Jackson at Fort Strother on the departure of the east Tennesseeans, January 14, received a reinforcement of sixty-day militia, barely nine hundred in number.[350] Determined to use them to the utmost, Jackson started three days afterward to co-operate with General Floyd in an attack on the Tallapoosa villages, aiming at a town called Emuckfaw, some forty miles north of Tuckaubatchee. The movement was much more dangerous than any he had yet attempted. His own force was fresh, motley, and weak, numbering only nine hundred and thirty militia, including “a company of volunteer officers headed by General Coffee, who had been abandoned by his men,” and assisted by two or three hundred friendly Creeks and Cherokees. The sixty-day militia were insubordinate and unsteady, the march was long, and the Creek towns at which he aimed were relatively large. Emuckfaw was one of seven villages belonging to Ocfuskee, the largest town in the Creek nation,—in 1800 supposed to contain four hundred and fifty warriors.[351]
As far as Enotachopco Creek, twelve miles from Emuckfaw, Jackson had no great danger to fear; but beyond that point he marched with caution. At daylight, January 22, the Indians, who were strongly encamped at about three miles distance, made an attack on Jackson’s camp, which was repulsed after half an hour’s fighting. Jackson then sent Coffee with four hundred men to burn the Indian camp, but Coffee returned without attempting it. “On viewing the encampment and its strength the General thought it most prudent to return to my encampment,” reported Jackson.[352] Immediately after Coffee’s return the Indians again attacked, and Coffee sallied out to turn their flank, followed by not more than fifty-four men. The Indians were again repulsed with a loss of forty-five killed, but Coffee was severely wounded, and Jackson “determined to commence a return march to Fort Strother the following day.”
At that moment Jackson’s situation was not unlike that of Harrison after the battle of Tippecanoe, and he escaped less happily. Fortifying his camp, he remained during the night of January 22 undisturbed. At half-past ten, January 23, he began his return march, “and was fortunate enough to reach Enotachopco before night, having passed without interruption a dangerous defile occasioned by a hurricane.”[353] Enotachopco Creek was twelve or fifteen miles from Emuckfaw Creek, and the Hillabee towns were about the same distance beyond.
At Enotachopco Jackson again fortified his camp. His position was such as required the utmost caution in remaining or moving. So hazardous was the passage of the deep creek and the defile beyond, through which the army had marched in its advance, that Jackson did not venture to return by the same path, but on the morning of January 24 began cautiously crossing the creek at a safer point:—
“The front guard had crossed with part of the flank columns, the wounded were over, and the artillery in the act of entering the creek, when an alarm-gun was heard in the woods.... To my astonishment and mortification, when the word was given by Colonel Carrol to halt and form, and a few guns had been fired, I beheld the right and left columns of the rear guard precipitately give way. This shameful retreat was disastrous in the extreme; it drew along with it the greater part of the centre column, leaving not more than twenty-five men, who being formed by Colonel Carrol maintained their ground as long as it was possible to maintain it, and it brought consternation and confusion into the centre of the army,—a consternation which was not easily removed, and a confusion which could not soon be restored to order.”[354]
The Indians were either weak or ignorant of warfare, for they failed to take advantage of the panic, and allowed themselves to be driven away by a handful of men. Jackson’s troops escaped unharmed, or but little injured, their loss in the engagements of January 22 and 24 being twenty-four men killed and seventy-one wounded. Probably the Creek force consisted of the Ocfuskee warriors, and numbered about half that of Jackson.[355] Coffee supposed them to be eight hundred or a thousand in number, but the exaggeration in estimating Indian forces was always greater than in estimating white enemies in battle. An allowance of one third was commonly needed for exaggeration in reported numbers of European combatants; an allowance of one half was not unreasonable in estimates of Indian forces.
In letting Jackson escape from Emuckfaw the Creeks lost their single opportunity. Jackson never repeated the experiment. He arrived at Fort Strother in safety January 29, and did not again leave his intrenchment until the middle of March, under much better conditions.
General Floyd was no more successful. Jackson started from Fort Strother for Emuckfaw January 17; Floyd left Fort Mitchell, on the Chattahoochee, January 18, for Tuckaubatchee, only forty miles south of Emuckfaw.[356] Floyd’s army, like Jackson’s, was partly composed of militia and partly of Lower Creek warriors, in all about seventeen hundred men, including four hundred friendly Creeks. From the best information to be obtained at the time, the effective strength of the hostile Indians did not then exceed two thousand warriors,[357] scattered along the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers; while experience proved the difficulty of concentrating large bodies of Indians, even when supplies were furnished them. The British commissariat in Canada constantly issued from five to ten thousand rations for Indians and their families, but Proctor never brought more than fifteen hundred warriors into battle. The Creeks, as far as was known, never numbered a thousand warriors in any battle during the war. Floyd, with seventeen hundred men well armed, was able to face the whole Creek nation, and meant to move forward, fortifying military posts at each day’s march, until he should establish himself on the Tallapoosa in the centre of the Creek towns, and wait for a junction with Jackson.
When Jackson was repulsed at Emuckfaw January 22, Floyd was about forty miles to the southward, expecting to draw the chief attack of the Indians. Having advanced forty-eight miles from the Chattahoochee he arrived at a point about seven or eight miles south of Tuckaubatchee, where he fortified, on Calibee Creek, a camp called Defiance. There, before daybreak on the morning of January 27, he was sharply attacked, as Harrison was attacked at Tippecanoe, and with the same result. The attack was repulsed, but Floyd lost twenty-two killed and one hundred and forty-seven wounded,—the largest number of casualties that had yet occurred in the Indian war. The Indians “left thirty-seven dead on the field; from the effusion of blood and the number of head-dresses and war-clubs found in various directions, their loss must have been considerable independent of their wounded.”[358]
The battle of Calibee Creek, January 27, was in substance a defeat to Floyd. So decided were his militia in their determination to go home, that he abandoned all his fortified posts and fell back to the Chattahoochee, where he arrived February 1, four days after the battle.[359]