Note: This is a DRAFT seminar paper.

Kindly do not quote or reproduce without the permission of the author.

 

 

"Incident at Duck River:

The Impact of Indian Depredations

in the Public Memory of Early Tennessee."

 

by

Tom Kanon

Tennessee State Library and Archives

 

 

 

                  At an 1812 Fourth of July fete in Knoxville, Tennessee, the celebration concluded with a round of toasts appropriate to the occasion.  In addition to the obligatory salutes to the Day of Independence, the President, and the Congress, one Knoxville politician, John Williams, offered this passionate toast:

A speedy restoration of the unfortunate Mrs. Crawley (now a prisoner with the Creek Indians) to her family and friends, under a demand made by the government for her release--but if not so released in reasonable time may the people look to it without loss of time, and not only obtain her, but punish the offenders who committed the massacre at or near the mouth of Duck River.[1]

 

The subject of the speaker’s remarks, a Humphreys County woman named Martha Crawley, was on the minds of many Tennesseans in that summer of 1812.  In mid-May, a small party of Creek Indians attacked a remote settlement in western Tennessee, killing seven individuals and taking Martha Crawley as a prisoner.  The July the Fourth celebration held more than its usual significance in 1812, for the United States had just declared war on Great Britain.  The invoking of Martha Crawley’s name at this juncture reveals how deeply the incident penetrated the public consciousness at a critical time.

                  Williams’s toast contained references to Mrs. Crawley’s captors and the need to take decisive action regarding her return should the government fail to negotiate quickly enough for her release.  Indian depredations, governmental indecision, and British villainy were familiar to the settlers in the backcountry of the United States.  The previous generation experienced a similar scenario.  Their legacy to the War-of-1812 generation included an indelible public memory of Indian-hating, a distrust of federal government, and a lingering suspicion that Indian disturbances were rooted in British intrigue.

                  This examination focuses how public memory fostered the hatred of Indians on the early frontier through the ramifications of a May 1812 incident on the Duck River in Tennessee, resulting in the murder of several whites and the subsequent capture of Martha Crawley.  The Crawley episode struck a collective nerve, not only in Tennessee, but across the nation -- a nation eager to use the incident as a springboard to further anti-British sentiments and to promote the expansion of territorial claims into Indian lands.  As an isolated happening, the Crawley affair might have been nothing more than a grim reminder of past clashes with aggressive frontier Indians.  The timing of Crawley’s abduction, occurring at the onset of a war with Britain and at a period of escalating Indian unrest, increased the importance of the event, however.  Initiating a series of reactions and responses eventually leading to war and ultimate Indian removal, the Crawley incident “set in motion a train of events that led to the expulsion of the last Indians from Tennessee,” as one historian has pointed out.[2]

                  What exactly happened in western Tennessee in mid-May of 1812 to ignite the passions of the frontier?  The bare facts of the case, as represented by the newspapers, are these: a group of five Indians came to the home of a Humphreys County resident, Jesse Manley, where they murdered and scalped seven individuals, five of whom were children, and took Martha Crawley prisoner.  The details of the incident, as first reported by the Tennessee Herald, contain sensationalisms (not to mention inconsistencies) designed to elicit public wrath.  Describing the “unequalled scene of hellish barbarity,” the newspaper provided grisly scenes of “Indian cruelty and barbarity.”  After the Indians shot and scalped a young man of the neighborhood, asked by the absent Jesse Manley and John Crowley to watch over their families, the marauding Indians spotted one of the Manly children outside the house, “whom they tore to pieces with their dogs and scalped.”  The harrowing account continued:

With savage fury they now forced the door, and commenced a scene of still greater barbarity. They snatched Mrs. Manly’s child, only eight days old, from her, scalped it and threw it into the fire place, yelling at a horrid rate. An indiscriminate butchery of the children now took place before their mother; five children were scalped and murdered, they keeping Mrs. Manly alive as the last victim of their cruelty. After shooting her, they scalped her, and committed unheard of cruelties on her body. They then left the house, taking Mrs. Crawley along as prisoner.

 

Although it is never mentioned, one presumes this tale was related by Mrs. Manley, who miraculously survived the ordeal and was found four hours later “in her perfect senses.”  Another survivor was one of Mrs. Crawley‘s children (age unknown) who was placed beneath the cabin floor before the attackers broke into the dwelling.[3]

                  Further details of the murders were added in the ensuing weeks.  For instance, Mrs. Manley reportedly “was shot in the knee and shot through the jaws, a little below the ears, was scalped, and arrows left in her ______ but was not dead.”  Mrs. Manley testified her nine-day-old baby was dashed against the wall by the intruders (she does not mention the baby being scalped and thrown into the fireplace, as reported by the Tennessee Herald) and that her young son, in trying to run away, “was overtaken by the Indian dogs, that they danced around him and then killed him, and killed the rest of her family.”  Pieces of the story were still being assembled even twenty years later.  A claim made for the relief of Jesse Manley in 1834 reveals the petitioner and John Crawley left home to obtain some corn.  Upon their return on the twelfth of May, Manley “found his wife shot by the Indians through the knee, which was broke to pieces, a ball had passed through one her ears, and one of her eyes burnt out with the powder, her head was scalped, and she was otherwise indecently and cruelly mutilated, and three of his children were killed.”  Manley’s wife never recovered from her wounds, as indicated by a witness of the petitioner, John Read, who stated he saw Mrs. Manley “upon her death bed” shortly after the occurrence.[4]

                  There was one more witness to the atrocity -- Martha Crawley.  Fortunately, she gave a deposition regarding the killings, her abduction, and eventual escape.  Taken in early August 1812, by the justices of the peace for Humphreys County, her testimony as to what happened should have provided the most accurate account possible.  Curiously, the intention of the deposition was to arrive at the truth “concer[n]ing the treatment she received while a prisoner with the Indians.”[5]  Only a brief mention of the killings is offered, perhaps indicating an acceptance of the “facts” as they were then known.  The propaganda effect from the report of the murders had run its course by August, and, now, Crawley’s captivity story was of greater value to those promoting a war against the Creeks.[6]

                  The settlement of Humphreys County reveals quite a bit about Indian-white and Tennessee-U.S. relations.  If Tennessee was the southwestern frontier of the United States in 1812, then Humphreys County was the frontier of that “frontier.”  Established by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1809, Humphreys County ran along the eastern border of the Tennessee River, then the western boundary of the state (the land west of the river being Indian territory).  At the time, the county ran down to what is now the Tennessee/Alabama state line.  Lying in a region claimed, in particular, by the Chickasaws (known as the “traditional guardians” of the area), settlement was scant into the early years of the nineteenth century.  Treaties with the Chickasaws in 1805 and 1806 opened the region to white settlement.  While no Indian towns existed in the region, the presence of Indian hunting camps meant the potential threat of violent encounters between Indians and whites.  Indeed, the white population remained sparse due to frequent border attacks, which occurred as late as 1808.[7]

                  Still, beginning in 1802, settlers were being drawn into this wilderness by the lush soil along the tributaries emptying into the Tennessee River.  The tide of emigration stemmed from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and the eastern parts of Tennessee.  Unfortunately, very little family data exists on the Crawleys.  In one of the affidavits concerning the Duck River “massacre,” John Crawley is mentioned as “Captain” Crawley.  There was, in fact, a tax district in the county under the jurisdiction of a Captain John Crawley at this time.  If this were Martha Crawley’s husband, then we can assume he was a person of note in the community.  There is nothing to substantiate what Captain Crawley did for a living, although Crawley is described as a “riverboat man” in some accounts.[8]  Isolated and vulnerable, the Humphreys County settlers had to constantly brace themselves for the possibility of Indian attacks.

                  The early history of Tennessee, indeed, the entire American frontier is marked by a series of border wars between Native Americans and ever-encroaching white settlers.  Throughout the period of the Revolution, the decade of the 1780s, and the early years of the 1790s, the savage struggle between the possessors and the usurpers of Tennessee soil ravaged the landscape.  Years later, white chroniclers of the times would deify the resoluteness of pioneers determined to carve out an existence from the then-overwhelming Indian tribes and the harsh conditions of a wilderness.  Some of this idolatry was understandable, if not justifiable.  The Knoxville Gazette reported seventy-one deaths from Indian incursions in less than a seven-month period in 1793.  In the western section of the state, the so-called Cumberland settlements, there were sixty-two killings in they years 1791 and 1792 -- in the vicinity of Nashville alone there was an average of one white person murdered every ten days in 1789.  Against such odds, the backcountry welcomed any leadership offering to stem the tide of Indian depredations.  The Creeks, in particular, were singled out as a “blood thirsty nation” by Southwest Territory Governor William Blount.  In a 1794 report to Secretary of War Henry Knox, Blount complained of the continuous murders of white settlers by the Creeks “who for upwards of ten years, without the least provocation have killed the Citizens of this Territory, and robbed them of their property, with an almost unremitting hand.”  Indian-hating had reared its ugly head.[9]

                  Of course, as white migration increased, the situation reversed itself, and Indian populations fell victim to white depredations.  Raids on Indian villages in the Northwest Territory, commanded by Indian fighter George Rogers Clark, reveal Indian-hating at its ugliest: captives were scalped, women and children indiscriminately killed, and, in one instance, an Indian was burned at the stake with a bag of gunpowder tied to his waist.  In Tennessee, John Sevier responded to a frontier depredation in 1788 by destroying the entire Indian village of the suspected perpetrators.  Naturally, few white chroniclers told this side of the story, and, if they did, it was always with a sense of justification for white atrocities.  Leaders such as Clark, Sevier, and their followers subscribed to the theory that atrocities committed by Indians could only be countered by equally (or greater) harsh treatment.  In an 1812 history of Kentucky, the writer acknowledges the existence of white depredations but reasons that Indian brutality is at the root of white savagery. “For it is a fact that may be committed to history,” the author writes, “that white men in their wars against the Indians, became themselves Indians in practice; and did those things, without remorse, of which in other cases, they would be ashamed, and repent.”  In other words, the Indians had only themselves to blame for their inevitable demise -- a convenient rationalization endorsed by a willing white population.  As George Rogers Clark put it, “To excel them in barbarity was and is the only way to make war upon Indians.”[10]

                  The settlers of Humphreys County, in fortifying themselves against Indian incursions, expected little help from the government in Washington.  A key element in the frontier saga of border warfare is that westerners, by their own estimation, won their contest without support from a hesitant federal government.  Restricted by distance and the expense of maintaining an army on the frontier, while harboring the desire to treat amicably with western tribes, government officials in the East dealt with two peace-threatening groups -- marauding Indians and revenge-driven white “savages.”  Heated resentment of government inactivity ran rampant throughout the West.  Frustrated territorial officials in the 1780s and 1790s faced a no-win situation; they were expected to check the advance of white incursions into Indian lands while pacifying the settlers victimized by frequent Indian raids.  Kentucky frontiersmen voiced their disdain for Virginia’s stipulation that the frontiersmen could pursue Indian war parties into the backcountry, but, that no militia officer had the right to head the militia into Indian country.  In Tennessee, a reluctant federal government offered no military commitment to beleaguered settlers in the early 1790s, who took it upon themselves to kill Indians -- more often than not, peaceful ones.[11]

                  Exasperated westerners often lashed out at federal policy regarding negotiations with Native Americans.  An early historian of Indian wars, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, wrote in 1792 he had no confidence in peace treaties, adding that “nothing but the principle of fear restrains them [Indians].”  Territorial governor Blount, writing in 1793, proclaimed that only “a vigorous national war can only bring the Indians to act as they ought.”  A young, rising politician named Andrew Jackson spewed his condemnation of Indian treaties in 1794, insisting Congress should “Punish the Barbarians for Murdering her innocent Citizens” rather than committing time and money in useless negotiations.  Jackson, like many in the West, felt the administrations of Washington and Adams cared little for the struggles of the frontier.  This attitude carried over into the next decade.[12]

                  Faced with a sluggish and apathetic federal government, westerners took matters in their own hands, as exemplified by the actions of Tennesseans in the fall of 1794.  Under the token censure of territorial governor William Blount, an expeditionary force of over five-hundred men, under the command of Major James Ore and the overall supervision of General James Robertson, set out for the Chickamauga villages of Nickajack and Running Water.  The so-called Nickajack Expedition resulted in the looting, killing, and burning of the towns, fields, and orchards of the Chickamauga, thereby breaking their will of resistance.  Ore’s men returned to Nashville to a hero’s welcome.  It is significant that, in the wake of the Crawley affair of 1812, Andrew Jackson alluded to the Nickajack Expedition in his plea to the Tennessee citizenry for a quick, decisive response.  “What then can we do,” he asked, “but to imitate the conduct of those who marched to Nick-a-Jack and terminated by one blow the war which had so long depopulated the infant settlements of Tennessee?”[13]

                  Reaction to the incident on the Duck River was swift but ineffective.  General Thomas Johnson, of the Sixth Brigade of Tennessee Militia, dispatched a detachment of over 500 men within forty-eight hours of the incident.  Johnson proclaimed everyone in the unit was “burning to avenge the cruel depredations.”  After crossing the swollen Tennessee River, the small army encountered scarcity of supplies and a rugged terrain, forcing them to abandon the chase.  Other militia units in the general region responded with preparations to join the search.  The Clarion reported that orders were given in nearby Dickson, Rutherford, Williamson, and Davidson Counties for the militia there to begin preparations to join General Johnson.[14]

                  Andrew Jackson, away on a business trip to Georgia at the time of the incident, returned to Nashville on the fourth of June.  Upon hearing of the atrocity at the Duck River, he immediately penned a letter to Tennessee’s governor, Willie Blount.  Insisting that the perpetrators “must be punished,” Jackson, as commander of the Tennessee militia, sought the governor’s approval to march into the Creek nation:

. . . the sooner the[y] can be attacked, the less will be their resistance, and the fewer will be the nations or tribes that we will have to war with. It is therefore necessary for the protection of the frontier that we march into the creek nation, demand the perpetrators, at the Point of the Bayonet, if refused, that we make reprisals, and lay their Towns in ashes. . . . I only want your orders, the fire of the militia is up, they burn for revenge, and now is the time to give the creeks the fatal blow, before the[y] expect it.[15]

 

Despite Jackson’s plea, it would be well over a year before he would lead troops into the heart of the Creek nation.

Punitive action, however, did come in the form of a makeshift expedition led by a Colonel Pillow of West Tennessee.  His band of soldiers marched to the frontier of the Creek nation near Fort Hampton, at the Tennessee River, where they were told the Creeks who abducted Martha Crawley recently passed through.  Taking a lone Creek as prisoner, they tried to force him to reveal the whereabouts of the renegade Creeks.  His attempt to flee the scene was answered by rifle fire into his back.  One of the soldiers ran up to the victim, “gave him some stabs with a knife, and tore the scalp from his head yet convulsed with the agonies of death.”  Pillow’s band soon returned to Tennessee having accomplished little but aggravating the already tense situation on the frontier.[16]

                  Jackson’s above-mentioned letter to Blount contains two other items worth noting.  With a guarantee to Governor Blount that he will “quell the Creeks,” Jackson promises to “bring them to terms without presents or annuities,” a direct reference to the western aversion to the way federal authorities conducted peace treaties with Native Americans.  At Knoxville’s Fourth of July celebration in 1812 (the same event where John Williams toasted the speedy revenge of Martha Crawley’s capture), twelve rousing cheers accompanied this inspired toast: “Our savage neighbors . . . the western volunteers will settle their accounts without the aid of annuities.”  In addition, Jackson states his conviction the Creeks were “urged on by British agents,” a reflection of one of the most common assumptions about Indian/white relations in the Early Republic.  Since the Crawley incident occurred at a time when America is about to declare war on Great Britain, this second item deserves further scrutiny.[17]

                  British policy, official or otherwise, of using Indians as a barrier to American settlement can be traced back to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.  The Revolution left Native Americans with a sense of betrayal as a result of their alliance with the British.  Yet, Indian anxiety over the increasing American encroachment on their lands kept the British connection alive.  The British, primarily concerned with the defense of Canada and the valuable fur trade existing there, maintained the Indians as allies, usually through instructions given to local Indian agents.  These agents were instructed not to provoke a war between Indians and the Americans, while at the same time promising military aid should a conflict break out.  Historian Reginald Horsman is correct in his assessment of the British Indian policy: “The British did not create Indian discontent but took advantage of it to win the Indians for the defense of Canada in the event of war.”[18]

                  Americans took it for granted Indian depredations were inspired by foreign interference, the lack of Britain’s active participation notwithstanding.  Any incursion in the backcountry involving Indian aggression resulted in a knee-jerk reaction by the people of the frontier, convinced of English duplicity.  The refusal to acknowledge American antagonism as a possible source of Indian discontent reveals a great deal about the character of the Early Republic.  In meeting Indian agent Return J. Meigs in 1809 in Tennessee, a Mohawk chief sensed Meig’s distrust of any Indian from a northern tribe, noting that “for whatever encroachments may render the Tribes of the North uneasy, and dispose them to War, the Americans never fail to attribute their hostile disposition to the instigation of British Agents.”  In a pro-war oration in Kentucky, presented on 17 May 1812 (just days, ironically, after the Crawley murders), the speaker alluded to “whole families massacred, even Infants at the breast thrown into the Kettles of boiling water and Scalded to death, others cast into Furnaces and Roasted” by Indians “influenced by British Intrigue.”  In an 1812 publication on the geography of America, the author alluded to Creek animosity against most white people -- except the British.  “Their prejudice is strong in favour of that nation,” he wrote, “and they still believe ‘the Great King over the water’ is able to keep the whole world in subjection.”[19]

                  Nowhere did the specter of British manipulation manifest itself any greater than at Tippecanoe.  In early November 1811, a force of Northwest tribes clashed with an army commanded by Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe Creek near the Wabash River.  In the ensuing battle, the Americans suffered a loss of over sixty soldiers.  Most of the soldiers were Kentuckians, and that state’s newspapers used the incident to fan the fires of frontier discontent over assumed British subterfuge.  For instance, the Lexington Reporter, in its 10 December 1811 issue, declared “the blood of our fellow citizens murdered on the Wabash by British intrigue calls for vengeance.”  No matter that Harrison made no mention in his report of direct British involvement at Tippecanoe -- English interference was presumed by westerners bent on revenge.  “Such has been her [England] career from the beginning of the Revolution to this day,” the Kentucky Gazette concluded, “she has always been the first to ‘light the savage fires’--the Indians are but her tools--her allies--her agents.”  In Tennessee, the Clarion pronounced the warning that “savage hell-hounds are unchained upon our frontiers.”[20]

                  In true frontier fashion, many westerners blamed the government back East for American losses at Tippecanoe.  A Cincinnati newspaper, the Liberty Hall, claimed the Madison Administration refused to give Harrison orders to attack the Indians.  “Will our government act; or will they always sleep?” questioned the editor, “Surely this is enough to rouse them from lethargy.”  In fact, Harrison did not have official governmental sanction for his excursion to Tippecanoe, but he did inform the administration of his intentions and, afterwards, drew Madison’s approval for his actions.  Madison had authorized Harrison’s forces “to insure a successful issue of the expedition, if practicable, without bloodshed.”  Clearly, it was a case of westerners overstepping their bounds to advance their own desires at the expense of an embarrassed federal government -- a legacy of the Frontier Fathers.[21]

                  The ties between the affair at Tippecanoe and the incident at Duck River become apparent upon closer inspection of the two events.  Creek Indians attacked the Crawley and Manley families in Tennessee in May 1812.  The previous fall, Tecumseh, the noted Shawnee leader, spent some time among the Creeks in his efforts to create a pan-Indian confederacy in defiance of continuing American expansion.  Along with his brother, the Prophet, Tecumseh established a village (dubbed Prophetstown) along the Wabash in the Indiana Territory.  It was this site that was the focal point of Governor Harrison’s expedition in November 1811.  At the time of the battle, Tecumseh was in the midst of his journey throughout the Southwest, enlisting support from the various tribes.  Tecumseh seemed to have the most success among the Creeks -- indeed, it was reported two Creek warriors were among the slain at Tippecanoe.  The Creeks that fell on the families in Tennessee were said to have accompanied Tecumseh on his return to the north.  Led by a Creek chief, Little Warrior, the small band was on their way home from their stay with Tecumseh when they raided the Duck River settlement.[22]

                  Tennesseans found no difficulty in drawing all the pieces together to form a picture of Indian barbarity and British complicity.  When the Knoxville Gazette first published the account of Crawley’s capture in their 25 May 1812 issue, the report accompanied a string of correspondence from the Northwest pertaining to Indian incursions on that frontier.  All of the material fell under the headline “Indians and British Depredations,” despite the fact that no direct reference is made about the British in any of the articles.  Writing to Willie Blount in early June 1812, Jackson used his frontier logic to comprehend the situation -- judgment similar to that utilized in the West decades before:

Now sir the object of Tecumpsies visit to the creek nation is unfolding to us. That incendiary, the emissary of the Prophet, who is himself the tool of England, has caused our frontier to be stained with blood, and our peaceful citizens to fly in terror from their once happy abodes. The sooner we strike, the less resistance we shall have to overcome; and terrible vengeance inflicted at once upon one tribe may have its effect upon all others. Even the wretches upon the wabash might take some warning from such a lesson.

 

Note Jackson’s insistence that a swift retribution inflicted on one tribe would serve as an example to all other tribes.  He made no distinction between hostile and “friendly” tribes, a characteristic all too common on the frontier of the Early Republic.[23]

                  Others in the West, and around the nation, made the same assumptions as Jackson.  A reprint of the Duck River massacre story in a Cincinnati newspaper elicited this biting editorial comment in early June 1812: “Can it be expected that those savage butcheries will have an end until we take possession of Malden and other British forts on the Lakes?  And must the settlements in our territories be entirely destroyed and the blood of the women and children drench the soil before this can be done? . . . What will our Congress say?”  When the Niles Weekly Register reproduced the Tennessee Herald’s account of the Crawley affair in its 13 June 1812 edition, the editor included his assessment of the true meaning of the incident.  “Our opinion as to the cause of these horrible murders has been frequently expressed,” the editor offered, “It arises from our good friends at Amherstburgh and Malden in Upper Canada.”  These comments were published just as Congress was concluding a grueling several-month-long session, devoted to declaring a war against Great Britain.  By linking Indian depredations on the frontier to British subterfuge, the so-called War Hawks added fuel to their fiery arguments for war.[24]

                  Back in Tennessee, the concern was for revenge of the Duck River killings and Martha Crawley‘s capture.  The Clarion, in attempting to keep alive the martial fervor created by the incident, published an editorial in late June lamenting the possibility that “the remembrance of the horrid affair at the mouth of Duck River, seems to be fast passing away.”  Jackson, as Major-General of the Second Division of Tennessee Militia, feverishly implored Governor Blount to set the army loose upon the Creeks.  Blount, entirely sympathetic to Jackson’s cause, still had to consult with the War Department.  Predictably, the government sought to defuse the situation by seeking to secure the release of Mrs. Crawley via their agent among the Creeks, Benjamin Hawkins.  Hawkins used his position to get certain Creek leaders to agree to bring the perpetrators to justice and secure the release of Martha Crawley.  While not defending the actions of the Creeks, Hawkins keenly pointed out, in a letter dated 18 May 1812, that the few “wild young people” among the nation did not represent the majority of chiefs who were “unanimously opposed to having any thing to do in the wars of the white people.”  Tennesseans were loath to accept this premise.  One of these Tennesseans, famed Indian-fighter John Sevier, doubted Hawkins could resolve the matter in a satisfactory manner.  Now a senator in Washington, Sevier wrote to the Tennessee governor in June 1812 that Hawkins’ promise to have the perpetrators punished was merely “the old story.”  “Fire and sword must be carried into that country, before those wretches will be reduced to reason, or become peaceful neighbors,” Sevier exclaimed, “there can be no reliance, or any trust reposed in them.”  “No doubt,” the Frontier Father added, “British emissaries are among them.”[25]

                  As correspondence made its way between state to federal hands, rumors began surfacing concerning the whereabouts and condition of Martha Crawley.  Governor Blount, in a 25 June communication to the Secretary of War, mentioned he heard the Creeks took “that poor woman from town to town, in their nation, naked, and exultingly dance around her as their captive.”  There was even a rumor the female captive was burned at the stake:

The rumor circulating some time ago that this unfortunate woman had been burned by the Creeks, is not true. Some particulars of her fate have been learned from a half breed Cherokee, who has been upon the frontier of Giles County. He states that she has been severely whipped, exhibited naked in circles of warriors, who danced around her; and that at present she is at Tuckabatchee, beating meal for the family to whom she belongs.  

 

The above description, as printed by the Clarion on 8 July 1812, is rife with penetrating images, e.g., a naked white woman being whipped by frenzied savages dancing around her.  Equally disturbing is the idea of her slave-like condition, beating corn meal for her captors.  Indian-hating Tennesseans readily embraced this imagery.[26]

                  In fact, unknown to most of the concerned parties, Martha Crawley had escaped her abductors sometime in late June 1812 and was in safe hands in the Mississippi Territory.  Her deposition, given in mid-August, relates quite a different scenario of her captivity than was offered by the press.  After witnessing the brutal slayings of her family and friends, she was carried off into the Creek nation under a threat of death should she attempt an escape.  Eventually, she found an opportunity to elude her captors and spent a harrowing three days and nights hiding in swamps, with only blackberries to eat.  Coming upon an Indian village on the Black Warrior River, she made the acquaintance of Tandy Walker, a blacksmith in the employ of the United States factor, George Gaines, at St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River.  Stories differ as to how he managed to free her -- some say she was purchased from the town chiefs on the Black Warrior (although Crawley denies ever seeing money exchanged hands); while some claim Walker affected a daring rescue of the prisoner.  Whatever the circumstances, Martha Crawley was safely in the hands of the Gaines family in late June.  What is important about Crawley’s deposition is what is not mentioned.  At no point does Crawley admit to being severely whipped, stripped of her clothing, or made the object of ceremonial dancing.  She does indicate that, on the first night of her captivity, she was tied “by the arms and neck to a tree.”  Furthermore, she states that, at one point, “she was ordered by one of the men to stir a pot of hommany that was then on the fire.”[27]

                  In June and July of 1812, though, Crawley’s rescue was still unknown, and Tennesseans were fretting over the Duck River depredation.  Benjamin Hawkins’ efforts notwithstanding, it appeared some Tennesseans would accept nothing less than the immediate return of Martha Crawley and the handing over of the Creek perpetrators to American authorities.  Other Tennesseans were not satisfied with even this resolution.  Jackson, for instance, showed his exasperation and contempt with regard to federal authorities in an early July letter to the governor:

It would have afforded me much pleasure to have seen the Secretary of war treating that subject with that serious attention that its importance deserved, and the magnitude of the offense required and merited--But to pass over it with a bare acknowledgment of the receipt of your letter, that he has transmitted it to B[enjamin] H[awkins] Esqr with directions to procure the release of Mrs. Crawley, and to demand a surrender of the Indians to the authority of the united States, is as little , as he could have said on the receipt of a communication from you as chief executive of the state, stating that a party of Creeks had Killed an old sow with her litter of pigs, and drove one off to the nation--This is not such a notice as I expected from the crisis and the extent of the murders, (with the unusual barbarity even among savages) would have been paid to this subject.

 

Jackson’s sarcasm was followed two days later by his suggestion the governor convene an emergency session of the state legislature to appropriate funds for a punitive expedition into the Creek nation.  Reluctantly admitting the Madison Administration was preoccupied with the recently-commenced war with Great Britain, Jackson fumed over the slow wheels of government diplomacy with the Indians via Benjamin Hawkins.  “If this is the specimen of the energy and dispatch of our war ministers at the commencement of their operations,” he wrote, “such emergency I fear will not bring the war to a speedy close.”  The Tennessee legislature even went so far as to propose, through a memorial, to have Tennessee representatives in Congress “use their best endeavors with the proper authority to have Ben[jamin] Hawkins removed from the Creek agency.”[28]

                  Jackson’s frustrations may have been fueled by the response of an equally-exasperated populace in the state.  One citizen, John Murrey, wrote a letter to the general in mid-June volunteering his services in the event of a war with the Creeks: “It appears from the Conduct of the Indians at present that we Will be obliged to Chastise them, before they will cease from Murdering & plundering Our Citizens.”  Adding that “the sooner they are brought to their senses,” the better it would be for the frontier, Murrey implored Jackson to “drop me a few lines stating the time & place of Rendezvous” and he would rush to the defense of his country.[29]

                  Newspapers, not surprisingly, were instrumental in stirring these passionate flames of revenge.  What is significant is the way the printed press went about admonishing their readers to do what was expected of them during this crisis.  Playing upon a public memory of past Indian incursions, western (and some eastern) newspapers attempted to strike a nerve in the consciousness of the backcountry population weaned on the legacy of their Frontier Fathers.  There is no better interpretation of this device than in the Nashville Clarion’s editorial of 23 May 1812.  At the risk of perhaps placing too much emphasis on one example, this piece illustrates the type of legacy-laced literature found in the correspondence, speeches, and press in the days leading up to the War of 1812.  This issue contained the eyewitness descriptions of the terrible effects of the raid at Duck River, replete with all the shocking details of the aftermath of the murders.  The item is worth studying in its entirety:

Americans have you lost your spirit? Can you peruse the foregoing accounts, and not burn with indignation at the wrongs of your injured and massacred countrymen and countrywomen? No! those feelings of compassion that have on more than one occasion spared the dastards have not absorbed the noble emotions of the brave. The time has arrived, that is, teach the neighboring savages your true character. For ten years you have been the sport of those who owe their existence to your forbearance--to robberies innumerable every now and then the most shocking murders are added. The scene of most of these enormities is in the neighborhood where the 6 persons above mentioned perished under the hand of the ruthless savage. Martin’s blood remains still unavenged, and it is therefore needless to speak of the Crawley’s and the Manley’s of yesterday. But never before did we hear as horrid a tale as that of the poor Mrs. Manley--only a few days blessed with a sweet little babe when the cruel spoiler tore it from her feeble arms--her protector had flew to the standard of his country, & little did he dream of the trials of his amiable wife--in a moment the smiling cherub was thrown against the wall, in sport. From the horrid sight of her mangled baby, she was soon roused by the screams of another of her children--but this was but the beginning of her sufferings as before. Never was there such wantonness manifested.

Americans act as becomes men. Make the neighboring nations responsible for the acts committed in and through their territory. Teach double dealers your true character, and command the submission of the petty savages on your frontier. In times like the present forbearance will be construed into pusillanimity. Act as your forefathers, and at the point of the bayonet subdue or extirpate the savage foe. The softer emotions of humanity are out of the question; it is folly to spare the viper that he may poison your family. Act as becomes freemen.[30]

 

The above “oration” focuses on three main ideas -- first, a repetition of Indian depredations from the past; second, a failure of the current Indian policy; and, finally, a sense of having lost the revolutionary spirit of the previous generation.  In actuality, all three notions were linked by circumstances of the present to the legacy of the past.  The border warfare of the colonial and early period of the American republic established Native Americans as the common enemy.  A shared history of withstanding frontier Indian depredations solidified an otherwise diverse politico-cultural society.[31]

                  When the Clarion speaks of “the Crawley’s and the Manley’s of yesterday,” the reference is to the litany of names recorded in the past of those who were victims of Indian warfare.  The remembrance of Indian depredations on the frontier was an essential ingredient of backcountry culture.  Whether told in books, poems, newspaper accounts, or, what is assumed to be the most common form, the verbal story, the saga of Indian tortures, cruelties, captivities, and murders shaped the public memory of the backcountry.  Coming to the Elk River area of Tennessee in 1806, five-year-old Mia Taylor recalled the old Indian fighters dramatizing their exploits around the fireside: “And on long winter evenings, they gathered around each other’s hearths and fought their battles over again, and many were the marvelous tales of peril and adventure and of hardship that we listened to with greedy ears and glowing faces.”  The most vivid memory of another youth on the frontier, Oliver Spencer, during his first year in Ohio, was the tale of an Indian depredation that took place nearby.  In this instance, the unfortunate victim was tortured by fire, live coals, and flaming brands -- reminiscing forty years later, Spencer recalled the details with amazing clarity.[32]

                  In many instances, the legacy of border warfare left its mark on the landscape itself.  While the noting the beauty of the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York in 1793, Quaker Jacob Lindley experienced uneasiness in reflecting on its violent past.  “But it felt to me a land of darkness and a land of blood,” he wrote in his journal, “Many of the people had had their relations killed and scalped, whose spirits remain rough, and much exasperated against the Indians.”  Even more dramatic was Lindley’s discovery of human skulls on an old battlefield “having the marks of the tomahawk and scalping knife evidently upon them.”  A member of Lindley’s entourage took a skull as a grisly souvenir.[33]

                  The generation that followed the Revolutionary age began to “speak” for those who had passed on, designing what they thought the revolutionaries originally intended or thought.[34]  In the period before the War of 1812, however, there were still many original voices left to tell their story as they intended it to be told.  These voices shaped the public memory of the Indian wars in the West.  Tennessee’s William Hall, of Sumner County, was a case in point.  At the age of twelve, he witnessed the death of his brother in June 1787 by a group of ambushing Indians, two of whom sunk their tomahawks in each side of his brother’s brain.  Two months later, Hall and his family were again ambushed and, this time, he saw another brother and his father shot to death -- Hall’s father “pierced by thirteen bullets.”  Five years later, he saw the aftermath of an Indian raid that left a seventeen-year-old girl “lying on the ground, terribly, mortally wounded, scalped and bleeding.”  “She was faintly moaning when I came up, and was lying on her face,” Hall recalled, “She had fine long hair black hair, and the wretches had borne it away, together with large portion of her dress, which they had cut off in haste.”[35]  Hall’s accounts, whether in written or oral form, reflected a style of recounting Indian depredations adopted by the next generation of storytellers.

                  The editor of the Clarion, in depicting the events at Duck River, is utilizing images very familiar to his readers.  Using representations of a “mangled baby,” and “the screams of another of her children” follow a trend set decades before by chroniclers and story-tellers of the border wars.  The depredations of the 1780s and early 1790s became so entrenched in the minds of westerners, that any slight provocation by Native Americans revived memories of that earlier period.  “The power of the savages was broken: fear of their inroads was in great part effaced,” recalled an early settler of western Virginia, “but the lapse of time was too brief to permit the horrors of their inroads to be forgotten.”[36]

                  The Clarion editorial, in its recommendation of how to deal with the Creeks, reminded its readers that “the softer emotions of humanity are out of the question.”  Admonishing Tennesseans to “command the submission of the petty savages” strikes out against the Indian policies the federal government had in place the past two decades.  Molded by Enlightenment ideals and the wish to avoid bloody reprisals and costly wars, American Indian policy walked a precarious line between pacifying the uneasy tribes of Native Americans and curtailing the relentless drive of Anglo-Americans pushing on Indian borders.  Trying to incorporate the American Indian into the Jeffersonian dream, through a process of “civilizing” them, policy makers still recognized the inevitable destiny of Anglo-American expansion.  The Indian policy dictated in the East embodied two fundamental miscalculations: first, that Indians wanted to be assimilated into the American society and, secondly, that white settlers in the West would let them.[37]

                  On paper, the official policy of the United States regarding Native Americans looked magnanimous.  An 1814 edition of The Historical Register of the United States, in comparing British Indian policy with America’s, plays up American altruistic attitudes:

                                    The policy observed by the British and American governments towards

the Indians is of diametrically opposite complexion. The American government is doing everything in its power to civilize those unfortunate tribes who live within their limits, and to introduce among them the practice of agriculture and the mechanic arts, with a view to wean them from the hunter state. . . . The policy of the British, on the contrary, is to keep them in their hunter state, by which they not only supply a lucrative branch of trade, but furnish a powerful weapon in war. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Indians, who delight in warfare, and all of those habits are averse from the pursuits of civilized life, should view the Americans, from their rapid increase of population and strength, with jealousy and dislike.[38]

 

Note the stereotypical comment that all Indians delight in making war.

                  That the “softer emotions of humanity” could not allowed in dealing with Indians was a legacy passed on from the Frontier Fathers.  William Savery, a delegate to the 1794 treaty with the Six Nations, spoke to many settlers in the backcountry of New York.  Most had their doubts of the effectiveness of treating with the Indians, “all agreeing that the Indians must first be chastised and humbled.”  Savery, a Quaker, grew weary of constantly hearing tales of past bloodshed, noting the effect such repetition had on the mindset of the white population:

A long and truly afflicting recital of Indian cruelty and perfidy was brought into view, of which we have been obliged to hear enough before to fill a large volume. I could, several times, have been glad to have stopped my ears from hearing of blood, as I am confirmed in opinion that it has a tendency gradually to eradicate the tenderest feelings of humanity.[39]

 

Humanity to “savages” had no place in the hearts of the people in the backcountry -- that attribute was reserved for the victims of Indian depredations, such as the Crawleys and Manleys.  “When we figure to ourselves our beloved wives and little prattling infants, butchered, mangled, murdered, and torn to pieces, by savage bloodhounds, and wallowing in their gore,” wrote Andrew Jackson, “you can judge of our feelings.”  What was frustrating to westerners was that the federal government did not appreciate the idea of a swift and violent judgment.  Jackson felt that “nothing but energy and dispatch” would keep the frontier safe.  He posed this question to Willie Blount, regarding the interference of Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins: “What feelings can a government have, who can hear the recital, and await the slow progress of dispatches thro the channel of a mail to an Indian agent, instead of making use of the power and the means to enforce speedy vengeance on the perpetrators of these horrid scenes.”  Clearly, in many western eyes, the federal Indian policy was out of touch with reality.[40]

                  The first line of the May 23rd editorial in the Clarion asks the readers a simple question: “Americans have you lost your spirit?”  In asking that question, the newspaper followed the example of many periodicals and public orations of the day.  The War of 1812 was, from the onset, referred to as the “second struggle for our liberty” by its proponents, linking the war to the legacy of the Revolution.  But the sons of the Founding Fathers had much to live up to, and there was some doubt the second-generation revolutionaries were worthy of the fruits of their fathers.  An 1811 Fourth of July toast made in Kentucky cast this dire warning: “The spirit of ‘76--Woe to the sons that prove unworthy of the virtues of their fathers.”  One way the sons cemented their inheritance was to portray themselves as victims of the enemy of their parents, i.e., Great Britain.  For the sons of the Frontier Fathers, Indians served the same purpose.[41]

                  Mia Taylor, in recalling the influx of settlers moving into the Huntsville (AL) region during 1809/10, pointed out that many of them came from Georgia and Tennessee, and those “who had heard their fathers fight their battles over again, longed for an opportunity to emulate their deeds.”  No doubt the stories Taylor’s generation heard included tales of Indian depredations and, perhaps, accounts of the most famous Revolutionary battle in the old Southwest -- that of Kings’ Mountain.  Years later, “pioneer spirit” was identified as the attribute that infused these early westerners and their deeds.  Many surviving first-generation settlers, and their offspring, felt they paid an exorbitant price for their glory.  William Hall, the Tennessean who lost his father and two brothers, as well as a sister (and her child), to Indian attacks noted with pride “that I have not been driven from my heritage, but that I have been able with the assistance of the brave men of the period gone by, to defend it through all attacks.”[42]

                  The Clarion editorial challenged Americans to “act as becomes men” and “act as becomes freemen.”  “Act as your forefathers,” the newspaper demanded, “and at the point of the bayonet subdue or extirpate the savage foe.”  After all, was not this what the Frontier Fathers did, “subdue or extirpate” the enemy?  Were the sons up to the same task?  Jackson posed a similar question in early July 1812: “Are you ready to follow your general to the heart of the Creek nation?”[43]  In Jackson’s division orders, announced a few days later, the general answers the question with a stern “woe to the man who is unwilling to do so.”  He then proceeds to once again replay the bloody images at Duck Creek to his men and then cleverly appeals to their zeal for revenge by challenging their manhood:

He that can see the infant babe of nine days old torn from the arms of its mother and beat to pieces upon the walls of the house--he that can see children of six years of age stabbed with knives, their heads split open with Tomahawks, and others torn to pieces, and devoured alive by dogs--he that can view in the midst of this scene a distracted mother crying in vain for pity, and receiving from the hands of savage monsters stab after stab, and arrow after arrow, into her body: He that beholds all this, and yet say no vengeance ought to be taken for such enormities, may indeed be a happy man, but I envy him not his feelings. No! The wretch who can view the massacre at the mouth of Duck river, and feel not his spirit kindle within him and burn for revenge, deserves not the name of a man; and the mother who bore him should point with the finger of scorn, and say, “He is not my son.”[44]

 

According to Jackson at least, the “lost spirit” alluded to by the Clarion involves a burning desire for revenge.  No longer could Tennesseans “spare the dastards” responsible for such acts as those near Duck River.  Instead, the shine of the “noble emotions of the brave” would be reflected off “the point of the bayonet.”  Tennessee‘s public memory, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, revered the generation who had to “subdue or extirpate the savage foe” in order to secure the heritage they felt was rightly theirs.  And, in the long run, who would be left to challenge that right?

                 

As to the outcome of the Crawley affair, the escape of Mrs. Crawley was accompanied by the compliance of Creek leaders to Benjamin Hawkins’ demand of bringing the Duck River murderers to justice.  The perpetrators, including their leader, Little Warrior, were put to death by “friendly” Creeks, initiating a civil war between the pro-white and anti-white factions of the nation.  These tensions led to further incursions on the white population, particularly at Fort Mims, in the Mississippi Territory, in late August 1813.  Dubbed a “massacre” by the press of the day, the attack by the so-called Red Stick faction of the Creeks killed nearly 250 settlers (although the newspapers reported much higher figures).  So great was the angry response by the Southwest population to this incursion, that Andrew Jackson finally had his war with the Creeks by the fall of that year.[45]

                  In tracking the principle characters, John Crawley and Jesse Manley both served under Jackson in the War of 1812, Crawley dying in early December 1814.  Jesse Manley survived the war and petitioned the United States Congress in 1834 for losses sustained from the incident at Duck River (the claim was denied).[46]  Martha Crawley returned to Humphreys County after her heroic rescue and promptly faded into relative obscurity.  An 1820 census lists her as the head of a household in Humphreys County, but she is not listed on any later census.[47]  However, the incident at Duck River survived to be recounted in state and local histories, becoming part of Tennessee’s public memory.[48]

                  The ensuing Creek War resulted in the loss of much of the land belonging to that tribe, as proscribed in the Treaty of Fort Jackson (August 1814).  Andrew Jackson led the proceedings at these negotiations and issued harsh demands on the Creeks, in place of the conciliatory terms suggested by the War Department.  Significantly, the articles of agreement in this treaty make a reference to the Duck River incident.[49]  Jackson’s firmness in dealing with the Creeks echoed in future treaties with other Southwest tribes until their eventual removal in the 1830s.  That white hunger for Indian land was at the core of Indian/white relationship on the frontier cannot be disputed.  However, historians must not overlook the powerful influence public memory of the Indian wars had on the population in the backcountry.  The murders on the Duck River and the abduction of Martha Crawley in May 1812, shocking as they were, came as no surprise to settlers imbued with sagas of Indian depredations.  Tennesseans of the Early Republic, in anticipating how Native Americans would behave in conflicting circumstances, and by emulating the response of their revered ancestors, tapped into a public memory destined to mold images of the Indian for the next several generations.

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ENDNOTES

 

 

[1] Wilson’s Knoxville Gazette, 6 July 1812. The Nashville Clarion of 8 July 1812 reprinted a similar toast offered at a Nashville dinner: “Mrs Crawley—May her sufferings kindle a spark that shall increase until it consume her cruel spoilers, and effect her immediate restoration to her friends and country.” These toasts were carefully calculated to influence public opinion and were almost always reproduced in local newspapers. For the importance of the reporting of toasts, see Jeffery L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 6-7.

 

[2] Wayne Moore, “Farm Communities and Economic Growth in the Lower Tennessee Valley: Humphreys County, Tennessee 1785-1980” (Ph. D. diss., University of Rochester, 1990), 87.

 

[3] The incident, as it appeared in the Tennessee Herald, was reprinted in many newspapers across the country. Since no original copies of the Tennessee Herald exist, the date of the issue containing the article is unknown. The quoted extracts were taken from the 13 June 1812 edition of the Niles Weekly Register (Baltimore), II: 256. An affidavit from a Williamson County resident, who was in the vicinity of the Duck River, states he heard reports of the crime from those claiming to have gotten the story from Mrs. Manley. See Nashville Clarion, 23 May 1812. A Captain John Crawley is listed on an 1812 tax list for Humphreys County – see Early Tax Lists (microfilm), Tennessee State Library and Archives [TSLA] (Nashville).

 

[4] Clarion, 23 May 1812; Petition of Jesse Manley to Committee of Claims, 9 April 1834, House of Representatives Report 402, 9 April 1834, 23rd Congress, 1st Session, Series 262.

 

[5] A copy of Martha Crawley’s deposition, dated 11 August 1812, can be found in the Papers of Andrew Jackson (Library of Congress) -- a published version, the one used in subsequent quotes in this paper, can be found in John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume I (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926), 225-226n1.

 

[6] In a 26 June 1812 letter from a resident of St. Stephens (Mississippi Territory), William Henry to John J. Henry of Williamson County (TN), Henry claims to have visited Martha Crawley, who by then had escaped her Creek captors. According to Henry, Crawley provided him with some conflicting details of the incident, e.g., the murders took place at her (Crawley’s) house, not Manley’s, and there were eleven attacking Indians, not five as reported. The letter was included in a communication from Tennessee Governor Willie Blount to Secretary of War William Eustis, dated 26 July 1812. The letter can be found in Walter Lowrie and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds., Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States - American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1832), I: 814. That there should be conflicting reports of this type of incident, especially over time, is not unusual. For example, see “The Rescue of Jane Stoops from the Indians: Three Accounts of Samuel Brady’s Rescue of Jane Stoops, 1780” in Emily Foster, ed., The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 53-57.

 

[7] Jill Knight Garrett, A History of Humphreys County, Tennessee (Columbia, TN: pub. by author, 1963), 2-4; and Moore, “Humphreys County, Tennessee,” 77, 85-86.

 

[8] Garrett, History of Humphreys County, 11-12; and Clarion, 23 May 1812. Humphreys County was formed principally from the first district of Stewart County. The 1808 tax list of that district does not list any Crawley, indicating John and Martha may have come to the region sometime after that year. One tie may be through an individual named Kemp Crawley, a North Carolinian, who settled in the county between 1800-05. See Garrett, History of Humphreys County, 15, 190.

 

[9] For Gazette statistics, see Thomas Perkins Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee: A Study in Frontier Democracy (Memphis, TN: Memphis State College Press, 1955), 130n62. For Cumberland statistics, see John Buchanan, Jackson’s Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), 127. For Nashville deaths, see Richard H. Faust, “Another Look at General Jackson and the Indians of the Mississippi Territory,” Alabama Review 28 (July 1975), 202. For Blount, see William Blount to Henry Knox, 28 November 1794, in Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States – Vol. 4 – The Territory South of the River Ohio, 1790-1796 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936), 373.

 

[10] For George Rogers Clark, see R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 99; also, see Bernard W. Sheehan, “The Famous Hair Buyer General: Henry Hamilton, George Rogers Clark, and the American Indian,” Indiana Magazine of History 79 (March 1983), 14-22. For Sevier, see Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crises and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 210. Marshall quote from Humphrey Marshall, The History of Kentucky, Including an Account of the Discovery, Settlement, Progressive Improvement, Political and Military Events, and Present State of the Country (Frankfort, KY: Henry Gore, 1812), 38. Clark’s quote taken from Colin Calloway, “The Continuing Revolution in Indian Country,” in Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds., Native American and the Early Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), 13.

 

[11] For Kentucky at odds with Virginia, see Paul W. Beasley, “The Life and Times of Isaac Shelby, 1750-1826” (Ph. D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1968), 95. For the situation in Tennessee, see Randolph C. Downes, “Indian Affairs in the Southwest Territory, 1790-1796,” Tennessee Historical Magazine, 2nd ser., 3 (January 1937): 240-268. Some historians view frontier reactions as an insurrection against federal government policy; see, for example, Cynthia Cumfer, “Local Origins of National Indian Policy: Cherokee and Tennessean Ideas About Sovereignty and Nationhood, 1790-1811,” Journal of the Early Republic 23 (Spring 2003), 36-37.

 

[12] Brackenridge’s quote from Thomas D. Clark, ed., The Voice of the Frontier: John Bradford’s Notes on Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 179. For Blount, see William Blount to Daniel Smith, 17 June 1793, Governor William Blount Papers, 1790-1796, folder 1, TSLA. Jackson quoted in Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 71. For Jackson’s feelings about Federal administrations, see Ronald N. Satz, “Remini’s Andrew Jackson (1767-1821): Jackson and the Indians,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 38 (Summer 1979), 160.

 

[13] For Nickajack Expedition, see Buchanan, Jackson’s Way, 141-143; and John R. Finger, Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 146-147. For an interesting account of the expedition from the Cherokee point of view, see Carl F. Klinck and James J. Talman, eds., The Journal of John Norton, 1816 (Toronto, Canada: Champlain Society, 1970), 39. Jackson’s proclamation, dated 7 July 1812, was published in the 8 July 1812 issue of the Clarion, under the heading “The Massacre at the Mouth of Duck River” and can be found in Harold Moser and Sharon Macpherson, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, 1804-1813 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 310-311.

 

[14]Clarion, 23 May 1812. Johnson’s quote from a letter to John Hutchinson from Johnson, dated 17 May 1812, and published in ibid.; also, see Thomas Johnson to Andrew Jackson, 27 May 1812, in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II: 298-299.

 

[15] Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I: 226. Toast from Wilson’s Knoxville Gazette, 6 July 1812.

 

[16] Knoxville Gazette, 15 June 1812. The newspaper, in commenting on Pillow’s expedition, called it a “daring project.” In reference to the murder of the Creek prisoner, the paper blatantly declared that “one Indian more or less in the world, is a matter of no moment.”

 

[17] Jackson quotes from Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I: 226.

 

[18] For British use of Indians as a barrier, see Robert F. Berkholder, Jr., “Barrier to Settlement: British Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783-1794,” in David M. Ellis, ed., The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 249-276. For an excellent study of British Indian policy, consult Robert Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in Defense of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto, Canada: Dundurn Press, 1992). Reginald Horsman’s quote from his book, Matthew Elliott, British Indian Agent (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1964), 176.

 

[19] Klinck and Talman, Journal of Major John Norton, 51; Lyman Draper Papers (microfilm edition), State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison), 5CC33; Jervis Cutler, A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana (Boston: Charles Williams, 1812; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1971), 215.

 

[20] For more on Tippecanoe, see Reginald Horsman, “American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783-1812,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 18 (January 1961), 48-53; and Marshall Smelser, “Tecumseh, Harrison, and the War of 1812,” Indiana Magazine of History 65 (March 1969), 25-44. Lexington Reporter quoted in Donald Hickey, The War of 1812: The Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 26. Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), 19 November 1811. Clarion, 7 January 1812.

 

                        [21] Liberty Hall quote from John F. Cady, “Western Opinion and the War of 1812,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 33 (October 1924), 453-454. For Madison and Harrison , see Smelser, “Tecumseh, Harrison, and the War of 1812,” 38-39; also, William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, 3 October 1811, William Henry Harrison Papers (microfilm edition), series 1, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).

 

[22] The literature on Tecumseh is too extensive to list in this essay. A thorough examination of his life can be found in John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1998); also, R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1984) is one of the best sources for a discussion of Tecumseh’s attempts to create an Indian confederacy. That there were Creek warriors among the Indians at Prophetstown is verified in a letter from British Indian agent, Matthew Elliott, to Major-General Isaac Brock, dated 12 January 1812 -- the letter is printed in William Wood, ed., Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812, 3 vols. (Toronto, Canada: Champlain Society, 1920; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), I: 282. For Little Warrior, see Buchanan, Jackson’s Way, 209.

 

[23] Wilson’s Knoxville Gazette, 25 May 1812. Andrew Jackson to Willie Blount, 5 June 1812, in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II: 301. For a study of how early Americans blurred the distinctions between friendly and hostile tribes, see Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. chapter 4. Hinderaker traces this phenomenon to the brutality of the Seven Years War in the Ohio Valley, as the frontier began to label all Indians as “savages”: “As colonists learned to despise and dehumanize their attackers, the distinction between friendly and hostile warriors became increasingly difficult to maintain. Colonial hatred was categorical; under its pressure, the biological continuities that seemed to unite all Indians effaced the political and cultural variations that divided them.” (quote on p. 158)

 

[24] Western Spy (Cincinnati, OH), 6 June 1812 and Niles Weekly Register, 13 June 1812, II: 256. For a look at the War Hawks using depredations to further their cause, see Tom Kanon, “James Madison, Felix Grundy, and the Devil: A Western War Hawk in Congress,” Filson History Quarterly (Fall 2001), esp. pp. 453-455.

 

[25] Clarion, 30 June 1812. For Hawkins’ involvement, see William Eustis to Willie Blount, 22 June 1812, in American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I: 813. Hawkins’ letter in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II: 307n5. Sevier’s letter to Governor Blount, dated 12 June 1812, reprinted in 19 June 1812 issue of Knoxville Gazette.

 

[26] Blount to William Eustis, 25 June 1812, in American State Papers, Indians Affairs, I: 813. Clarion, 8 July 1812.

 

[27] “Crawley Deposition,” in Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I: 225-226n1. For a somewhat fanciful account of Tandy Walker’s rescue of Crawley, see George F. Mellon, “A Blacksmith Hero,” Southeastern Native American Exchange 1 (Winter 1993): 6-9. In a petition on behalf of Walker, to the Tennessee Legislature in September 1815, the petition declares Walker spent “a very considerable expense in employing and supporting twenty-odd Indians for a considerable time in aiding and assisting her escape” -- see Legislative Petitions, Record Group 60, 1815, Folder 53, Tennessee State Library and Archives [TSLA] (Nashville).

 

[28] Jackson to Willie Blount, 8 July 1812, in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II; 312. Jackson to Blount, 10 July 1812, in Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I: 231. For memorial of Tennessee legislature, dated 25 September 1812, see Robert H. White, ed., Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, 1796-1821 (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1952), 386.

 

[29] John Murrey to Andrew Jackson, 18 June 1812, Papers of Andrew Jackson, Library of Congress.

 

[30] Clarion, 23 May 1812.

 

[31] For examples of this line of thought, see Elizabeth Perkins, Border Life: Experiences and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, esp. pp. 216-255.

 

[32] Mia Taylor, “Early Recollections of Madison County” Huntsville Historical Review 2 (April 1972), 21-22. Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The Indian Captivity of O.M. Spencer (New York: Citadel Press, 1968), 15-16.

 

[33] Jacob Lindley’s account taken from “Expedition to Detroit, 1793,” in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections 17 (1892), 573-574.

 

[34] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 1983; rev.ed., 1991), 194-198.

 

[35] “Narrative of General Hall” South-Western Monthly 1 (June 1852), 332-334; also, South-Western Monthly 2 (July 1852), 14-15. Hall later became a general in the Tennessee militia and served in the Creek War (1813-14).

 

[36] Quote is from an 1850 letter by William Darby found in Wills De Hass, History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia; Embracing an Account of the Various Expeditions in the West, Previous to 1795 (Wheeling, VA: H. Hoblitzell, 1851), 328-329.

 

[37] This paragraph is a distillation of chapter 2 of my thesis, “Frontier Fathers and Martial Sons: Indian Hating in the Backcountry Prior to the War of 1812” (unpublished master’s thesis, Middle Tennessee State University, 2003).

 

[38] T.H. Palmer, ed., The Historical Register of the United States. From the Declaration of War in 1812, to January 1, 1814, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: G. Palmer, 1814), II: 6.

 

[39] Jonathan Evans, comp., A Journal of the Life, Travels, and Religious Labors of William Savery, A Minister of the Gospel of Christ, of the Society of Friends (Philadelphia, PA: no pub., 1873), 56.

 

[40] Jackson to Willie Blount, 10 July 1812, in Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I: 231; also, Jackson to Blount, 8 July 1812, in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II: 312.

 

[41] Kentucky toast from the Lexington Reporter, 20 July 1811, cited in Robert Pettus Hay, “A Jubilee for Freeman: The Fourth of July in Frontier Kentucky,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 64 (July 1966), 182. For worthiness of the sons of Founding Fathers/Frontier Fathers, see Kanon, “Frontier Fathers, Martial Sons,” 3-4, 7-12, 72-74, 88-89.

 

[42] Taylor, “Early Recollections of Madison County,” 31; and “Narrative of General Hall,” 16.

 

[43] “The Massacre at the Mouth of Duck River,” 7 July 1812, in Moser and Macpherson, Papers of Andrew Jackson, II: 311.

 

[44] “To The 2nd Division,” 9 July 1812, in ibid., II: 314 -- published in the Clarion, 14 July 1812.

 

[45] Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1981), 15-17, 35-41.

 

[46] John Crawley appealed to the Tennessee Legislature in October 1812 for money as a result of having his house and property destroyed during the Duck River incident. See Legislative Petitions, RG 60, 1812, folder 24. John Crawley’s service and subsequent death is based on lists of Tennesseans who served in the War of 1812: a John Crawley is listed in a unit commanded by Colonel John Cocke, in a company led by Captain Daniel Price. See Bryon and Samuel Sistler, comps., Tennesseans in the War of 1812 (Nashville: Bryon Sistler & Associates, 1992), 147. For Manley’s petition, see House of Representatives Report 402, 9 April 1834 (endnote #4 of this paper).

 

[47] Martha “Crowley” is listed as being over the age of 45; there are two males in her household: one listed between the ages of 16 to 18 and the other between the ages of 19 to 26. See Ronald Vern Jackson and G. R. Teeples, eds., Tennessee 1820 Census, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: Dana Press, 1974), 126. The fact that she is listed as a head of household adds to the belief that John Crawley is deceased by this time.

 

[48] For example, see History of Tennessee From the Earliest Time to the Present; Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Montgomery, Robertson, Humphreys, Stewart, Dickson, Cheatham and Houston Counties (Nashville, TN: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1886; reprint, Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1979), 871; also, Garret, History of Humphreys County, 12-13.

 

[49] Owsely, Jr., Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands, 86-91. For contents of the treaty and the reference to the incident at Duck River, see American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I: 326-327.