The General proposes terms which well nigh amount to a wiping out of the Creek landed possessions. The Creeks go into secret council, as it were executive session, and bemoan their desperate lot. They curse the English who urged them to that butchery of Fort Mims and then deserted them. Beyond relieving their minds, however, the curses accomplish no Creek good. They must still face the inveterate General, whose word is, “Your lives or your lands!”
The mournful, beaten Creeks come forth from executive session, and the great formal conference begins. The council is called on the flat field-like expanse in front of the General's imposing marquee—for he has come to this mission with no little of pompous style, to the end that the Creek mind be impressed.
The Creek chiefs, blanketed to the ears, feathered to the eyes, sit about, crosslegged like tailors, in a half circle, their only weapon a sacred red-stone pipe. The General, blazing in a new uniform, comes out of his marquee. With him are Colonel Coffee, Colonel Hawkins, and lastly, Colonel Hayne, the brother of him who will one day cross blades in Senate debate with the lion-faced Webster, and have the worst of it.
As the General steps forward an orderly leads up his great war horse, as though the conference might lapse into battle, and he must be ready to mount and fight. To the rear, his hunting-shirt men, one thousand strong, are drawn out, as following forth those precautions which produce the General's war horse. The Creeks, at these evidences of suspicious alertness, never move a bronze muscle; they pass the sacred redstone pipe with gravity unmoved, and puff away as though the last thing they suspect is suspicion.
Big Warrior makes a speech, and is followed by She-lok-tah, the tribal Demosthenes. The General shakes his grim head at their protests; there is no help for it, they must give him his way or fight. The Creeks bow to the inevitable, and give the General his way; which bowing submission is the less disgraceful, since both the Spanish at Pensacola and the English at New Orleans, in a brief handful of months, under pressures less stringent than are those which now and here in front of the Generali great marquee bear down the broken hopeless Creeks, will follow their abject example.
Having made peace with the Creeks on the Tallapoosa, the General lets his angry, warseeking eye rove in the direction of Florida. Many of the hostile Creek Red Sticks have fled to cover there, where they are made welcome by the Spanish Governor Maurequez, and petted and pampered by Colonel Nichols and Captain Woodbine of the English. The besotted Governor Maurequez has permitted these latter to land an English force, and, inspired by his native hatred of Americans and the sight of British ships of war in Pensacola harbor, has surrendered to them the last stitch of Florida control.
The General guesses these things and sends out scouts to make discoveries. Meanwhile, he marches his hunting-shirt men to Mobile, which his instincts—never at fault in war—warn him will be the next English point of attack. Word has reached him of the downfall of Napoleon, and he foresees that this will release against America the utmost energies of England, who in thirty odd years has not forgotten Yorktown nor despaired of its repair.
The General's scouts are a sleepless, observant, close-going set of gentlemen, and fairly enter Pensacola. Presently, they are back with the news that two flags float in friendly partnership on the battlements of Fort St. Michael, one English and one Spanish. Also, seven English war ships ride in the harbor.
They likewise say that the popinjay Colonel Nichols is issuing proclamations to “The People of Louisiana,” demanding that, as “Frenchmen, Spaniards, and English,” they arise and “throw off the American yoke”; that Captain Woodbine is assembling the fugitive Red Sticks by scores, and reviving their drooping spirits with English gold, English guns, English gin, and English red coats.
Captain Woodbine, it appears, is so dull as to think he may make regular soldiers of the untamed Red Sticks, and drills them in the Pensacola plaza, where they handle their new muskets much as a cow might a cant hook, and look like copper-colored apes in those gorgeous red coats. The tactical, yet tactless, Captain Woodbine even makes his red command a speech, and is so unguarded as to refer to “General Jackson.” This is a blunder, since instantly half the assembled Red Sticks desert, taking with them the guns, gin, and jackets which have been conferred upon them. The oratorical Captain Woodbine is deeply impressed by the awful effect of the General's name upon his red recruits, and their terror communicates itself to him. He has difficulty in restraining himself from deserting with them, but takes final courage and remains. Only he is at pains to delete “General Jackson” from subsequent eloquence, and never again mentions that paladin of the Cumberland in the quaking presence of a Red Stick Creek.