Black Creek. Paul Varnes
be able to get me. If I tried to go straight back to my group, they would surely kill or capture me. Lifting a hand to Pa, I made a circle with it and pointed toward the Red Sticks. That was our signal we had seen something. I then raised a fist three times, letting Pa know there were fifteen of them. The Red Sticks and the members of our group were not visible to each other because of the thick vegetation around the ponds. Pa acknowledged my signal. My job done, I then moved to take care of myself. Stepping in front of my mare, I signaled her to bow. I then jerked lightly with her left rein across her face to signal her to lie down. Certain that I had not been seen, I dropped across her neck and stroked her head.
Having been warned, and having twice the number of warriors the Red Sticks had, Pa’s group had the advantage. As the fight started, I could tell the location of both parties by the sounds of gunfire and running horses. Pa’s group wasn’t fifty yards from me when I slid off my mare’s neck and pulled on her reins. I then stuck my right foot over her back and was in the saddle as she came to her feet. I was right in the thick of the fight when my mare gained her footing. With a loaded rifle and musket, I was a welcome addition. The surviving Red Sticks were soon at full flight.
After our party was reassembled, Pa said, “What happened? I thought your mare stepped in a hole or something. Her foot seems okay now.”
I said, “She’s fine, Pa. I found out some time back how to make her lie down. We just did it as a stunt when we were alone. I never thought it might have a use. The mare just saved my life by lying still.”
Back at the fort I was asked to demonstrate to those Indians who were with me how I got my horse to lie down. As the word got around about the incident, there were others, Indian and white, who wanted me to show them how to make their horse lie down. There were varying degrees of success by the warriors in teaching their horses the trick. Very few horses learned to lie down on command as quickly as my mare had. My mare became so famous that it would have been impossible for anyone to steal her. She would have been recognized anywhere. I soon started working with Pa’s mare to teach her to lie down.
Going to war isn’t all about fighting. There were lots of boring times between battles when we were looking for something to do. Teaching stunts to horses and showing off on horseback became one of the chief pastimes around the camp. It was amazing how many stunts some of the Indian ponies could do. I soon had my mare and Pa’s doing many of those stunts.
After the fort was completed and food arrived, Jackson ordered his ships to blockade St. Marks and kill or capture any Indians they came across. He then turned his army loose on the towns and villages to the east around Lake Miccosukee. It was estimated that 1,500 Indians—men, women, and children—lived in that area. Accompanied by Pa, a white regiment, and me, General McIntosh and his 1,500 warriors swept through the area. In addition to killing those warriors we could corner, we seized everything we could use. Everything else was destroyed. In village after village we encountered little resistance. Sometimes we would be shot at from heavy cover. The attackers would then run. The size of our force was overpowering. Frequently, only empty villages awaited us. After taking what was useful, we then burned the villages. In most cases the villagers left in such a hurry that they left behind most of their food and other belongings.
One of the villages destroyed was that of a Red Stick chief named Peter McQueen. In that attack, over a hundred prisoners were taken—mostly women and children. As Pa and I rode past one small group of prisoners, I had an uneasy feeling and glanced about. Seeing an Indian boy who was standing and staring at me, I stopped my horse. Pa stopped, too. I said, “Pa, it’s the same boy I let go last June.”
Pa said, “It sure is. He’s over a hundred miles west of where we last saw him.”
I said, “We are too, Pa.”
The boy and I looked at each other for half a minute. Neither of us smiled. I then raised my hand to him and he raised his hand in return.
Turning to Pa, I said, “Pa, we need to let him go and I haven’t learned enough Muskogee yet to explain it to our Indian friends.”
Pa then spoke to a nearby friendly Indian who returned his conversation in Muskogee.
Pa then said to me, “All of this little group is to be let go. That’s why they’re separated from the others. There’s no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth so I didn’t ask why they’re to be let go.”
Still not knowing his name, I looked back at Osceola. I thought of speaking to him, but I didn’t know what to say or enough of his language to do a good job of it. I didn’t know at the time that his pa was a half-Scot who had taught him English. Pa then heeled his mare and moved on. Raising my hand to the boy, I also rode on. The Indian boy once again raised his hand. Otherwise he didn’t move. I was then seventeen. I was later to learn that Osceola was fifteen at that time. I was also to learn he had come to Florida with Peter McQueen’s band when they were driven out of Alabama and Georgia.
In the meantime Jackson’s white soldiers were crushing the other Seminole towns. Outnumbered by almost ten to one in most cases, the Indians put up little resistance. Jackson’s troops burned town after town, took thousands of cattle, and took the Indians’ supplies of corn, rice, beans, pumpkins, and other food. The Indians mostly vanished into the swamps.
Jackson then turned his army toward St. Marks and took the fort without a fight. The Spanish commander of the fort only protested.
Bowlegs’ town on the Suwannee River, the black community on the Suwannee, and Arbuthnot’s ship were the next victims of Jackson’s attacks. Arbuthnot sold guns, ammunition, and cloth to the Indians from his ship, which was anchored in the Suwannee. He had done so for some time.
In the meantime, the friendly Indian army Pa and I were with turned toward the Suwannee to meet General Jackson for the attack there. As we approached the Suwannee, survivors from the towns we had ransacked arrived there and told what had happened to their towns and property. These people convinced those along the Suwannee of the danger they were in. Not knowing they were alerted, Jackson marched his men as fast as possible hoping to find and engage the enemy before they were alerted. Jackson wanted to end the war with one major attack. We needed to engage the enemy well before dark in order to have adequate time to finish our work before they could use the cover of night to escape. With the Lower Creek warriors, we arrived in advance of Jackson’s white force.
Recognizing the futility of the situation, Chief Bowlegs’ tribe disappeared into the swamp east of the river. His village was on the east side of the river so it was just a matter of them pulling out and vanishing into the swamp. The blacks, whose houses lined the west side of the river—the same side we were approaching from—set up a blocking force to stop us. They also started moving their families across the river. We arrived at that time. About four hundred black fighters and some Indians who stayed behind to help them held us off for the hour or so until dark.
Since Jackson’s white force had not yet arrived, our Lower Creek Indian friends did most of the fighting against the black force holding the riverbank. Being there, and participating, I can tell you the fighting was not very ferocious. The blacks were dug in and our Indians never made an open charge. If they had, they would have overpowered and killed most of the blacks. A couple of hundred Lower Creeks might have also been killed if we had made an open daylight charge.
The way it happened was that we set up behind trees and logs and shot at the blacks with our long rifles. Armed only with short-barreled muskets, that’s what they shot at us with. We were almost out of range of their muskets but were plenty close enough to be effective with the few long rifles among our force. Still, the blacks mostly kept their heads down and we didn’t hit very many.
I can’t fault the Indians for the way they fought. It was just their style to lay up behind trees. Pa and I were both happy with that. Neither of us wanted to lead a charge into the muzzles of over four hundred guns behind breastworks.
As soon as it was dark enough not to be committing suicide, we advanced. The instant we got within range of their muskets, we made a charge. The blacks chose that same time to make a break for the river and try to cross it. Most of them escaped