It was Dr. Thomas G. Holmes who planned the sortie by which the persons named in the last chapter made their escape. He cut the hole through the picketing and headed the desperate charge, which was opposed by a thick line of savages who, anticipating some such attempt, had placed themselves in position along a fence for the purpose of making escape impossible. It is indeed a marvel that anybody should have succeeded in breaking through their line and reaching the woods beyond. Dr. Holmes had his clothes riddled with bullets as he ran, but he managed to reach the thick woods unhurt, and there concealed himself in the hole made by the uprooting of a large tree. Remaining thus hidden until night, he was not discovered by any of the bands of Indians who beat the bushes in every direction, bent upon leaving no white man or friendly Indian alive. After night he had intended to make his escape under cover of darkness from the neighborhood, but the light from burning buildings prevented this until midnight, when, by careful creeping, he made his way without discovery, among the camp-fires of the sleeping savages, who now rested from their bloody toil. As Dr. Holmes could not swim, it was impossible for him to cross the river to the forts and settlements there, and hence he wandered about in the swamp for five days, living upon roots and other such things, until finally, almost famished, he emerged from the cane-brakes and sought the highlands, really caring very little in his desperation whether he should fall into the hands of friends or foes. Coming upon some horses which were tied, and finding that they belonged to white men who were somewhere near, he fired his gun to attract their attention; but unluckily it alarmed them, and they fled to the river and hid themselves, remaining there for two days and nights. Left thus alone, Holmes went to a house in the neighborhood, and succeeded in catching some chickens, which in his ravenous hunger he ate raw. He was finally discovered by a white man, the owner of the place, and taken to a place of safety. Many years afterward he related the story of his adventures to Mr. Pickett, from whose pages we have condensed it.
Lieutenant Chambliss was twice severely wounded in his flight, but reached the friendly woods at last and concealed himself in a heap of logs, meaning to make his way to a place of safety as soon as night should fall. About dark, however, a roving band of the savages surrounded the log heap, and to the dismay of poor Chambliss, set fire to it. His position was terrible. The fire rapidly ate into the pile, and to remain there was to be roasted alive, while any attempt to come out would be met, of course, by immediate destruction with knife or tomahawk. The fire was now scorching him, but he lay still, enduring it as long as it was possible to suffer in silence. Just as it became absolutely necessary for him to withdraw, he was delighted to see the Indians, who had now lighted their pipes, walking away. Silently, in order that the savages might not hear him, he crept out of the burning pile and concealed himself more effectually elsewhere. Wounded and famishing he wandered about for awhile, managing at last to reach Mount Vernon.
The most romantic incident of this terrible affair remains to be told. Zachariah McGirth, with his half-breed wife and his children, was one of the inmates of Fort Mims until the day of the massacre. On the morning of that day, a few hours before the attack was made, he left the fort, intending to visit his plantation at a point higher up on the Alabama River. Leaving his family in the fort he went to the river, accompanied by some negroes, and began his journey in a boat. He had gone but a few miles when the sound of the firing at the fort reached his ears, and he thus learned that the attack had come. Anxious about the fate of his wife and children, he turned back, and secreting himself in the woods, passed the long afternoon in a state of the most terrible suspense. When the sound of musketry at last died away, the great volumes of smoke revealed to him the fact—horrible in its significance to him—that the savages had triumphed. Desperate now with distress, he hid the negroes and boldly went to the scene of the slaughter, not caring whether the Indians had left or not. Finding no savages there, but seeing heaps of the slain everywhere, he summoned his negroes and began a search for the bodies of his wife and children. They were nowhere to be found, and McGirth was forced to conclude that his family were among those who had been burned in the buildings.
As a matter of fact, McGirth's wife and children were the half-breed family who had been spared, as related in the preceding chapter. There was a young warrior among Weatherford's men who, many years before, when he was an orphan and hungry, had been tenderly cared for by McGirth's wife, and during the horrible slaughter at Fort Mims this young warrior happened to recognize the woman who had befriended him in his time of sorest need. To save her and her children he had to tell his comrades that he wished to make them his slaves, and under this pretence he carried them to his home in the nation.
McGirth knew nothing of this, of course, and as he had very tenderly loved his family, he now became entirely reckless of danger, not caring to live, but being desperately bent upon doing all that he could for the destruction of the Creeks, who, as he believed, had bereft him of his wife and his children. He became the most daring scout and express rider in the American service, making the most perilous journeys, shrinking from no danger, and many times serving the American cause when nobody else could be found to perform the important duties which he undertook. One day, several months after the massacre at Fort Mims, McGirth was in Mobile, when some one came to him with a message, saying that a party of poor Indians who had made their way down the river from the hostile country wished to see him. Answering the summons he was ushered into the presence of his wife and seven children, whom he had thought of for months, as among the victims of the savages at Fort Mims. It was as if they had suddenly arisen from the dead.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DOG CHARGE AT FORT SINQUEFIELD AND AFFAIRS ON THE PENINSULA.
It was a part of Weatherford's tactics to prevent the concentration of his enemies as far as that was possible, and to keep the whole country round about in such a state of apprehension that no troops or militiamen could be spared from one stockade fort for the assistance of another. Accordingly, when he advanced to the assault on Fort Mims he sent the prophet Francis with a force of Creeks into the country which lies in the fork of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, and which in our day constitutes Clarke County. In this part of the country there were several stockade forts erected, one in each neighborhood, by the settlers, as a precautionary measure, when the disturbed state of the country first aroused serious apprehensions. Fort Sinquefield, named, as all these fortresses were, after the owner of the place on which it was built, stood a few miles north-east of the village of Grove Hill, which is now the county seat of Clarke County. Fort White was further to the west, and Fort Glass was about fifteen miles to the south, near the spot on which the present village of Suggsville stands.
When the battle of Burnt Corn brought actual war into being, most of the settlers removed with their families into these forts and prepared to defend themselves. When General Claiborne arrived with his seven hundred men he sent some small reinforcements to these posts, under command of Colonel Carson, who rebuilding Fort Glass, christened it Fort Madison, and made it his head-quarters and the head-quarters of the district round about.