The Creek War of 1813 and 1814

By H. S. Halbert, T. H. Ball and Frank L. Owsley

The first edition of Halbert and Ball's Creek War was published in 1895, and a new edition containing an introductory essay, supplementary notes, a bibliography, and an index by Frank L. Owsley Jr., was published in 1969. This standard account of one of the most controversial wars in which Americans have fought is again available, with introductory materials and a bibliography revised to reflect the advances in scholarship since the 1969 edition. This facsimile reproduction of the 1895 original provides a full and sympathetic account of the Indians' point of view, from the earliest visit of the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh to the southern tribes in 1811, through the buildup of apprehension and hostilities leading to the fateful battles at Burnt Corn, Fort Mims, and Holy Ground.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Jul 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9780817383701

Book preview

The Library of Alabama Classics was inaugurated in 1982 with paperback reprint editions of the works of Carl Carmer, Stars Fell on Alabama, and Clarence Cason, 90° in the Shade, and the series continues to make important and enduring books on the history and culture of Alabama available in durable and reasonably priced editions.

In 1992 the Alabama Library Association awarded its Citation of Merit to the University of Alabama Press for the Library of Alabama Classics.

The

CREEK WAR

of

1813 and 1815

H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball

WITH INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND INDEX

by Frank L. Owsley, Jr.

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

Copyright 1895 by H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball

Editor's Introduction to the 1995 Edition and Editor's Bibliography Copyright © 1995 Editor's Introduction, Editor's Notes, and Editor's Index Copyright © 1969 The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1884

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Halbert, Henry S. (Henry Sale), 1837–1916.

The Creek War of 1813 and 1814/ H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball: with introductions, notes, bibliography, and index by Frank L. Owsley, Jr.

    p.     cm. — (The library of Alabama classics)

Originally published: Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1895.

ISBN - 10  0-8173-0775-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN - 13  978-0-8173-0775-2

ISBN - 13  978-0-8173-8370-1 (electronic)

1. Creek War, 1813–1814. I. Ball, T. H. (Timothy Horton), 1826–1913. II. Owsley, Frank Lawrence, 1928–   . III. Series.

E83.813.H15   1995

973.5′238—dc20                                     94-37440

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor's Acknowledgments

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction to the 1995 Edition

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

I.  The Choctaw-Muscogee Tribes

II.  Causes of the Creek War

III.  Tecumseh Among the Chickasaws and Choctaws

IV.  Tecumseh Among the Creeks

V.  The War Cloud Gathering

VI.  The Stockades

VII.  Inter-Tribal Councils of the Creeks and the Choctaws

VIII.  The Battle of Burnt Corn

IX.  Fort Mims

X.  The Kimbell-James Massacre

XI.  Attack on Fort Sinquefield

XII.  The Night Courier

XIII.  Incidents of the War in the Fork

XIV.  Choctaws and Chickasaws Join the American Army

XV.  The Bashi Skirmish

XVI.  Beard and Tandy Walker

XVII.  The Canoe Fight

XVIII.  Battle of the Holy Ground

XIX.  The War in the Indian Country

XX.  Closing Events, 1814

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

Editor's Notes

Editor's Bibliography

Editor's Index

EDITOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The editor wishes to express appreciation to Auburn University for providing him with the free time and financial assistance necessary to complete the project. He also wishes to express his thanks to his wife, Mrs. Dorothy Owsley, and to Mrs. James B. Sellers and Mrs. Marsha Williams for their clerical help. In addition he extends thanks to Milo Howard and his staff at the Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama, for their aid and suggestions, and to Dr. Malcolm C. McMillan for his good advice.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 is by far the most detailed and probably the most accurate of the older works dealing with the Creek War. In writing this account Henry Sale Halbert and Timothy Horton Ball relied heavily upon the manuscripts and reminiscences of contemporaries. In addition they made good use of Albert J. Pickett's History of Alabama, J. F. H. Claiborne's Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, and A. B. Meek's unpublished History of Alabama, which were the best secondary accounts available at the time.¹ Their use of manuscripts and reminiscences is probably their most valuable contribution to modern scholarship, since much of the material they preserved would have been lost otherwise. The authors’ great familiarity with the area of South Alabama and Mississippi during the early period makes their volume necessary reading for anyone wishing to study the history of the region. They have managed to preserve an authenticity of the location and an understanding of the participants in the war that it would not be possible to recreate today.

The most valuable portions of this work are those dealing with the causes of the war and with its early stages in the Mississippi Territory. The rather cursory treatment of Andrew Jackson's campaigns and the activities of the Georgia armies is the major weakness, and because of it the book is not an adequate account of the entire war. The authors justified this shortcoming on the ground that this phase of the war was well covered in the plethora of biographies of Andrew Jackson—a statement more accurate today than at the time their volume was published.² Unfortunately, no author has given adequate coverage to the actions of the Georgia armies in the war, and it therefore remains for future historians to complete the work in that area, and to relate the action of the Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi Territorial armies in the final defeat of the Creek nation. It also remains for future historians to relate the Creek War to the larger War of 1812, of which it became a part.

In common with nearly all writers who have dealt with this conflict, Halbert and Ball had to rely on American sources for their research, for they did not have the advantage of access to the numerous British and Spanish records that bear on the subject. The abundant manuscript materials pertaining to the Creek War that are available in the British Museum, the National Library of Scotland, the British Public Record Office, and in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville have not been explored by American authors writing about the conflict, but future scholars who wish to see the Creek War in its true perspective and to prove or disprove the many speculations about it will find it necessary to research those foreign archives.

An unusual feature of Halbert and Ball's work is their largely successful effort to present the Indians’ viewpoint and to explain why the usually friendly Creeks went to war and the Choctaws and Chickasaws did not. It is in this area that the authors have done some of their best work, especially in their account of the reactions of the Choctaws to the persuasion of Tecumseh and others who would have led them to the warpath. This emphasis should interest all students of the Indian wars. The Creeks’ grievances are well described—their loss of land to the white man and their rejection of the cultural changes that were being imposed upon them by the white man's influence. Certainly Halbert and Ball have captured most of the facts as well as the feelings of both the Indians and whites.

Source material for the Creek War as the Indians saw it is quite rare, of course, owing to the total absence of any written records. It is usually possible to gain some idea of the Indians’ feelings from the correspondence of their agents, but the letters of the Creeks’ agent, Benjamin Hawkins, are sparse and poorly informed during the critical period when the war turned from a Creek civil war to hostilities against the white man. Hawkins was one of the ablest of Indian agents, and he carried on perhaps the most voluminous correspondence of any of them, but he was seriously ill during the crucial period when the sentiment for war was growing and was unable to travel among the Creeks to observe their activities at first hand.³ His illness was significant not only because he could not report adequately the activities of the Indians at the outset of the war, but also because there is good reason to believe that if he had been well and active he might have been able to prevent the war entirely or at least to limit its spread somewhat.

Despite friendship for the Indians, the authors did not attempt to gloss over the Indian atrocities. Neither did they condone the campaign of extermination that Jackson and some other American generals carried out. In deploring the atrocities of both whites and Indians, Halbert and Ball achieved a balance and impartiality most unusual in accounts of Indian wars, especially those written late in the nineteenth century. In presenting their narrative as they did, the authors managed to depict quite graphically the horrors of Indian war and to show how the hatreds generated by such conflicts made peace between white and Indian extremely difficult of attainment.

The relative scarcity of material relating to the Indian side of the conflict has made it very hard to find information that can be compared or contrasted with the material offered in this book. The editor was fortunate in locating a manuscript account of the war's first stages that proved to be of invaluable assistance in evaluating the work of Halbert and Ball. This manuscript, History of the Creek Nation, was written by George Stiggins, a literate half-breed.⁴ Although Stiggins served on the side of the white man, he was well acquainted with a number of hostile Indians, and was therefore able to provide information not available in any other source.⁵ Since the Stiggins manuscript was not used by Halbert and Ball, a comparison is especially useful. The significant fact, one that becomes apparent very quickly, is that the two accounts are very similar. They differ on a few points, but in the main the differences are in matters of detail. Their similarity obviously strengthens the claim of both accounts to accuracy.

The authors of The Creek War were both well-educated men who lived for many years in the area about which they wrote. Henry Sale Halbert was born in Pickens County, Alabama, on January 14, 1837, of parents who had come there from South Carolina.⁶ He was raised in Lowndes County, Mississippi, and received the fine education usually provided for the son of a large planter.⁷ In Halbert's case, this included attendance at good academies and, in 1857, an M.A. degree from Union University in Tennessee. He then served as a soldier with Texas state troops on the frontier. Most of this military service, which lasted from April 2 to October 14, 1860, involved actions against the Indians. At the start of the Civil War, Halbert enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army and served in the 6th Texas Cavalry throughout the war. He was severely wounded at New Hope, Georgia, on May 16, 1864, and did not return to duty until a few months before the war's end.

From 1866 to 1872 Halbert taught at Waco University, an institution that later merged with Baylor University, and from 1872 until 1884 he was an instructor at a number of different academies in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. But probably the most significant experience in his teaching career—and one that prepared him to do this book—was the educational work that he did among the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi from 1884 through 1899. It was during this period that Halbert obtained the intimate knowledge of Indians that was to inform most of his writing. Some idea of how vast his knowledge of Indians was can be obtained from his papers in the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery. During his lifetime Halbert was recognized as one of the nation's leading authorities on the Choctaws, and his knowledge of the Creeks was almost as good.

In addition to writing numerous short articles for the American Antiquarian, The American Anthropologist, The Transactions of the Mississippi Historical Society, The Transactions of the Alabama Historical Society, and various Baptist papers, Halbert also served as co-editor (with Dr. John R. Swanton) of Bulletin 46, Bureau of American Ethnology, which is an edition of Cyrus Byington's dictionary of the Choctaw language.⁸ It was during the period of his work with the Choctaws that Halbert made his contribution to The Creek War, the work that must be counted his most significant endeavor. In addition, he wrote a history of the Choctaw Indians which was never published.

Halbert's scholarly activity cannot be fully assessed in terms of his own publications, since he was quite willing to help other historians and ethnologists in their work. Thus, for example, he supplied a large amount of information concerning the Creek War and the Choctaw Indians to the famous frontier historian Lyman Draper, and there are numerous Halbert letters in the Draper Collection.⁹

During the last twelve years of his life Halbert was a clerk in the State Department of Archives and History at Montgomery, Alabama. Still a bachelor, he died of tuberculosis on May 9, 1916.¹⁰

The other author, Timothy Horton Ball, was born at Agawam, Hampden County, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1826. He came from a fairly well-to-do New England family and received a good education, including baccalaureate and master's degrees from Franklin College (in 1850 and 1853, respectively), and a divinity degree from Newton Theological Institution (in 1863). As a teacher and Baptist preacher Ball lived in a number of places, but his many years’ residence in Clarke County, Alabama were of some special significance, for it was during those years that he wrote A Glance into the Great Southwest or Clarke County Alabama, and its Surroundings from 1540 to 1877 and, still more importantly, obtained much of the material he would later use in The Creek War.¹¹ Ball, like Halbert, was an extremely active collector of all manner of historical information. During his Clarke County years he was reputed to have the largest library in the county, the contents of which he generously shared with the area's young students. He had the reputation of spending much of his time walking through the region and of passing many hours in conversation with old settlers. He kept careful notes of the settlers’ reminiscences, pressing them for details and constantly cross-checking the facts one against the other for accuracy. In this way Ball collected large quantities of primary historical data.¹² The similarity of information found in his earlier History of Clarke County shows that he made a significant contribution to the factual material contained in his joint effort with Halbert.¹³

Ball was an extremely prolific writer, and sixteen different titles by him are listed by the Library of Congress. Some of these are short pamphlets, to be sure, but many are books of 300 to 500 pages. The range of interests covered by these publications is quite wide, including poetry, music, county and regional histories, genealogy, and numerous religious subjects.¹⁴ In addition to those catalogued by the Library of Congress, the titles of several other works by Ball are listed in Thomas M. Owen's Dictionary of Alabama Biography. He married Martha Caroline Creighton of Clarke County, Alabama, and they had two children. Ball died November 8, 1913, at Crown Point, Indiana.¹⁵

The editor has been unable to discover precisely how Halbert and Ball became acquainted or how they went about writing The Creek War. However, they were both active Baptists and both extremely interested in work with the Indians, and it is possible that they became acquainted as a result of one or the other of these common concerns. As for their respective contributions to The Creek War, one must again rely largely on conjecture, but it is fair to suppose that both men furnished in about equal parts the information used in the volume. Ball was almost certainly the editor of the book, however, and very likely wrote and organized most, if not all, of the final version; he was, after all, an extremely prolific writer whereas Halbert never published a book-length work of his own. At all events, the final product is a very useful study of white and Indian conflict and remains, after seventy-five years, the best history of the Creek War to be published to date.

FOOTNOTES

¹ Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the Earliest Period, 2 vols. (Charleston, 1851); J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, as a Province, Territory, and State, with Biographical Notices of Eminent Citizens (Jackson, 1880); A. B. Meek, History of Alabama, unpublished manuscript in Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.

² Henry S. Halbert and Timothy H. Ball, The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 (Chicago, 1895) pp. 13–14.

³ See Hawkins letters to the Secretary of War, Letters to the Secretary of War, Record Group 107, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Collected letters of Benjamin Hawkins, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia.

⁴ George Stiggins, History of the Creek Nation, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina Papers, MSS I–V, Lyman Draper Manuscript Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

⁵ J. Pierce to Harry Toulmin, Jul. 13, 1813, enclosure in Willie Blount to the Secretary of War, Aug. 18, 1813, Letters to the Secretary of War, Record Group 107.

⁶ Thomas M. Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, 4 vols. (Chicago, 1921), vol. 3, p. 723.

⁷ Mobile Register, May 11, 1916.

⁸ Owen, History of Alabama, vol. 3, pp. 723–24.

⁹ A number of Halbert letters are located in the Tecumseh Papers, 4YY, Draper Manuscript Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

¹⁰ Owen, History of Alabama, vol. 3, pp. 723–24; Mobile Register, May 11, 1816.

¹¹ Owen, History of Alabama, vol. 3, pp. 84–85.

¹² Montgomery Advertiser, Mar. 16, 1941.

¹³ Timothy H. Ball, A Glance into the Great South-Eas., or, Clarke County, and its Surroundings From 1540 to 1877 (Grove Hill, Alabama, 1882).

¹⁴ William Warner Bishop et al., eds., The Association of Research Libraries, A Catalog of Books Represented by Library of Congress Printed Cards, Issued to July 31, 1942, 164 vols. (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1942–1946), vol. 9, pp. 60–61.

¹⁵ Owen, History of Alabama, vol. 3, p. 85.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE 1995 EDITION.

The 1969 reprint of Halbert and Ball's The Creek War of 1813 and 1814, originally published in 1895, produced the only work devoted to the study of that conflict. The ensuing twenty-five years have seen a greatly increased interest in and study of Native Americans, not only among scholars but in the general community as well. Because Halbert and Ball concerned themselves with personality and the early relations between whites and Indians, their study is especially useful to the more recent students of Native American culture.

Since the 1969 reprint, however, several scholars have published studies that cover either the Creek War generally or specific portions of it. In 1968, even before the actual release of the reprint, James W. Holland published a brief study of the Creek War titled Andrew Jackson and the Creek War: Victory at Horseshoe Bend. This work, although well written, is brief and fails to cover the early war in the Mississippi Territory in more than a cursory way. It was, in fact, commissioned by the National Park Service for the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

In 1977, Robert V. Remini published the first volume of his series on the life of Andrew Jackson titled Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire 1767–1821.¹ This outstanding study covers Jackson's role in the Creek War and develops that conflict using virtually every known source including British and Spanish records. Nevertheless, the work is limited to Jackson's participation in the war and as a result does not focus on the early conflict in either the Mississippi Territory or Georgia.

In 1981, Frank L. Owsley, Jr., published Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans.² This study covers the entire Creek Indian War, showing how it ultimately became part of the War of 1812. Owsley's work utilized for the first time in a comprehensive study both British and Spanish records as well as virtually all the available American records, including George Stiggins's unpublished History of the Creek Indians. Stiggins, the brother-in-law of William Weatherford, produced the only manuscript which can be attributed to a contemporary Native American author. Owsley's study documents the exact amount of support and influence that can be attributed to the British and Spanish in this conflict.

More recently, in-depth studies have discussed various individuals and concepts of the Creek Indian War. In 1988, Benjamin W. Griffith, Jr., published McIntosh and Weatherford: Creek Indian Leaders, a work that deals somewhat with the war but develops in much more detail the roles of these two leaders.³ Another leader, Josiah Francis, is the subject of a study by Frank L. Owsley, Jr., in Prophet of War: Josiah Francis and the Creek War, in the American Indian Quarterly.⁴ This article, along with an earlier one by Owsley title The Fort Mims Massacre, published in The Alabama Review in 1971, describes the rising Creek nativism and illustrates how the Creek civil war was a full-scale revitalization movement.⁵ Inspired by Tecumseh's ideas and trained by Tecumseh's prophets, the hostile Creeks wanted nothing less than a return to their original pre-Colombian status. In 1984, David Edmunds's Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership described how Tecumseh aroused Indian nativism.⁶ His great success can be attributed in part to the influence and heritage he was able to claim because his mother was Creek.

The most recent account in this area, a study published in 1991 by Joel W. Martin titled Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World, also treats the war as a cultural and religious conflict.⁷ Although Martin deals with Creek nativism, he places special emphasis on religion, an interesting distinction in itself because most historians consider that religion is part of the nativism movement. In any case, Martin's contribution is to add much depth and understanding to the religious dimension.

Despite all the new work on the Creek War, Halbert and Ball's The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 remains an extremely useful study. Scholars still consider the study to be remarkably accurate and insightful. Even at the time when they wrote, these two authors recognized that the cultural conflict was a major issue. Although they lacked many of the modern terms, they clearly identified the elements.

The most significant value of this work was and still is those accounts of so many individuals who participated in the conflict. Halbert and Ball actually knew some of these people and reproduced their firsthand accounts in the work. No new author can ever have personal access to so much material again. Halbert and Ball's study gives the reader a sense of the feelings of both settlers and friendly Indians who were under attack. For this reason, if for no other, no new study will ever be able to replace the work of these two men.

NOTES

1. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (New York, 1977).

2. Frank L. Owsley, Jr., Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans (Gainesville, Fla., 1981).

3. Benjamin W. Griffith, Jr., McIntosh and Weatherford: Creek Indian Leaders (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1988).

4. Frank L. Owsley, Jr., Prophet of War: Josiah Francis and the Creek War, The American Indian Quarterly Journal of American Indian Studies 9 (Summer 1985), pp. 273–293.

5. Frank L. Owsley, Jr., The Fort Mims Massacre, The Alabama Review 24 (July 1971), pp. 192–204.

6. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (Boston, 1984).

7. Joel W. Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World (Boston, 1991).

---

T. H. BALL,

Historical Secretary of the Old Settlers’ Association of

Lake County, Indiana;

Honorary member of Lake County Teachers’ Association;

Active Member of Indiana Academy of Science;

Corresponding Member of Wisconsin State Historical

Society;

Honorary Member of Trinity Historical Society of Texas.

Author of

Lake County, 1834–1872,

Lake of the Red Cedars,

Clarke County, Alabama,

Notes on Luke's Gospel

Poems and Hymns

Annie B., &c, &c.

---

---

H. S. HALBERT,

Member of Mississippi State Historical

Society;

Member of Alabama State Historical

Society;

Contributor to American

Antiquarian;

Contributor to Alabama

Historical Reporter.

---

PREFACE

WHEN this work was commenced, several years ago, it was not expected that it would become in size what it has grown to be. It was then expected only to give facts in regard to the Creek war as connected with the white settlers in what is now South Alabama, giving especially a fuller account of the attack on Fort Sinquefield with other gathered reminiscences and traditions. But when large libraries were examined and many historical works were consulted, and so little that was really reliable could be found in regard to that border war, and its real beginning seeming to be altogether unknown to Northern writers, it was thought best to make thorough research and to prepare a somewhat voluminous work for the sake of those, or for the use of those, who, in years to come, in the North as well as in the South, might justly be expected to be interested in a work as full, and, in some respects, as minute in details, as this.

If, therefore, any readers should think that some of the chapters, as those in regard to Tecumseh and Fort Mims, are more full than was needful, or that, in some others, too many personal, biographical incidents and sketches or notes are given, let them please bear in mind that the work is designed for more than one class of readers; let the more critical charitably trust that there will be some readers interested in the minute details and the apparent digressions; and let all who may read rest assured that the authors have, with the idea of different classes of readers before their minds, endeavored faithfully to obtain and impartially to present historic truth.

November 19, 1894.

Well may the inhabitants of Alabama, especially, say in regard to the Red men,

"Though ’mid the forests where they roved,

   There rings no hunter's shout,

Yet their names are on our waters,

   And we may not wash them out;"

for well, of the Indian tongue, as speaking in the flowing waters, does an Alabama poet say,

"‘ Tis heard where CHATTAHOOCHEE pours

   His yellow tide along;

It sounds on TALLAPOOSA'S shores,

   And COOSA swells the song;

Where lordly ALABAMA sweeps,

   The symphony remains;

And young CAHAWBA proudly keeps

   The echo of its strains;

Where TUSCALOOSA'S waters glide,

   From stream and town ’tis heard,

And dark TOMBECKBEE'S winding tide

   Repeats the olden word;

Afar, where Nature brightly wreathed

   Fit Edens for the free,

Along TUSCUMBIA'S bank ’tis breathed,

   By stately TENNESSEE;

And south, where, from CONECUH'S springs,

   ESCAMBIA'S waters steal,

The ancient melody still rings,—

   From TENSAW and MOBILE."

INTRODUCTION.

THIS work proposes to give as accurate an account as can now be obtained from written and printed records, from traditions, and from personal observation, of that portion of American history known as the Creek War of 1813 and 1814.

Of these Creek Indians says BREWER, author of a history of Alabama: In 1813 and 1814 they waged the bloodiest war against the whites anywhere recorded in the annals of the United States.

Says MEEK, one of Alabama's talented orators and poets: Time as it passed on and filled these solitudes with settlers, at last brought the most sanguinary era in Alabama history.

And PICKETT, recognized as Alabama's leading historian, says: Everything foreboded the extermination of the Americans in Alabama, who were the most isolated and defenseless people imaginable.

The reader who comes to our Conclusion may be disposed to change BREWER'S statement ; but he will not question the statements of PICKETT and MEEK.

But this work does not propose to give in full that part of the conflict waged in the Indian country which broke the power of the fierce Muscogees; but rather that part which has not been as yet so fully given, connected with the white settlers in what is now South Alabama. This portion of our American history, as connected with Indian border warfare, the authors of this work believe will be given more accurately and fully than has ever been done before. They propose to do justice to the Indians and justice to the whites.

For this portion of history they hope to make this work an authority. And for this they suggest the possession of some special fitness;

H. S. Halbert is a member of the State Historical Societies of Alabama and Mississippi. He was born in Alabama, and was, in a great measure, educated by the late Dr. J. H. Eaton, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He spent a portion of his early manhood in Indian campaigns on the western frontier, where he became familiar with the sight of the wild warrior with his bow and quiver, his paint and feathers; and there he conceived an abiding interest in the strange history and destiny of the American Indians. He has also been not a little among the civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. After four years of service in the Confederate army, he was for a number of years engaged in teaching in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama. While pursuing his profession in the two latter states he devoted much of his leisure to historical researches. He visited the homes and interviewed some surviving soldiers and contemporaries of the Creek war of 1813 and noted down their varied recollections, thereby collecting much new material for the history of that war. He was especially fortunate in securing from these aged survivors a full account of the attack on Fort Sinquefield, of which only a meagre sketch is recorded in the histories of Meek and Pickett.

For a number of years past he has been engaged in educational work among the Choctaws of Mississippi, with whose language, customs, and traditions he is familiar. From the immediate descendants of some of Pushmataha's warriors he has been enabled to rescue from oblivion a number of incidents in the career of that noted Mingo, and many facts in regard to Tecumseh's Southern visit. He has, in short, been interested largely for years in studies and investigations connected with the Southern Indians, and has visited in person and examined with care the Burnt Corn and Holy Ground battlefields. The Alabama Historical Reporter for January, 1885, said: Mr. H. S. Halbert is now doing more than any man in the South, perhaps, in collecting everything connected with the Southern Indians in the shape of history, tradition, romance, legend, etc.

T. H. Ball had an early home in the state of Georgia, before 1833, not far from the Savannah River, and learned some of the customs and ways of the South ; but in 1837, when eleven years of age, his home was transferred to the then almost untenanted solitudes of Northwestern Indiana (where the great prairie region of the West joined the woodland growth that extended to the Atlantic) and to the banks of a beautiful lake in the region then but lately occupied by the Pottawatomie Indians, some thirty–six miles from the old Fort Dearborn of Lake Michigan, some seventy-two miles from the Tippecanoe battle ground. He gained in those years of boyhood some knowledge of the Indians—Indians that had been associated with French missionaries and with fur traders—as he saw