The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic 99rized by the federal government, led by Andrew Jackson who was
then head of the Te nnessee militias. Jackson threatened to form his
own mercenary army to drive the Muskogees "into the ocean" if the
government fa iled to eradicate the insurgents.7 Although Jackson
and his fellow Te nnesseans made it clear that their goal was extermi
nation of the Muskogee Nation, their rhetoric claimed self-defense.
In a serie.s of search-and-destroy missions over three months prior to
the final assault on the Red Sticks, Jackson's mercenaries killed hun
dreds of Muskogee civilians, pursuing without mercy even homeless
and starved refugees seeking shelter and safety. By this point, the
Red Sticks had killed most of the Muskogee Nation livestock both
to deprive US soldiers of food and to rid Muskogee culture of the
colonizers' influence. 8
Both Shawnee fighters and Africans who had freed themselves
from slavery allied with the Red Sticks. With all their families they
set up a fortified encampment at Tohopeka at the Horseshoe Bend
on the Ta llapoosa River in present-day Alabama. Jackson proceeded
to mobilize Lower Creek fighters and some Cherokee allies against
the Red Sticks. In March 1814, with seven hundred mounted mili
tiamen and six hundred Cherokee and Lower Creek fighters, Jack
son's armies attacked the Red Stick stronghold. The mercenaries
captured three hundred Red Stick wives and children and held them
as hostages to induce Muskogee surrender. Of a thousand Red Stick
and allied insurgents, eight hundred were killed. Jackson lost forty
nme men.
In the aftermath of "the Battle of Horseshoe Bend," as it is
known in US military annals, Jackson's troops fashioned reins for
their horses' bridles from skin stripped from the Muskogee bodies,
and they saw to it that souvenirs from the corpses were given "to the
ladies of Te nnessee."9 Following the slaughter, Jackson justified his
troops' actions: "The fiends of the Ta llapoosa will no longer murder
our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders ....
They have disappeared from the face of the Earth .... How lamen
table it is that the path to peace should lead through blood, and over
the carcasses of the slain! But it is in the dispensation of that provi
dence, which inflicts partial evil to produce general good." 10
Horseshoe Bend marked the end of the Muskogees' resistance in