"Our enemies are not sufficiently humbled; they do not sue for peace. A collection of them await our approach, and remain to be dispersed. Buried in ignorance, and seduced by the false pretences of their prophets, they have the weakness to believe they will still be able to make a decided stand against us. They must be undeceived, and made to atone their obstinacy and their crimes by still further suffering. Those hopes which have so long deluded them must be driven from their last refuge. They must be made to know that their prophets are impostors, and that our strength is mighty and will prevail. Then, and not till then, may we expect to make with them a peace that shall be permanent."
Ten days after the battle of the Horse Shoe the army again advanced, the men carrying provisions in their haversacks as before. A long march brought them to the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, where a junction with the southern army was effected and supplies were abundant.
There Jackson established his camp and fortified it. The force of Creeks which he had expected to strike had dispersed, and there was now nowhere a body of Indians for him to march against or fight. His presence with a strong army, well supplied with food and able to maintain itself there in the very heart of the nation, did the rest. Seeing the utter hopelessness of contending further with such an army so commanded, and hearing through friendly Indians, who were sent out for the purpose, that Jackson wished to make peace, the savages rapidly flocked to his camp and surrendered themselves.
Peter McQueen, Josiah Francis, and several other chiefs fled to Florida, but the greater number of the Creek leaders preferred to sue for Jackson's clemency.
To them Jackson replied that he had no further desire to make war, but that peace would not be granted to the nation until Red Eagle—or Weatherford, for by that name only the whites called the Creek commander—should be brought to him bound hand and foot. It was his purpose to hang Red Eagle as a punishment for the massacre of women and children at Fort Mims, he knowing nothing, of course, of the warrior's daring efforts to prevent that bloody butchery, and to make of the affair a battle, not a massacre.
News of Jackson's determination was carried to Red Eagle, and he was warned to fly the country and make his escape to Florida, as many of his companion chiefs had done. There, of course, he would have been safe beyond the jurisdiction of Jackson and of the government which Jackson represented; but Red Eagle was a patriot, and when he was told that the fierce commander of the whites would give no terms to the Creeks under which the women and children now starving in the woods could be saved, except upon his surrender, that the price of peace for his people was his own ignominious death—he calmly resolved to give himself to suffer for his race, to purchase with his blood that peace which alone could save his people from destruction.
Mounting his famous gray horse—the one which had carried him over the bluff at the Holy Ground, he rode away alone toward Jackson's camp.
The author of that history of Alabama which has been quoted frequently in these pages gives the following account of what followed, drawn, he assures us, from Red Eagle's own narrative in conversations had with him:
"He rode within a few miles of Fort Jackson, when a fine deer crossed his path and stopped within shooting distance, which he fired at and killed. Reloading his rifle with two balls, for the purpose of shooting the Big Warrior, should he give him any cause, at the fort, he placed the deer behind his saddle and advanced to the American outposts. Some soldiers, of whom he politely inquired for Jackson's whereabouts, gave him some unsatisfactory and rude replies, when a gray-headed man a few steps beyond pointed him to the marquee. Weatherford rode up to it and checked his horse immediately at the entrance, where sat the Big Warrior, who exultingly exclaimed:
"'Ah! Bill Weatherford, have we got you at last?'"