Andrew Jackson (28 page)

W
illie Blount had his own reasons for fanning fear of the Indians. When Blount succeeded John Sevier as governor of Tennessee in 1809, he initially hoped for peace with the Indians, but he insisted that it be peace on white—or, more precisely, Blount’s—terms. Blount was Jackson’s age and had lived in Tennessee nearly as long. He witnessed the chronic conflict between settlers and Indians, and by the time he became governor he concluded that the only solution was for the Indians to move across the Mississippi. “I am willing to act justly towards them,” Blount wrote Jackson not long after entering the governor’s house. But justice had to be tempered with realism. And, realistically, the Indians would never have peace so long as they were “surrounded by states thickly populated by people who have different interests.” Blount proposed an exchange of real estate with the Cherokees and the Chickasaws: their current tribal lands for new lands west of the Mississippi. Tennessee didn’t actually own any land over the river, but the United States owned the entire Louisiana Territory, and as one of the states Tennessee had a fair claim to part of that. A portion of Tennessee’s claim could be transferred to the Cherokees and Chickasaws. “It would be promotive of their interest as nations to settle over the Mississippi,” Blount told Jackson. “Game is there very abundant, the climate friendly to their constitutions, and much of the country is inhabited by people (Indians) whose manners and customs are more assimilated to theirs than those of the people where they now live.” If they stayed where they were, they would lose their national character, if they survived at all. Beyond the river they could remain a cohesive people.

It went without saying that the emigration of the two tribes would benefit Tennessee. The state would gain land and eliminate the source of the friction that had vexed the people since the first white settlements. Blount thought his plan would serve the broader American interest as well. The residence of the Cherokees and Chickasaws—two relatively “civilized” tribes, and favorably disposed, at this point, toward the United States—would have a calming influence on their new neighbors. “Their intercourse with the neighboring Indians could by precept and example civilize them faster and make more favorable impressions on them of the friendship of the United States towards Indians in general than could be effected in any other way with ten-fold the expense.”

J
ackson would come to agree with Blount on the merits of putting distance between the whites and the Indians, but for now he needed the Cherokees, if not the Chickasaws, just where they were. As Tecumseh’s message took hold, attacks against white settlements increased. In the spring of 1812 a band of Creeks killed six settlers in Humphreys County and carried off another, Martha Crowley, the wife of a riverboat man. Jackson was traveling when the first reports reached Nashville. By the time he got back the reports had been confirmed. “My heart bleeds within me on the receipt of the news of the horrid cruelty and murders committed by a party of Creeks on our innocent wives and little babes since I left home,” he told Governor Blount. “
They must be punished
.” Jackson believed—correctly, as it turned out—that the British were behind the Creek rising. This made swift retribution all the more essential. “The sooner they can be attacked, the less will be their resistance and the fewer the nations or tribes that we will have to war with. It is therefore necessary for the protection of the frontier that we march into the Creek nation and demand the perpetrators at the point of the bayonet. If refused, that we make reprisals and lay their towns in ashes.” Striking hard and fast would yield the additional benefit of forcing the hand of wavering Indians. “The Cherokees will join us if we show an immediate spirit of revenge.” So critical was swiftness that the governor need provide only part of the expense of the campaign. “Give me the power to procure provisions and munitions of war by your orders, and I will pledge myself for the balance.”

When Blount was slow to respond, Jackson took matters into his own hands. “I shall wait no longer than the 20th or 25th,” he informed the governor in early July. “With such arms and supplies as I can obtain I shall penetrate the Creek towns until the captive, with her captors, are delivered up, and think myself justifiable in laying waste their villages, burning their houses, killing their warriors, and leading into captivity their wives and children until I do obtain a surrender of the captive and the captors.”

To rally support for his insubordination, Jackson published an article in the Nashville
Democratic Clarion
entitled “The Massacre at the Mouth of Duck River.” “It is now nearly two months since this cruel outrage, this act of war against the peaceful inhabitants of our country,” Jackson wrote. “No vengeance has yet been taken; no atonement has yet been made.” Jackson still hoped the government would shake off its criminal lethargy. But if it didn’t, the people of Tennessee must act on their own. “It is impossible for them to permit the assassins of women and children to escape with impunity and with triumph. They cannot submit to the prospect of an Indian war, protracted through several years and kept alive by the murder of peaceful families in the dead hour of the night.” The people had elected him to military command, and now he called on them. “Citizens! Hold yourselves in readiness. It may be but a short time before the question is put to you:
Are you ready to follow your general to the heart of the Creek nation?
”

T
hough Jackson didn’t know it as he prepared to lead the Tennessee militia into battle, war had already been declared. In June 1812 Madison finally yielded to the demands of the war hawks and laid a bill of particulars against Britain before Congress. “British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great high way of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it,” the president said. “Our commerce has been plundered in every sea; the great staples of our country have been cut off from their legitimate markets.” British agents in the West consorted with Indians engaged in “a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex, and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity.” Diplomacy had been tried to the limits of American patience and honor. War was the sole remaining resort.

Congress agreed with the president and on June 18 declared war. Yet the vote wasn’t nearly unanimous: 79 to 49 for war in the House, 19 to 13 in the Senate. The 62 nays were mostly Federalists but included 22 Republicans, and they were predominantly—49 of the 62—from the Northeast. The war hawks had won in Congress, but their victory was tentative. If American armies stumbled in the field, recriminations would surely follow.

J
ackson was overjoyed at Madison’s action, belated though he judged it. Yet he wondered if the president really understood the danger America faced. Madison had mentioned the Indian threat almost as an afterthought to the main theme of his war message. This made sense in terms of national politics. All Americans could rally against Britain, but what did Pennsylvania or New Jersey care for the troubles of Tennessee? Yet to Jackson and most westerners, the Indian threat lay at the heart of the reason for war. Tecumseh had accomplished something no Indian leader since Pontiac had achieved: an alliance of several tribes against the whites. Memories of Pontiac’s War—of the terror unleashed against men, women, and children; of refugees fleeing farms and villages for their lives—remained an active part of the western consciousness. The old folks told their children, who told
their
children, who shivered in their beds at the thought. Now the scourge had returned. The tomahawk and scalping knife were sharpened and raised. By all evidence, Tecumseh was even more adroit and persuasive than Pontiac had been. This new alliance was broader, stretching from the Great Lakes to the lower Mississippi. And it had the backing of the British, who had never scrupled to employ the natives against enemies of the Crown.

Jackson wanted to fight the British, but the Indians came first. “Before we march,” he told his officers and men, “we must have an assurance that our wives and children are to be safe in our absence; and that assurance can only be derived from the surrender and punishment of the assassins who have taken refuge with the Creeks, or by marching an army into their country and laying it waste with fire and sword.” Every able-bodied Tennessean must rally to the cause. “Woe to the man who is unwilling to do so! . . . The wretch who can view the massacre at the mouth of Duck river, and feel not his spirit kindle within him and burn for revenge, deserves not the name of a
man
; and the mother who bore him should point with the finger of scorn, and say, “
He is not my son
.”

T
ecumseh was even happier than Jackson at the commencement of hostilities between the Americans and the British. The race war Tecumseh had been preaching—of Indians against whites—had already started, and it wasn’t going well. After his confrontation with William Henry Harrison at Vincennes in 1810, Tecumseh had continued to travel and to stir up anger against the whites. Harrison couldn’t track Tecumseh’s movements in detail, but he knew what the Shawnee chief intended and how he aimed to achieve it. And in the autumn of 1811, when he learned that Tecumseh was away in the South, the Indiana governor determined to preempt the resistance Tecumseh was raising.

Harrison led a force of army regulars and militiamen up the Wabash River from Vincennes toward Prophetstown, a village at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River where Tecumseh’s brother had gathered a large band of warriors. Harrison cited Indian attacks on white settlements as justification for invading what he conceded to be Indian land, but his own words and subsequent events revealed that he was seeking an excuse for battle, which he expected to win easily. “I have no reason to doubt the issue of a contest with the savages,” he boasted to the secretary of war.

Tecumseh knew his alliance wasn’t ready to take on the blue coats, which was why he had urged the Prophet to avoid a confrontation with the Americans at least until he returned from the South. Harrison knew this, too, which was why
he
was pressing ahead just now. As things developed, important factions of several nearby tribes chose to sit out the approaching battle, and some—notably the Delawares—provided Harrison intelligence about the Prophet’s force.

Upon the Americans’ approach, the Prophet assumed a brave posture. Perhaps he sincerely believed in the magic he promised his fighters. Perhaps he was simply trying to boost morale. Either way, he announced that the Great Spirit would strengthen their arms and shield them from the white men’s bullets. And when the Americans, who outnumbered the Indians by two to one, encamped a mile from Prophetstown, he ordered a daring nighttime attack.

Though the Americans had slept on their arms, the stealth and swiftness of the Indian attack staggered them. The regulars formed a defensive line but the militia scattered among the trees, the wagons, and anything else that afforded shelter from the Indian musket fire. The Americans had built bonfires against the autumn cold and rain; these now served to silhouette them and assist the Indians’ aim. The Indians, for their part, kept to the woods around the American camp and were all but impossible to see. During the first hour of the fighting, the American position was in constant danger of being overrun.

Yet the defenders held on, aided by their greater numbers and by the Indians’ short supply of ammunition. And as the eastern sky slowly brightened, the balance of the battle began to tip. Finally the Americans could see their attackers, had a chance of hitting them, and could consider a counterattack. Harrison had been individually targeted by the Indians but been spared by fate as another officer, who had mounted Harrison’s easily recognizable horse, was killed instead. When Harrison ordered the counterattack, his men, desperate to escape the positions where they had been pinned down, surged forward. They drove the Indians from the camp and thanked heaven for having survived.

The Americans got the worst of the fighting in terms of casualties. “Our killed and wounded amounted to 179,” Harrison reported the next day. “Of these 42 are now dead and seven or eight more will certainly die.” The Indian losses were considerably fewer, though harder to gauge. Yet the end of the battle left the Americans in command of the field.

Decades later Harrison’s supporters would treat the Battle of Tippecanoe as the turning point in the struggle for the Northwest. At the time, the battle itself was overshadowed by Harrison’s obliteration of Prophetstown, which was left undefended upon the Indians’ retreat. Even this accomplishment was less important than the destruction of the Indians’ store of food for winter. As always, the weakest link in the chain of Indian defense was the need of their women and children to eat.