A History of the American People

most articulate spokesman of the Southerners, wanted every unassimilable Indian driven west of
the Mississippi. Jackson agreed with that. He further argued that the states and the federal
government should build roads as quickly as possible, thus attracting settlers who would secure
any territory vacated by the Indians immediately. Jackson's Protestant forebears in Ulster had
pursued exactly the same strategy against the Wild Irish.' When he got his orders, his arm was still in a sling from his latest duel but he hurried south, building roads as he went. With him were his bosom pal and partner in land-speculation, General John Coffee, who commanded the cavalry, and various adventurers, including David Crockett (1786-1836), also from Tennessee and a noted sharpshooter, and Samuel Houston (1793-1863), a Virginia-born frontiersman, then only nineteen. These men, who were later to expand the United States into Texas and beyond, were bloodied in the Creek War. And bloody it was. On November 3, two months after the massacre, Jackson surrounded thehostile' village of Tallushatchee and sent in Coffee with 1,000 men to destroy it.
Jackson later reported to his wife Rachel that Coffee 'executed this order in elegant stile.'
Crockett put it more accurately: We shot them like dogs.' Every male in the village, 186 in all, was put to death. Women were killed too, though eighty-four women and children were taken prisoner. An eyewitness wrote:We found as many as eight or ten bodies in a single cabin.'
Some had been torched, and half-consumed bodies were seen among the smoking ruins. In other instances, dogs had torn and feasted on the bodies of their masters.' A tenmonth-old Indian child was found clutched in his dead mother's arms. Jackson, who always had a fellow-feeling for orphans and who was capable of sudden spasms of humanitarianism in the midst of his most ferocious activities, adopted the boy instantly, named him Lyncoya, and had him conveyed to the Hermitage. He wrote to Rachel:The child must be well taken care of, he may have been given
to me for some valuable purpose-in fact when I reflect that he, as to his relations, is so much like
myself, I feel an unusual sympathy for him.'
A week later, Jackson won a pitched battle at Talladega, attacking a force of 1,000 Red Sticks
and killing 300 of them. At that point some of his men felt enough was enough. The militia was
obliged to provide only ninety days' service. The volunteers had engaged for a year but their term
was running out. Both said they wanted to go home. They would either march home under
Jackson, or mutiny and go home without him. This was the spirit which had ruined the Canada
campaign and was already affecting other forces in the multipronged campaign against the
Creeks. But Jackson was not going to let his angry will be frustrated by a few homesick barrack-
room lawyers. He used the volunteers to frighten the militia men and his few regulars to frighten
both. On November 17 he and Coffee lined the road and threatened to shoot any militiamen who
started to march home. Back in camp he faced an entire brigade, his left arm in a sling, his right
clutching a musket which rested on the neck of his horse, and said he would personally shoot any
man who crossed the line he drew. He held the mob with his fierce glare until regulars with arms
ready formed up behind him. When the volunteers, their time up, decided to move off on
December 10, Jackson trained two pieces of artillery, loaded with grapeshot, on them, and when
they failed to respond to his orders, he commanded the gunners, picked loyalists, to light their
matches. At that the mutineers gave way. They hated Jackson, but they feared him more.
He wrote to Rachel that the volunteers had become `mere whining, complaining Seditioners
and mutineers, to keep whom from open acts of mutiny I have been compelled to point my
cannon against, with a lighted match to destroy them. This was a grating moment of my life. I
felt the pangs of an affectionate parent, compelled from duty to chastise the child." It is unlikely
that Jackson felt any such emotion; he always rationalized his acts of passion in language from a