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The military authorities of the United States made ready to defend Mobile, but recently seized from the Spaniards. At Fort Mims, near the point where the Alabama and Tombigbee form the Mobile, five hundred and fifty-three men, women, and children were pent up in an ill-planned inclosure, defended by a small force under an incompetent though courageous officer named Beasley.
On the 30th of August, the Indians attacked Fort Mims, one of the largest of the stockade stations, and after a desperate battle destroyed it, killing all but seventeen of the five hundred and fifty people who were living in it.
Andrew Jackson knew the Flint well, and marched across it once to avenge the Indian Massacre at Fort Mims. That was in 1814, not long before the battle of New Orleans; and by the Creek treaty that followed this campaign, all Dougherty County, and much other rich land, was ceded to Georgia.
Mrs Cottier asked us if we had not heard her calling. "Yes, Mims," I said, "we did hear; but we were hidden in a secret house; we wondered if you would find us we were close to you some of the time." My aunt said Something about "giving a lot of trouble" and "being very thoughtless for others"; but we had heard similar lectures many times before and did not mind them much.
British officials, moreover, got wind of a threatened uprising in the South and secretly encouraged it. The Alabama settlers took alarm and left their log houses and clearings to seek shelter in the nearest blockhouses and stockades. One of these belonged to Samuel Mims, a half-breed farmer, who had prudently fortified his farm on a bend of the Alabama River.
They had never forgiven him for leading his party of Lower Creeks against them in the campaign that was made necessary by the terrible massacre of Fort Mims, and they now determined to rid themselves of him at once and forever.
Just below the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on the east side of the stream, they will find the little town of Tensaw, and Fort Mims stood very near that place. The peninsula formed by the two rivers above their junction is now Clarke County, and almost exactly in its centre stands the village of Grove Hill. A mile or two to the north-east stood Fort Sinquefield.
The Creeks had gone on the warpath and had opened proceedings by capturing Fort Mims, at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on August 30, 1813, and massacring over five hundred people who had taken refuge there. Alabama was almost abandoned by the whites, and Georgia and Tennessee at once rushed to her relief by voting men and money to put down the Indians.
"It doesn't really matter," said Mims; "the officer has gone, and the boy would only have been scared by all his questions. He might ha^e frightened the boy out of his wits. I wonder where the young monkeys have got to. They were going to build snow-huts, like the Indians. Perhaps they're hiding in one now." We were, had she only known it; Hugh and I grinned at each other.
I thought of Mims waiting at home for me, and of the jolly tea-table, with Hoolie begging for toast and Hugh's face bent over his plate. The thought that I should never see them again set me crying passionately I cried as if my heart would break. "Why come, come," said Marah; "I thought you were a sailor. Take a brace, boy. We're not going to kill you. You'll make a trip or two. What's that?
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