Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama.. Eggleston George Cary

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СКАЧАТЬ no less competent men than his two uncles, Alexander McGillivray, and the accomplished Frenchman Le Clerc Milfort. Young Weatherford evinced the best capacity for acquiring knowledge, but it was only such knowledge as he wanted to acquire. Caring nothing about reading and writing, he refused to learn to read and write, and no persuasions would overcome his obstinacy in this particular. He took pains, however, to acquire the utmost command of the English language, partly because it was useful to him as a means of communication with the Americans, and partly because he found that command of a civilized tongue gave him a greater force in speaking his native Creek language, and it was a part of his ambition to be distinguished for eloquence in council. He learned French, also, but less perfectly, and acquired enough of Spanish to speak it in ordinary conversation. He travelled, too, for improvement, making several journeys while yet a boy to Mobile and Pensacola, picking up as he went whatever information there was to acquire.

      He thus became in an important sense an educated man. He could not read or write, it is true; but it is probable that Homer was equally ignorant, and not at all certain that Hannibal or Richard Cœur de Lion, great commanders as they were, were much better scholars.

      The chief function of education is to train the mind, and the chief difference between the educated man and one who is not so is that the mind of the one has been trained into a state of high efficiency while that of the other has not. Reading and writing offer the shortest roads, the simplest means, to this end; but they are not the only ones, and if Red Eagle had little or no knowledge of letters, he had nevertheless an active intellect, trained under excellent masters to a high degree of efficiency, and hence was, in the true sense of the term, a man of education.

      In his tastes and instincts this son of a Scotchman was altogether an Indian. He devoted himself earnestly to the work of acquiring the knowledge of woodcraft and the skill in the chase which his people held in highest esteem. He was a notable huntsman, a fine swimmer, a tireless walker. He was a master marksman, alike with the bow and with the rifle. He was passionately fond of all athletic sports, too, and by his skill in them he won the admiration – almost the worship – of all the youth of his nation. He was the fleetest of foot of all the young men who ran races in the Creek villages, and his fondness for the sports of his people was so great that he was never absent from any gathering of the young men for contests of strength, activity, or skill, however distant the place of meeting might be. He was their chief by right of his accomplishments, as well as by inheritance as the son of Sehoy the princess. Especially in the great Creek game of throwing the ball – a game which closely resembled a battle between hundreds of men on each side, and one in which success was achieved only by great personal daring and endurance added to skill, bones being broken frequently in the rude collisions of the opposing forces, and men being killed and trampled under foot not infrequently – the young Red Eagle was an enthusiastic and successful player.

      While yet a little child, Red Eagle showed that he had inherited his father's love for horses, and his persistence in riding races, breaking unruly colts, and dashing madly over the roughest country on the back of some one of his father's untamed animals, gave him the finest skill and most consummate grace of a perfect horseman. An old Indian woman who knew the young chief in his youth, telling of his daring, his skill, and his grace as a horseman, said, "The squaws would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the corn-patch."

      All these things added to Red Eagle's popularity with the old and young of his nation, and the daring and enthusiasm which he showed in the sports of his people were exercised frequently in their service. In the wars of the Creeks with neighboring nations, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, and in their campaigns on the borders of Tennessee, Red Eagle distinguished himself for courage, tireless activity, and great skill in warfare, even before he had reached manhood, so that when his growth was fully gained he was already a man of the widest and most controlling influence among the Creeks, by reason both of his birth and of his achievements.

      His popularity was enhanced doubtless by the beauty of his face and the comeliness of his person, for all the writers who have described Red Eagle, and all the men of that time who have given oral accounts of him, agree in telling us that he was a singularly handsome man, with brilliant eyes, well-cut features, shapely limbs, and imposing presence.

      That nothing which could help him to influence and power might be lacking, Red Eagle was gifted with eloquence at once stirring and persuasive. His natural gift had been cultivated carefully, and, as we have seen in a former chapter, he adroitly hoarded his power in this respect, taking care not to weaken the force of his oratory by making it cheap and common. He would not speak at all upon light occasions. While others harangued, he sat silent, permitting decisions to be made without expressing any opinion whatever upon the matters in dispute. It was only when a great occasion aroused deep passions that Red Eagle spoke. Then his eloquence was overwhelming. He won his audience completely, and bent men easily to his will. He knew how to arouse their passions and to play upon them for his own purposes. Opposition gave way before the tide of his speech. His opponents in debate were won to his views or silenced by his overwhelming oratory; and he who was his people's commander in the field was no less certainly their master in the council on all occasions which were important enough to stir him to exertion. He had vices, certainly, but they were the vices of his time and country, and there is no sufficient evidence that he carried them to excess, while his retention of physical and intellectual vigor afford the strongest possible proof of the contrary.

      CHAPTER IV.

      THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE

      We all know how trouble begins. Whether a big or a little quarrel is the thing about which we inquire, and whoever the parties to the dispute may be, the trouble may always be traced back to some small occurrences which led to larger ones, which in their turn provoked still greater, until finally the trouble came.

      We have seen that there was peace and justice between the Americans and the Creek Nation, and that the Creeks had every reason in their own interest to continue living upon friendly terms with the whites. A good many of them fully understood this, too, and sought to persuade others of it; and it is probable that when the first troubles came the great majority of the Creeks earnestly wished to keep the peace, and to make use of the means of advancement offered to them by the American Government and people. Unluckily, they were the victims of bad advice, and the old story followed: one thing led to another.

      It is not easy, in this case, to say precisely what the one thing was which led to another. That is to say, it is not easy to determine what was the first of the long chain of events which led the prosperous and improving Creeks into dissensions, and thence into the war out of which they came a broken and disheartened remnant of a once powerful nation; but tracing the matter as far back as it is necessary to carry the inquiry, we discover that a public road was one of the earliest causes of the trouble.

      The Creeks were made masters of their own country by the Treaty of 1790, and their absolute title to their lands was respected by the United States Government, which defended them rigorously against encroachments upon their domain. That government, having become possessed of a wide tract of territory lying west of the Creek Nation, toward which the tide of emigration was rapidly turning, wished to provide a more direct and better road than any that existed, and with that end in view sought permission of the Creeks to run the new Federal Road, as it was called, by a direct route through the Creek territory. The principal chiefs, beginning to learn some of the natural laws that govern commerce, saw that the passage of a good road through the heart of the nation would necessarily benefit them, and make their commerce with the outer world easier and more profitable. Accordingly these chiefs gave the Creek Nation's consent, and the road was made. Over this the people quarrelled among themselves, dividing, as wiser people are apt to do, into two fiercely antagonistic parties. Those of them who objected to the thoroughfare were seriously alarmed by the great numbers of emigrants who were constantly passing through their country to the region beyond. They said that they would soon be walled up between white settlements on every side. The land on the Tombigbee River was already becoming peopled to such an extent that the hope, which СКАЧАТЬ