216 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.anx.19 



engagement lie was sliot thioutrli the arm, tnit eontimiec! to tiglit desperately until 

 he reeeived a bullet in the head and fell dead, surrounded by the bodies of 120 of 

 his slain warriors. The services of Tecumtha and his Indians to the British cause 

 have been recognized by an English historian, who says, "but for them it is proba- 

 ble we .should not now have a Canada." Authorities: Drake, Indiana, ed. 1880; 

 Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1894; Eggleston, Tecumseh and the 

 Shawnee Prophet. 



(34) Fort Mims M.\ss.\cre, 1813 (p. 89): Fort Jlims, so ealle<l from an old Indian 

 trader on whose lands it was built, was a stocka<le fort erected in the summer of 1813 

 for the protection of the settlers in what was known as the Tensaw district, and was 

 situated on Tensaw lake, Alabama, one mile east of Alabama river and about forty 

 miles above Mobile. It was garrisoned by about 200 volunteer troops under Major 

 Daniel Beasley, with refugees from the neighboring settlement, making a total at 

 the time of its destruction of 553 men, women, and children. Being carelessly 

 guarded, it was surprised on the morning of August 30 by about 1,000 Creek war- 

 riors led by tlie mixed-blood chief, William Weatherford, wlio rushed in at the 

 open gate, and, after a stout but hopeless resistance liy the garrison, massacred all 

 within, with the exception of the few negroes and halfbreeds, whom they spared, 

 and about a dozen whites wlio made their escape. The Indian loss is unknown, l)ut 

 was very heavy, as the tight continued at close quaiters until the liuildings were 

 tired over the lieads of the defenders. The unfortunate tragedy was due entirely to 

 the carelessness of the commanding officer, who had been repeatedly warned that 

 the Indians were about, and at the very moment of the attack a negro was tied up 

 waiting to be flogged for reporting that he had the day before seen a number of 

 painted warriors lurking a short distance outside the stockade. Authorities: Pickett, 

 Alabama, ed. 1896; Hamilton and Owen, note, p. 170, in Transactions AlaVjama His- 

 torical Society, ii, 1898; Agent Hawkins's report, 1813, American State Papers: Indian 

 Affairs, i, p. 853; Drake, Indians, ed. 1880. The figures given are those <if Pickett, 

 which in tliis instance seem most correct, while Drake's are evidently exaggerated. 

 ' (35) General Willi.\m McIn'tosh (p. 98): This noted halfbreed chief of the 

 Lower Creeks was the son of a Scotch officer in the British army by an Indian 

 mother, and was born at the Creek town of Coweta in Alabama, on the lower Chat- 

 tahoochee, nearly opposite the present city of Columbus, Georgia, and killed at 

 the same place Ijy order of the Creek national council on April 30, 1825. Having 

 sufficient education to keep up an official correspondence, he iirought himself to 

 public notice and came to be regarded as the principal chief bf the Lower Creeks. 

 In the Creek war of 1813-14 he led his warriors to the supjjort of the Americans 

 against his lirethren of the Upper towns, and acted a leading part in the terrible 

 slaughters at Autossee and the Horseshoe bend. In 1817 he again headed his war- 

 riors on the government side against the Seminole and was commissioned as major. 

 His common title of general belonged to him only by courtesy. In 1821 he was the 

 principal supporter of the treaty of Indian springs, by wliich a large tract between 

 the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers was ceded. The treaty was repudiated by the 

 Creek Nation as being the act of a small faction. Two other attempts were made to 

 carry through the treaty, in which the interested motives of Mcintosh became so 

 aiJjiarent that he was liranded as a traitor to his Nation and condemned to deat'i, 

 together with his principal underlings, in accordance with a Creek law making 

 death the penalty for undertaking to sell lands without the consent of the national 

 council. About the same time he was pulilicly exposed and denounced in the 

 Cherokee council for an attempt to bribe John Ross and other chiefs of the Cherokee 

 in the same fashion. At daylight of April 30, 1825, a hundred or more warriors 

 sent by tlie Creek national council surrounded his house and, after allowing the 

 women and children to come out, set fire to it and sliot Mcintosh and another chief 



