On 27 March 1814, at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River in what is now Alabama, General Andrew Jackson's army and its Cherokee and Creek allies stormed the fortified Red Stick village of Tohopeka. At least 800 Red Sticks died, and the Creek War soon ended. On 27 March 1836 Mexican troops shot the Texan prisoners at Goliad.
A Creek civil war
The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 began as a civil war among the Creeks: the Red Stick faction of the Upper Towns against the Creeks loyal to the National Council and allied with the United States. The first fight was at Burnt Corn Creek in July 1813, where militia attacked a Red Stick party returning from Pensacola with ammunition. On 30 August 1813 the Red Sticks took Fort Mims, and armies from Tennessee, Georgia and the Mississippi Territory invaded Creek country.1
The breastwork at Tohopeka
Red Sticks from several Upper Creek towns gathered in a bend of the Tallapoosa River and built a village there, Tohopeka. Across the neck of the bend they raised a breastwork of logs and earth, which Jackson described as five to eight feet high with a double row of port-holes. About 1,000 warriors defended it, by the count of the National Park Service and of what prisoners later told Jackson; the historian Kathryn Braund estimates 800. Women and children were in the village too.2
Storming the bend
Early on 27 March Jackson sent General John Coffee across the river with some 700 mounted men and about 600 Cherokee and allied Creek warriors to surround the bend. With the rest of his army, some 2,000 men in all by the Park Service's count, Jackson advanced to the neck and at about half past ten opened fire on the breastwork with his artillery, with little effect.3
Meanwhile Cherokee warriors swam the river, brought back canoes and crossed into the bend, attacking the village from the rear. Jackson then ordered the breastwork stormed, and the 39th U.S. Infantry led the charge. Major Lemuel Montgomery was killed. The Red Sticks fought on until dark. Many who tried to swim the river were shot by Coffee's men on the far bank.4
Counting the dead
Jackson's officers counted 557 dead on the field. Coffee and others believed that 250 to 300 more had died in the river and were never counted, and the National Park Service puts the Red Stick dead at at least 800. Jackson's own army lost 49 killed and 154 wounded, Cherokees and allied Creeks among them.5
Menawa of Okfuskee, the Red Stick war leader, was wounded seven times but survived. After dark he reached the river and got away in a canoe.6
The end of the Creek War
In August 1814 Jackson imposed the Treaty of Fort Jackson on the Creeks. It took more than 20 million acres of their land: the Park Service gives 23 million, Christopher Maloney and Ove Jensen more than 21 million. The Red Sticks described their losses to the Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins as “like the fall of leaves”, Braund writes.7
In 1825 Menawa led the warriors sent by the National Council to execute William McIntosh for ceding Creek land illegally, and in 1836 he was removed west with his people. Jackson was promoted major general, won at New Orleans and in 1828 was elected president. His career is told in our article on Andrew Jackson, and the battle that followed in our article on the Battle of New Orleans.8
Also on 27 March: the Goliad Massacre, 1836
At dawn on Palm Sunday, 27 March 1836, Mexican troops at Goliad, Texas, shot the Texan prisoners taken with James W. Fannin. The commandant, Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla, carried out an order from Santa Anna to execute them. Between 330 and 342 men were killed, by the counts of Henderson Yoakum and the Handbook of Texas, and some two dozen escaped.9
