed that Bowles' antics in trying to create an independent Stat of Muscogee were doing more harm than good.  In addition to his qualities as a warrior, Weatherford was a successful businessman, planter and horse breeder.  These activities and his family connections would seem to put him in the White Stick Creek faction, Lower Creek families who had significant connections in the White world and believed that assimilation was the key to peaceful co-existence.  As the War of 1812 loomed and tensions within the Creek tribe increased about whether to stay neutral or support either the British or Americans, Weatherford was in favor of neutrality.  That changed when United States forces attacked an Upper
 Creek party smuggling guns from Spanish agents in Florida at the Battle of Burnt Corn Creek in July, 1813. 

Weatherford joined a growing party of Red Stick Creek leaders who carried out the assault on Fort Mims on August 30, 1813, and here is where controversy starts.  Over 500 people were slaughtered by the Red Stick forces at Fort Mims.  While some of these were soldiers under arms, many were White Settlers, mixed race Creeks of the White Stick faction, and slaves, either of the families or free people of color.  Some sources and family history claim that Weatherford tried to stop the slaughter.  Other sources indicate that he joined in with a vengeance.  This incident would be thrown in his face for the rest of his life.  Weatherford was now committed to the fight and his followers fortified the village of Econochaca, or Holy Ground.  In late December 1813, forces under General Ferdinand Claiborne assaulted the town.  Weatherford oversaw the evacuation of the women and children, then led a fighting retreat against the American forces.  At the last available moment, he jumped his horse over a bluff into the Alabama River and escaped in a hail of gunfire.

More warriors flocked to the Red Stick cause, until he commanded nearly 1,300 men, facing a force of roughly that same size along the Tallapoosa River near Calabee Creek.  The two sides fought to a draw before the Red Sticks retreated.  Sources differ as to whether Weatheford was at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, March 27, 1814, with some indicating that Weatherford again fought a rear guard action to protect the fleeing Creeks after their defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson, and others questioning whether he was present at all.  After this disaster, many Creeks decided to flee and join the Seminoles in Florida. Weatherford with about 200 warriors decided to stay in Alabama.  Knowing that the war was over for his people, Weatherford turned himself in at Fort Toulouse, now renamed Fort Jackson.  According to family tradition, his words to Jackson were, "My warriors no longer hear my voice.  Their bones are at Talladega, Tallusahatchee and Tohopeka.  I ask for peace for my nation and for myself."  Jackson was impressed with Weatherford's bravery and his family's prominence in the area and let him go.

But there were plenty of other voices calling for his arrest an execution for the disaster at Fort Mims.  And, Jackson had his own price to exact.  Weatherford used his influence with other Red Stick holdouts to persuade them to lay down their arms, and took the field against them when they did not.  Due to his family's influence with White officials in the territory, and his cooperation with Jackson, he was not arrested, but he was effectively out of public life.  Weatherford retired to his plantation, cared for his family and business interests, but no longer took an active part in Creek affairs. 

Great Leader: Peter McQueen of the Creek

Behind every great man or iconic hero is, not only a great woman, but also a mentor and inspiration.  The remarkable life story of Osceola began in the crucible of the Creek War (1813-1814) and he would've have plenty of powerful examples to draw on when his time came to take up his people's struggle.  One was his own great-uncle, Red Stick leader Peter McQueen (1780-1820).

Peter was born in Tallassee, on the Tallapoosa River in Alabama,  a town known for producing leaders among the Muscogee/Creek.  His father, Alexander McQueen, was a Scots trader, and his mother was a Creek woman with status in her society that she could pass on to her children.  Peter and his sister Ann were both leaders in their own right.  It was Ann who whose daughter Polly was the mother of William (Billy) Powell, the boy who would become Osceola.  In Creek society, the men of the mother's family provided the warrior training and mentored their nephews, sponsoring their introduction to men's society within the tribe.  If Polly did not have brothers, the next logical one to provide such training and mentorship to young Billy would've been his great-uncle, who was both a war leader and a prophet/visionary. 

Though the majority of Creeks, known as White Sticks, disregarded Tecumseh's pan-Indian movement, there were some among the Upper Creek towns who favored traditional ways and less coexistence with Whites.  They were known as Red Sticks, for the ceremonial painting of their war clubs with red, the color for war.  Peter McQueen, Josiah Francis, William Weatherford and Menawa were among a group of young war leaders who responded enthusiastically to Tecumseh's message and sought assistance from the Spanish and British to repulse American expansion on Creek land, and to oppose leaders such as William McIntosh who favored conciliation with the Americans. 

After the ambush at the Battle of Burnt Corn in July, 1813, when Peter McQueen was leading a party of Creeks who'd obtained arms and ammunition from Spanish agents, war began in earnest between the two Creek factions.  After the attack on Fort Mims in August, 1813, the United States became actively involved in putting down the Red Stick faction.  McQueen was also part of the Native command team which faced Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend in March, 1814.  Following that battle, as McQueen and his warriors fled to fight another day, Ann, Polly and Billy fell into Jackson's hands as captives.  Ann approached Jackson, offering to divulge her brother's whereabouts to obtain the freedom of the women and children.  Likely, she had no idea where Peter and the others were and wouldn't have told Jackson accurately even if she did.  Also likely, he wasn't fooled a bit, but needed a pretext to rid his camp of extra mouths to patrol and feed.  If Jackson noticed a stripling 10-year-old who was no doubt learning how guile could help one survive, he gave no sign.  Billy Powell would claim the attention of US authorities soon enough.

Ann and the others made good their escape and Peter led his people to join the Seminoles in Florida.  There, while Francis went to England to press for aid from the British, McQueen masterminded the continued resistance to the Americans.  He would lead Creek and Seminole war parties throughout the First Seminole War (1816-1818).  His great-nephew would've been too young to be a warrior, but would've learned some lessons from the older man nonetheless.  Josiah Francis was eventually hanged in 1816 and the revolt crushed.  Peter, likely without his extended family, sought refuge on a remote island in Florida, some sources indicate one of the key islands, and died there in 1820.  Fifteen years later, a man with McQueen lineage would rise to lead his people again.

Settlers versus Natives: Battle of Tallushatchee, November 3, 1813

Descriptions of this battle from Settlers who participated in it show the cruelty visited on Natives during the Creek War (1813-1814).  A warning: the following is harrowing and very disturbing reading.

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.