CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WAR.
The Indians were now concentrated at Tohopeka, or the Horse Shoe, the peninsula already mentioned, which was formed by a sharp bend of the Tallapoosa River, as the reader will see by reference to any good map of Alabama, as the place has not lost its name. This bend incloses about one hundred acres of ground, and the distance across its neck or narrowest part is between three hundred and four hundred yards. Across this isthmus the Indians had constructed a strong breastwork composed of heavy timbers built up into a thick wall, and designed, unlike the ordinary Indian stockade, to withstand artillery fire. This breastwork was provided with port-holes through which the fire of the garrison could be delivered, and the angles of the fortification were so well and so regularly drawn after the manner of educated military engineers, that any force which should approach it in assault must do so at cost of marching under a front and an enfilading fire. Care was taken also so to dispose the houses within the inclosure, the log-heaps, felled trees, and even the earth in some places, as to make additional fortifications of all of them; and about one hundred canoes were fastened along the river-bank as a means of retreat to the forest on the other side in the event of defeat.
MAP OF BATTLE SITE
All of this systematic preparation, and especially the erecting of the strong and well-placed breastworks, were things wholly new in Indian warfare. This is not the way in which the savage warrior prepares himself for battle: it is the method of the trained soldier; and Mr. Parton, struck with the unlikeness of the preparations to any thing ordinarily seen in Indian warfare, says: "As the Indian is not a fortifying creature, it seems improbable that Indians alone were concerned in putting this peninsula into the state of defence in which Jackson found it." To which we may add, that Red Eagle was not only an Indian chief: he was on one side the white man, William Weatherford, and the white man in him was essentially a civilized white man. He had been trained by that old soldier, General Alexander McGillivray, and by that other soldier, General Le Clerc Milfort; he had visited Mobile and Pensacola, and must have learned both the nature and the elementary principles of fortification there. It was he who planned the establishment of the strongholds of which Tohopeka was one, and what is more probable than that he planned the defences whose fitness for their purpose was so remarkable?
The fighting force of the Creeks at Tohopeka is believed to have been about one thousand strong. They had with them, of course, their women and children, and they had news of Jackson's approach; but notwithstanding the overwhelming numbers opposed to them, they remained in their stronghold determined to await their enemy's attack there, instead of hanging upon his flank after their usual manner, and seeking to surprise him.