Part 22

Meanwhile, the hostile Creeks had made themselves a stronghold at a place fifty-five miles to the south. Here was a bend of Tallapoosa River, called, from its shape, Tohopeka, or the "Horseshoe." It was a well-wooded area, about one hundred acres in extent, across whose neck the Indians had built a strong breastwork of logs, with two rows of port-holes, the whole so well constructed that it was evident they had been aided by British soldiers in its erection. At the bottom of the bend was a village of wigwams, and there were many canoes in the stream.

Within this stronghold was gathered the fighting force of the tribe, nearly a thousand warriors, and in the wigwams were about three hundred women and children. It was evident that they intended to make here their final, desperate stand.

The force led against them was two thousand strong. Their route of travel lay through the unbroken forest wilds, and it took eleven days to reach the Indian fort. A glance at it showed Jackson the weakness of the savage engineering. As he said, they had "penned themselves in for destruction."

The work began by sending Colonel Coffee across the river, with orders to post his men opposite the line of canoes and prevent the Indians from escaping. Coffee did more than this; he sent swimmers over who cut loose the canoes and brought them across the stream. With their aid he sent troops over the bend to attack the savages in the rear while Jackson assailed them in front.

The battle began with a fierce assault, but soon settled down to a slow slaughter, which lasted for five or six hours,--the fierce warriors, as in the former battles, refusing to ask for quarter or to accept their lives. Their prophets had told them that if they did they would be put to death by torture. When the battle ended few of them were left alive. On the side of the whites only fifty-five were killed and about three times as many wounded.

This signal defeat ended forever the power of the Cree nation, once the leading Indian power of the Gulf region. Such of the chiefs as survived surrendered. Among them was Weathersford, their valiant half-breed leader. Mounted on his well-known gray horse, famed for its speed and endurance, he rode to the door of Jackson's tent. The old soldier looked up to see before him this famous warrior, tall, erect, majestic, and dignified.

"I am Weathersford," he said; "late your enemy, now your captive."

From without the tent came fierce cries of "Kill him! kill him!"

"You may kill me if you wish," said the proud chief; "but I came to tell you that our women and children are starving in the woods. They never did you any harm and I came to beg you to send them food."

Jackson looked sternly at the angry throng outside, and said, in his vigorous way, "Any man who would kill as brave a man as this would rob the dead."

He then invited the chief into his tent, where he promised him the aid he asked for and freedom for himself. "I do not war with women and children," he said.

So corn was sent to the suffering women, and Weathersford was allowed to mount his good gray steed and ride away as he had come. He induced the remaining Creeks to accept the terms offered by the victorious general, these being peace and protection, with the provision that half their lands should be ceded to the United States.

As may well be imagined, a triumphant reception was given Jackson and his men on their return to Nashville. Shortly afterward came the news that he had been appointed Major-General in the army of the United States, to succeed William Henry Harrison, resigned. He had made his mark well against the Indians; he was soon to make it as well against the British at New Orleans.

THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA BAY.

On the coast of Louisiana, westward from the delta of the Mississippi, there lies a strange country, in which sea and land seem struggling for dominion, neither being victor in the endless contest. It is a low, flat, moist land, where countless water-courses intertwine into a complex net-work; while nearer the sea are a multitude of bays, stretching far inland, and largely shut off from the salt sea waves by barriers of long, narrow islands. Some of these islands are low stretches of white sand, flung up by the restless waters which ever wash to and fro. Others are of rich earth, brought down by lazy water-ways from the fertile north and deposited at the river outlets. Tall marsh grasses grow profusely here, and hide alike water and land. Everywhere are slow-moving, half-sleeping bayous, winding and twisting interminably, and encircling multitudes of islands, which lie hidden behind a dense growth of rushes and reeds, twelve feet high.

It was through this region, neither water nor land, that the hapless Evangeline, the heroine of Longfellow's famous poem, was rowed, seeking her lover in these flooded wilds, and not dreaming that he lay behind one of those reedy barrens, almost within touch, yet as unseen as if leagues of land separated them.

One of the bays of this liquid coast, some sixty miles south of New Orleans, is a large sheet of water, with a narrow island partly shutting it off from the Gulf. This is known as Grande Terre, and west of it is another island known as Grande Isle. Between these two long land gates is a broad, deep channel which serves as entrance to the bay. On the western side lies a host of smaller islands, the passes between them made by the bayous which straggle down through the land. Northward the bay stretches sixteen miles inland, and then breaks up into a medley of bayous and small lakes, cutting far into the land, and yielding an easy passage to the level of the Mississippi, opposite New Orleans.

Such is Barataria Bay, once the famous haunt of the buccaneers. It seems made by nature as a lurking-place for smugglers and pirates, and that is the purpose to which it was long devoted. The passages inland served admirably for the disposal of ill-gotten goods. For years the pirates of Barataria Bay defied the authorities, making the Gulf the scene of their exploits and finding a secret and ready market for their wares in New Orleans.

The pirate leaders were two daring Frenchmen, Pierre and Jean Lafitte, who came from Bordeaux some time after 1800 and settled in New Orleans. They were educated men, who had seen much of the world and spoke several languages fluently. Pierre, having served in the French army, became a skilled fencing-master. Jean set up a blacksmith shop, his slaves doing the work. Such was the creditable way in which these worthies began their new-world career.

Their occupation changed in 1808, in which year the slave-trade was brought to an end by act of Congress. There was also passed an Embargo Act, which forbade trade with foreign countries. Here was a double opportunity for men who placed gain above law. The Lafittes at once took advantage of it, smuggling negroes and British goods, bringing their illicit wares inland by way of the bayous of the coastal plain and readily disposing of them as honest goods.

Not long after this time the British cruisers broke up the pirate hordes which had long infested the West Indies. Their haunts were taken and they had to flee. Some of them became smugglers, landing their goods on Amelia Island, on the coast of Florida. Others sought the bays of Louisiana, where they kept up their old trade.

The Lafittes now found it to their advantage to handle the goods of these buccaneers, in which they posed as honest merchants. Later on they made piracy their trade, the whole fleet of the rovers coming under their control. Throwing off the cloak of honesty, they openly defied the laws. Prize goods and negroes were introduced into New Orleans with little effort at secrecy, and were sold in disregard of the law and the customs. It was well known that the Baratarian rovers were pirates, but the weak efforts to dislodge them failed and the government was openly despised.

Making Barataria Bay their head-quarters and harbor of refuge, the pirates fortified Grande Terre, and built on it their dwellings and store-houses. On Grande Isle farms were cultivated and orange-groves planted. On another island, named the Temple, they held auctions for the sale of their plunder, the purchasers smuggling it up the bayous and introducing it under cover of night into New Orleans, where there was nothing to show its source, though suspicion was rife. Such was Barataria until the war with England began, and such it continued through this war till 1814, the Lafittes and their pirate followers flourishing in their desperate trade.

We might go on to tell a gruesome story of fearful deeds by these bandits of the sea; of vessels plundered and scuttled, and sailors made to walk the plank of death; of rich spoil won by ruthless murder, and wild orgies on the shores of Grande Terre. But of all this there is little record, and the lives of these pirates yield us none of the scenes of picturesque wickedness and wholesale murder which embellish the stories of Blackbeard, Morgan, and other sea-rovers of old. Yet the career of the Lafittes has an historical interest which makes it worth the telling.

It was not until 1814, during the height of the war with England, that the easy-going Creoles of New Orleans grew indignant enough at the bold defiance of law by the Lafittes to make a vigorous effort to stop it. It was high time, for the buccaneers had grown so bold as to fire on the revenue officers of the government. Determined to bear this disgrace no longer, Pierre Lafitte was seized in the streets of New Orleans, and with one of his captains, named Dominique Yon, was locked up in the calaboosa.

This step was followed by a proclamation from Governor Claiborne, offering five hundred dollars for the arrest of Jean Lafitte, the acting pirate chief. Lafitte insolently retorted by offering five thousand dollars for the head of the governor. This impudent defiance aroused Claiborne to more decisive action. A force of militia was called out and sent overland to Barataria, with orders to capture and destroy the settlement of the buccaneers and seize all the pirates they could lay hands on.

The governor did not know the men with whom he had to deal. Their spies kept them fully informed of all his movements. Southward trudged the citizen soldiers, tracking their oozy way through the water-soaked land. All was silent and seemingly deserted. They were near their goal, and not a man had been seen. But suddenly a boatswain's whistle sounded, and from a dozen secret passages armed men swarmed out upon them, and in a few minutes had them surrounded and under their guns. Resistance was hopeless, and they were obliged to surrender at discretion. The grim pirates stood ready to slaughter them all if a hand were raised in self-defence, and Lafitte, stepping forward, invited them to join his men, promising them an easy life and excellent pay. Their captain sturdily refused.

"Very well," said Lafitte, with disdainful generosity. "You can go or stay as you please. Yonder is the road you came by. You are free to follow it back. But if you are wise you will in future keep out of reach of the Jolly Rovers of the Gulf."