In this determination they were strengthened not merely by the general countenance given to them at Pensacola, but by very specific and urgent advice from the British and Spanish officers there, who, as we learn from official documents, urged the Creeks to make the war at once, saying:
"If they [the Americans] prove too hard for you, send your women and children to Pensacola and we will send them to Havana; and if you should be compelled to fly yourselves, and the Americans should prove too hard for both of us, there are vessels enough to take us all off together."
CHAPTER VII.
RED EAGLE'S ATTEMPT TO ABANDON HIS PARTY.
Red Eagle, as we have already related, was the most active and efficient leader of the war party during all the time of preparation. At last the war which he had so earnestly sought to bring about had come, but it had not come in the way in which he had hoped, and Red Eagle hesitated.
In the first place the war had come too soon. Red Eagle was too shrewd and too well informed to believe the predictions of his prophets Sinquista and Francis, who told the Creeks that if they would completely abandon those things which they had learned of the whites and become utter savages, not one of them should be killed in the war; that the Great Spirit would rain down fire upon the whites, create quagmires in their path, cause the earth to open and swallow them, and draw charmed circles around the camps of the Creeks, into which no white man could come without immediately falling down dead. Like many another shrewd leader, Red Eagle was willing to make use of this sort of appeals to superstition, while he was himself unaffected by them. He saw clearly enough that the white men were strong, because he knew that their numbers and resources were not limited by what he could see. He knew that armies would come from other quarters of the country to aid the settlers on the Tombigbee River and in the Tensaw settlement. Therefore he did not wish to undertake what he knew would be a severe contest, single-handed. He wanted to wait until Tecumseh, who had promised to return, should come; he was disposed to wait also for the British to land a force somewhere on the coast before beginning the war.
Moreover, his schemes and his advocacy of war had been from the first founded upon his conviction that the friendship of the Creeks and half-breeds in the lower towns for the whites would give way when they should see that the war was inevitable. He had sought to bring about a war in which the whole Creek nation should be united against the whites; what he had brought about was a very different affair. He now saw that the friendliness of the people of the lower towns, who were his nearest friends and kinsmen, including his brother, Jack Weatherford, and his half-brother, David Tait, was much more firmly fixed than he had imagined. He had supposed that it was merely the indisposition of rich men to imperil their property by bringing on a state of war; he now knew that it was a fixed purpose to remain at peace with the white men, and even to join them in fighting the Creeks whenever the war should come. If he had cherished a doubt of this so long, he had proof of it in the presence of some of these friends of his in the American force at the battle of Burnt Corn, whither they had gone as volunteers.
All this put a totally different face upon matters. Red Eagle was eager for a war between the Creeks and whites, but a war between a part of the Creeks on the one hand, and the rest of the Creeks with the whites on the other, a war in which he must fight his own brothers and his nearest friends, was a very different and much less attractive affair.
There was still another cause of Red Eagle's hesitation at this time—perhaps a stronger cause than either of the others. He was in love, and his sweetheart was among the people whom he must fight if he fought at all. He was a rich planter, and lived at this time on a fine place near the Holy Ground, and being a young widower he had conceived a passionate fancy for one Lucy Cornells, a young girl of mixed Indian and white blood, who has been described by persons who knew her as very attractive and beautiful. However that may be, it is certain that Red Eagle's devotion to her was profound.