A BRUTAL RECKONING

The author of Tecumseh and the Prophet and The Earth Is Weeping returns with a new history of the Creek Indians’ war with U.S. settlers, focusing on the role of Andrew Jackson.

Based largely in present-day Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama, the Creeks were descended from the Native peoples who lived in the area before Hernando de Soto’s Spanish conquistadors plundered it. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1700s, despite being divided into small towns with no central authority, the Creeks were “the dominant Indian power in the Deep South.” Cozzens shows how this way of life came under pressure from White settlers eager to exploit the rich farmland inhabited by the Natives. The Creeks’ response was inspired by a group of prophets who preached war against the White men, beginning around 1812. Their followers—called Red Sticks after the wooden war clubs favored by the Creeks—at first attacked isolated White settlers and tribe members who had abandoned traditional ways. The August 1813 attack on Fort Mims, a White stronghold in southwestern Alabama, ended in a brutal massacre, with more than 250 dead, including women and children. That battle ignited a determination among Whites in the region—especially Jackson, who was from Tennessee—to end the uprising by whatever means necessary. Cozzens gives detailed, diligently researched descriptions of the subsequent battles, which culminated in early 1814 at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, where Jackson’s forces annihilated a Red Stick stronghold, killing some 850 Creeks and allied tribesmen. Jackson parlayed this victory into command of the armies that defeated the British in New Orleans early the next year. A seasoned historical storyteller, Cozzens portrays both Jackson and his Creek adversaries without minimizing their flaws, though he is clearly appalled by Jackson’s later treatment of the Indians during the Trail of Tears. The author includes 10 maps to keep readers oriented.

An authoritative account of a disturbing chapter in the relations between the U.S. military and Indigenous peoples.