Futile Escape

Major General Andrew Jackson sent General John Coffee and 1,300 Tennessee militia, including 700 mounted riflemen and 600 Cherokee and Lower Creek warriors, to surround Horseshoe Bend on the banks of the Tallapoosa River and cut off every avenue of escape for the Red Sticks. Coffee ordered Lieutenant Jesse Bean and forty mounted riflemen to take position on the island below, now called Bean's Island, to prevent fugitives from reaching refuge there. As Jackson's army attacked, many Red Sticks tried to escape by swimming across the cold waters of the Tallapoosa, but Bean's men fired from across the river and, according to Coffee, not one reached the bank. Lieutenant Alexander McCulloch recalled that the Tallapoosa was so stained with blood that by ten o'clock that night the water was perceptibly bloody and could not be used.

Alabama · United States