Then Captain Bailey saw that his hope had been made vain by the resolution of this commander and by his genius for controlling men. It was now three o'clock, and the battle had lasted three hours. Captain Bailey seeing no chance for its cessation by the failure of savage determination, resolved to abandon the defences, and marching boldly out, attempt to cut a way through Red Eagle's hosts to Fort Pierce, a few miles distant. From this attempt he was restrained only by force.
The savages were now steadily gaining ground. One point after another was abandoned by the whites, whose numbers were rapidly diminishing. The savages fell as fast as the whites did, or even faster, but as they greatly outnumbered their entrenched foes they could afford this. Deducting the women and children from the whole number of people in the fort, it will be seen that the savages—whose force was estimated variously at from one thousand to fifteen hundred fighting men—outnumbered the fighting men of the fort at least three to one, and perhaps even as greatly as six or seven to one. With the fall of each white man, therefore, the relative superiority of the Indians was increased, even though two or three of the assailants should fall at the same time.
Little by little the fort yielded. From one defensive point to another the various bands of white men were driven, fighting as they went, and contesting every inch of the assailants' advance. Two brothers of Captain Dixon Bailey, James and Daniel Bailey, went with some other men into Mims's house, and piercing the roof with port-holes did excellent work upon bodies of savages who were protected by barriers of various kinds against the fire of men on the ground. To silence their fire some of the Indians shot burning arrows into the shingles of the house and succeeded in setting it on fire. They also fired several other buildings, and the poor people who still remained alive were now driven to their last place of refuge, a small inclosure around the loom house, called in the fort the bastion. From every quarter the warning cry "To the bastion!" went up, and very soon the small inclosure was so full of people that there was scarcely room for any one to move. Meantime the fire was gaining on every hand. Around the burning houses demoniac savages danced and shrieked and howled, while the women and children within the burning buildings could do nothing but wring their hands and commit themselves to heaven while awaiting certain and horrible destruction.
Red Eagle was a soldier, not a butcher; and now that his victory was secure he sought to stop the bloodshed and spare the lives of the helpless people who remained; he called upon his warriors to desist and to receive the survivors as prisoners, but the yelling savages would not listen to him. He attempted to assert his authority and compel them to stop the carnage, but the authority which he was able to wield in setting these savages on, failed utterly when he tried to call them off. When he thus sought to save the lives of white men and women and children, his followers remembered that he had not long before tried to withdraw altogether from the war, and with loud shrieks of anger they now turned upon him, threatening to put him to death if he should further plead for mercy. He could do nothing but submit, and turn away in horror from the sight of the brutal slaughter which he had made possible. Mounting his superb black horse he rode away, resolved to have at least no personal share in the horrible butchery.
The few remaining people in the fort were now shut up in a slaughter-pen. A few of them cut a hole through the outer picketing and made a dash for life. Of these about twenty escaped in different directions, and in one way or another managed after many hardships to reach other forts. All the rest of the people in the fort were butchered, except a few negroes kept by the savages as slaves, and one half-breed family, of whom we shall hear more presently.
The persons who escaped by flight were Dr. Thomas G. Holmes, a negro woman named Hester, a friendly Indian named Socca, Lieutenant Peter Randon, Josiah Fletcher, Sergeant Matthews, Martin Rigdon, Samuel Smith, a half-breed, Joseph Perry, Jesse Steadham, Edward Steadham, John Horen, Lieutenant W. R. Chambers, two men named Mourrice and Jones, and some others whose names have not come down to us.
Thus ended the battle of Fort Mims, in some respects the most remarkable battle between Indians and white men of which history anywhere tells us. It had lasted for five hours without cessation, a most unusual thing in Indian warfare, which consists chiefly of sudden onsets that are not long persisted in if stoutly resisted. At Fort Mims the assault was kept up, in the face of desperate resistance, from noon until nearly sunset—a persistence due solely to the fact that the savages were for once commanded by a real soldier, who possessed the qualities of an able and determined general. The Indians here, as everywhere else, were disposed after a while, as has been said, to relinquish their purpose and content themselves with what they had accomplished in the way of destruction, but, as we have seen, Red Eagle sternly drove them back into battle, and succeeded in carrying the fort. If there were nothing else in his career to prove his title to respect as a really able military man, his management of this Fort Mims affair would sufficiently establish his claim.