Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814)
The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, was fought during the War of 1812 in the Mississippi Territory, now central Alabama. On March 27, 1814, United States forces and Indian allies under Major General Andrew Jackson defeated the Red Sticks, a part of the Creek Indian tribe who opposed American expansion ending the Creek War; the Creek Indians of Georgia and the eastern part of the Mississippi Territory had become divided into two factions: the Upper Creek, a majority who opposed American expansion and sided with the British and the colonial authorities of Spanish Florida during the War of 1812. S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins, sought to remain on good terms with the Americans; the Shawnee war leader Tecumseh visited Creek and other Southeast Indian towns in 1811–1812 to recruit warriors to join his war against American territorial encroachment. The Red Sticks, young men who wanted to revive traditional religious and cultural practices, were forming, resisting assimilation, they began to raid American frontier settlements.
When the Lower Creek helped U. S. forces to capture and punish leading raiders, the Lower Creek were punished in turn by the Red Sticks. In 1813, militia troops intercepted a Red Stick party returning from obtaining arms in Pensacola. While they were looting the material, the Red Sticks returned and defeated them, at what became known as the Battle of Burnt Corn. Red Sticks' raiding of enemy settlements continued. After the Fort Mims massacre, frontier settlers appealed to the government for help. Since Federal military forces were committed to waging the War of 1812 against Great Britain, the governments of Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory organized militia forces, which together with Lower Creek and Cherokee allies, fought against the Red Sticks. After leaving Fort Williams in the spring of 1814, Jackson's army cut its way through the forest to within six miles of Chief Menawa's Red Stick camp Tehopeka, near a bend in the Tallapoosa River called "Horseshoe Bend"—located in what is now central Alabama, 12 miles east of present-day Alexander City.
Jackson sent General John Coffee with the mounted infantry and the Indian allies south across the river to surround the Red Sticks' camp, while Jackson stayed with the rest of the 2,000 infantry north of the camp. Added to the militia units were the 39th United States Infantry and about 600 Cherokee and Lower Creek, fighting against the Red Stick Creek warriors. West Tennessee Militia: Major General Andrew Jackson On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson led troops consisting of 2,600 American soldiers, 500 Cherokee, 100 Lower Creek allies up a steep hill near Tehopeka. From this vantage point, Jackson would begin his attack on the Red Stick fortification. At 6:30am, he split his troops and sent 1300 men to cross the Tallapoosa River and surround the Creek village. At 10:30 a.m. Jackson's remaining troops began an artillery barrage which consisted of two cannons firing for about two hours. Little damage was caused to their 400-yard-long, log-and-dirt fortifications. In fact, Jackson was quite impressed with the measures the Red Sticks took to protect their position.
As he wrote: It is impossible to conceive a situation more eligible for defence than the one they had chosen and the skill which they manifested in their breastwork was astonishing. It extended across the point in such a direction as that a force approaching would be exposed to a double fire, while they lay safe behind it, it would have been impossible to have raked it with cannon to any advantage if we had had possession of one extremity. Soon, Jackson ordered a bayonet charge; the 39th U. S. Infantry, led by Colonel John Williams, charged the breastworks and engaged the Red Sticks in hand-to-hand combat. Sam Houston served as a third lieutenant in Jackson's army. Houston was one of the first to make it over the log barricade alive and received a wound from a Creek arrow that troubled him for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the troops under the command of General John Coffee had crossed the river and surrounded the encampment, they gave Jackson a great advantage. The Creek warriors refused to surrender and the battle lasted for more than five hours.
At the end 800 of the 1000 Red Stick warriors present at the battle were killed. In contrast, Jackson reported 154 wounded. After the battle, Jackson's troops made bridle reins from skin taken from Indian corpses, conducted a body count by cutting off the tips of their noses, sent their clothing as souvenirs to the "ladies of Tennessee."Chief Menawa was wounded but survived. On August 9, 1814, Andrew Jackson forced the Creek to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson; the Creek Nation was forced to cede 23 million acres —half of central Alabama and part of southern Georgia—to the United States government. Jackson had determined the areas from his sense of security needs. Of the 23 million acres Jackson forced the Creek to cede 1.9 million acres, claimed by the Cherokee Nation, which had allied with the United States. Jackson was promoted to Major General after getting agreement to the treaty. After the battle
Cultural assimilation of Native Americans
The cultural assimilation of Native Americans was an assimilation effort by the United States to transform Native American culture to European–American culture between the years of 1790 and 1920. George Washington and Henry Knox were first to propose, in an American context, the cultural transformation of Native Americans, they formulated a policy to encourage the civilizing process. With increased waves of immigration from Europe, there was growing public support for education to encourage a standard set of cultural values and practices to be held in common by the majority of citizens. Education was viewed as the primary method in the acculturation process for minorities. Americanization policies were based on the idea that when indigenous people learned United States customs and values, they would be able to merge tribal traditions with American culture and peacefully join the majority of the society. After the end of the Indian Wars, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the government outlawed the practice of traditional religious ceremonies.
It established Native American boarding schools. In these schools they were forced to speak English, study standard subjects, attend church, leave tribal traditions behind; the Dawes Act of 1887, which allotted tribal lands in severalty to individuals, was seen as a way to create individual homesteads for Native Americans. Land allotments were made in exchange for Native Americans becoming US citizens and giving up some forms of tribal self-government and institutions, it resulted in the transfer of an estimated total of 93 million acres from Native American control. Most was sold to individuals or given out free through the Homestead law, or given directly to Indians as individuals; the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 was part of Americanization policy. The leading opponent of forced assimilation was John Collier, who directed the federal Office of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, tried to reverse many of the established policies. Epidemiological and archeological work has established the effects of increased immigration of children accompanying families to North America from 1634–1640.
They came from areas where smallpox was endemic in the Netherlands and France, passed on the disease to indigenous people. Tribes such as the Huron/Wendat and others in the Northeast suffered epidemics after 1634. During this period European powers fought to acquire cultural and economic control of North America, just as they were doing in Europe. At the same time, indigenous peoples competed for dominance in the European fur trade and hunting areas; the French and Spanish powers sought to engage Native American tribes as auxiliary forces in their North American armies, otherwise composed of colonial militia in the early battles. In many cases indigenous warriors formed the great majority of fighting forces, which deepened some of their rivalries. To secure the help of the tribes, the Europeans signed treaties; the treaties promised that the European power would honor the tribe's traditional lands and independence. In addition, the indigenous peoples formed alliances for their own reasons, wanting to keep allies in the fur and gun trades, positioning European allies against their traditional enemies among other tribes, etc.
Many Native American tribes took part in King William's War, Queen Anne's War, Dummer's War, the French and Indian War. As the dominant power after the Seven Years' War, Great Britain instituted the Royal Proclamation of 1763, to try to protect indigenous peoples' territory from colonial encroachment of peoples from east of the Appalachian Mountains; the document defined a boundary to separate Native American country from that of the European community. In part, this justified the English taking complete control of lands on the European side, but the proclamation did not prevent individual ethnic European colonists from continuing to migrate westward; the British did not have sufficient forces to keep out colonists. Europeans and European governments continued to use military/diplomatic and economic force to secure control of more territories from Native Americans. For further information see European colonization of the Americas. From the Native American perspective, European control of an area means a dramatic change in their way of life, with free movement across hunting grounds curtailed or objected to, for instance, by Europeans who had different conceptions of property and the uses of land.
The struggle for empire in North America caused the United States in its earliest years to adopt an Indian policy similar to the one devised by Great Britain in colonial times. They realized that good relations with bordering tribes were important for political and trading reasons, but as had the British, they reserved the right to abandon these good relations to absorb the lands of their enemies and allies alike as the agricultural frontier moved west; the United States continued the use of Native Americans as allies, including during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. As relations with England and Spain normalized during the early 19th century, the need for such friendly relations ended, it was no longer necessary to "woo" the tribes to prevent the other powers from using them against the United States. Now, instead of a buffer against other "civilized" foes, the tribes became viewed as an obstacle in the expansion of the United States. George Washington formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process.
He had a six-point plan for civilization
Cherokee
The Cherokee are one of the indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, the tips of western South Carolina and northeastern Georgia; the Cherokee language is part of the Iroquoian language group. In the 19th century, James Mooney, an American ethnographer, recorded one oral tradition that told of the tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, where other Iroquoian-speaking peoples lived. Today there are three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. By the 19th century, European settlers in the United States classified the Cherokee of the Southeast as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", because they were agrarian and lived in permanent villages and began to adopt some cultural and technological practices of the European American settlers.
The Cherokee were one of the first, if not the first, major non-European ethnic group to become U. S. citizens. Article 8 in the 1817 treaty with the Cherokee stated that Cherokees may wish to become citizens of the United States; the Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 tribal members, making it the largest of the 567 federally recognized tribes in the United States. In addition, numerous groups claim Cherokee lineage, some of these are state-recognized. A total of more than 819,000 people are estimated to claim having Cherokee ancestry on the US census, which includes persons who are not enrolled members of any tribe. Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the UKB have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma; the UKB are descendants of "Old Settlers", Cherokee who migrated to Arkansas and Oklahoma about 1817 prior to Indian Removal. They are related to the Cherokee who were forcibly relocated there in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act; the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina.
A Cherokee language name for Cherokee people is Aniyvwiyaʔi, translating as "Principal People". Tsalagi is the Cherokee word for Cherokee. Many theories, though none proven, abound about the origin of the name "Cherokee", it may have been derived from the Choctaw word Cha-la-kee, which means "people who live in the mountains", or Choctaw Chi-luk-ik-bi, meaning "people who live in the cave country". The earliest Spanish transliteration of the name, from 1755, is recorded as Tchalaquei. Another theory is; the Iroquois Five Nations based in New York have called the Cherokee Oyata'ge'ronoñ. The word Cherokee means “people of different speech.” Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins. One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, are relative latecomers to Southern Appalachia, who may have migrated in late prehistoric times from northern areas around the Great Lakes, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples.
Another theory is. Researchers in the 19th century recorded conversations with elders who recounted an oral tradition of the Cherokee people migrating south from the Great Lakes region in ancient times, they may have moved south into Muscogee Creek territory and settled at the sites of mounds built by the Mississippian culture and earlier moundbuilders. In the 19th century, European-American settlers mistakenly attributed several Mississippian culture sites in Georgia to the Cherokee, including Moundville and Etowah Mounds. However, other evidence shows that the Cherokee did not reach this part of Georgia until the late 18th century and could not have built the mounds; the Connestee people, believed to be ancestors of the Cherokee, occupied western North Carolina circa 200 to 600 CE. Pre-contact Cherokee are considered to be part of the Pisgah Phase of Southern Appalachia, which lasted from circa 1000 to 1500. Despite the consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology, some scholars contend that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time.
During the late Archaic and Woodland Period, Native Americans in the region began to cultivate plants such as marsh elder, pigweed and some native squash. People created new art forms such as shell gorgets, adopted new technologies, developed an elaborate cycle of religious ceremonies. During the Mississippian culture-period, local women developed a new variety of maize called eastern flint corn, it resembled modern corn and produced larger crops. The successful cultivation of corn surpluses allowed the rise of larger, more complex chiefdoms consisting of several villages and concentrated populations during this period. Corn became celebrated among numerous peoples in religious ceremonies the Green Corn Ceremony. Much of what is known about pre-18th-century Native American cultures has come from records of Spanish expeditions; the earliest ones of the mid-16th-century encountered people of the Mississippian culture, the ancestors to tribes in the Southeast such as
Skirmisher
Skirmishers are light infantry or cavalry soldiers in the role of skirmishing—stationed to act as a vanguard, flank guard, or rearguard, screening a tactical position or a larger body of friendly troops from enemy advances. They are deployed in a skirmish line—an irregular open formation much more spread out in depth and breadth than a traditional line formation, their purpose is to harass the enemy—engaging them in only light or sporadic combat in order to delay their movement, disrupt their attack, or weaken their morale. Skirmishers' open formations and smaller numbers can give them superior mobility over the regular forces, allowing them to fight on more favorable terms, taking advantage of better position or terrain and withdrawing from any threat of superior enemy forces. Skirmishers can be either regular army units temporarily detached to perform skirmishing, or specialty units armed and trained for such low-level irregular warfare tactics. Light infantry, light cavalry, irregular units specialize in skirmishing.
Though critical in screening the main army from sudden enemy attacks, skirmishers are poor at taking and defending ground from heavy infantry or heavy cavalry. In modern times, following the obsolescence of such heavy troops, all infantry has become indistinguishable from skirmishers, the term has lost military meaning. A battle with only light indecisive combat is called a skirmish. In ancient warfare, skirmishers carried bows, javelins and sometimes light shields. Acting as light infantry with their light arms and minimal armour, they could run ahead of the main battle line, release a volley of arrows, sling stones, or javelins, retreat behind their main battle line before the clash of the opposing main forces; the aims of skirmishing were to disrupt enemy formations by causing casualties before the main battle, to tempt the opposing infantry into attacking prematurely, throwing their organization into disarray. Skirmishers could be used to surround opposing soldiers in the absence of friendly cavalry.
Once preliminary skirmishing was over, skirmishers participated in the main battle by shooting into the enemy formation, or joined in melée combat with daggers or short swords. Due to their mobility, skirmishers were valuable for reconnaissance in wooded or urban areas. In classical Greece, skirmishers had low status. For example, Herodotus, in his account of the Battle of Plataea of 479 BC, mentions that the Spartans fielded 35,000 armed helots to 5,000 hoplites yet there is no mention of them in his account of the fighting. Greek historians ignored them altogether, though Xenophon distinguished them explicitly from the statary troops, it was far cheaper to equip oneself as armed as opposed to a armed hoplite – indeed it was not uncommon for the armed to go into battle equipped with stones. Hence the low status of skirmishers reflected the low status of the poorer sections of society who made up skirmishers. Additionally, "hit and run" tactics contradicted the Greek ideal of heroism. Plato gives the skirmisher a voice to advocate "flight without shame," but only to denounce it as an inversion of decent values.
Skirmishers chalked up significant victories in this period, such as the Athenian defeat at the hands of the Aetolian javelin men in 426 BC and, in the same war, the Athenian victory of Sphacteria. Skirmisher infantry would gain more respect in the subsequent years as their usefulness was more recognised and as the ancient bias against them waned. Peltasts, light javelin infantry, played a vital role in the Peloponnesian War and well equipped skirmisher troops such as Thureophoroi and Thorakites would be developed to provide a strong mobile force for the Greek and Macedonian armies. Celts did not, in general, favour ranged weapons; the exceptions tended not to include the use of skirmishers. The Britons used the sling and javelin extensively, but for siege warfare, not skirmishing. Among the Gauls the bow was employed when defending a fixed position; the Celtic lack of skirmishers cost them dearly during the Gallic Invasion of Greece of 279 BC, where they found themselves helpless in the face of Aetolian skirmishing tactics.
In the Punic Wars, despite the Roman and Carthaginian armies' different organisations, skimishers had the same role in both: to screen the main armies. The Roman legions of this period had a specialised infantry class called Velites that acted as skirmish troops, engaging the enemy before the Roman heavy infantry made contact, while the Carthaginians recruited their skirmishers from native peoples across the Carthaginian Empire; the Roman army of the late republican and early imperial periods recruited foreign auxiliary troops to act as skirmishers to supplement the citizen Legions. The medieval skirmishers were armed with crossbows or longbows wielded by commoners. In the fourteenth century, although long held in disdain by Castilian heavy cavalry manned by the aristocracy, the crossbowmen contributed to the Portuguese victory at the Battle of Aljubarrota. English archers played a key role in the English victory over French heavy cavalry at Crécy. In the next century they repeated the feat at the Battle of Agincourt.
Such disasters have been seen as marking the beginning of the end of the dominance of the medieval cavalry in particular and heavy cavalry in general. The Seven Years' War and American Revolutionary War were two early conflicts in which the modern rifle began to make a significant contribution to warfare. Despite its lower rate-of-fire, its accuracy at long range offered advantages over the smoothbore musket in common use among regular armies of the time. In both t
Militia (United States)
The militia of the United States, as defined by the U. S. Congress, has changed over time. During colonial America, all able-bodied men of certain ages were members of the militia, depending on the respective states rule. Individual towns formed local independent militias for their own defense; the year before the US Constitution was ratified, The Federalist Papers detailed the founders' paramount vision of the militia in 1787. The new Constitution empowered Congress to "organize and discipline" this national military force, leaving significant control in the hands of each state government. Today, as defined by the Militia Act of 1903, the term "militia" is used to describe two classes within the United States: Organized militia – consisting of State militia forces. Unorganized militia – composing the Reserve Militia: every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age, not a member of the National Guard or Naval Militia. A third militia is a state defense force, it is authorized by state and federal laws.
The term "militia" derives from Old English milite meaning soldiers, militisc meaning military and classical Latin milit-, miles meaning soldier. The Modern English term militia dates to the year 1590, with the original meaning now obsolete: "the body of soldiers in the service of a sovereign or a state". Subsequently, since 1665, militia has taken the meaning "a military force raised from the civilian population of a country or region to supplement a regular army in an emergency as distinguished from mercenaries or professional soldiers"; the spelling of millitia is observed in written and printed materials from the 17th century through the 19th century. See article: Colonial American military history The early colonists of America considered the militia an important social institution, necessary to provide defense and public safety. See article: Provincial troops in the French and Indian Wars During the French and Indian Wars, town militia formed a recruiting pool for the Provincial Forces.
The legislature of the colony would authorize a certain force level for the season's campaign, based on that set recruitment quotas for each local militia. In theory, militia members could be drafted by lot if there were inadequate forces for the Provincial Regulars. In September 1755, George Washington adjutant-general of the Virginia militia, upon a frustrating and futile attempt to call up the militia to respond to a frontier Indian attack:... he experienced all the evils of insubordination among the troups, perverseness in the militia, inactivity in the officers, disregard of orders, reluctance in the civil authorities to render a proper support. And what added to his mortification was, that the laws gave him no power to correct these evils, either by enforcing discipline, or compelling the indolent and refractory to their duty... The militia system was suited for only to times of peace, it provided for calling out men to repel invasion. See New Hampshire Provincial Regiment for a history of a Provincial unit during the French and Indian War.
Just prior to the American Revolutionary War, on October 26, 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, observing the British military buildup, deemed their militia resources to be insufficient: the troop strength, "including the sick and absent, amounted to about seventeen thousand men... this was far short of the number wanted, that the council recommended an immediate application to the New England governments to make up the deficiency":... they recommended to the militia to form themselves into companies of minute-men, who should be equipped and prepared to march at the shortest notice. These minute-men were to consist of one quarter of the whole militia, to be enlisted under the direction of the field-officers, divide into companies, consisting of at least fifty men each; the privates were to choose their captains and subalterns, these officers were to form the companies into battalions, chose the field-officers to command the same. Hence the minute-men became a body distinct from the rest of the militia, and, by being more devoted to military exercises, they acquired skill in the use of arms.
More attention than was bestowed on the training and drilling of militia. See article: List of United States militia units in the American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War began near Boston, Massachusetts with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, in which a group of local militias constituted the American side. On April 19, 1775, a British force 800 strong marched out of Boston to Concord intending to destroy patriot arms and ammunition. At 5:00 in the morning at Lexington, they met about 70 armed militiamen whom they ordered to disperse, but the militiamen refused. Firing ensued; this became known as "the shot heard round the world". Eight militiamen were killed and ten wounded, whereupon the remainder took flight; the British continued on to Concord and were unable to find most of the arms and ammunition of the patriots. As the British marched back toward Boston, patriot militiamen assembled along the route, taking cover behind stone walls, sniped at the British. At Meriam's Corner in Concord, the British columns had to close in to cross a narrow bridge, exposing themselves to concentrated, deadly fire.
The British retreat became a rout. It was only with the help o
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and it flows south for 2,320 miles to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U. S. two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is within the United States; the Mississippi ranks as the fifteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Native Americans have lived along its tributaries for thousands of years. Most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies; the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the native way of life as first explorers settlers, ventured into the basin in increasing numbers.
The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, the early United States, as a vital transportation artery and communications link. In the 19th century, during the height of the ideology of manifest destiny, the Mississippi and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for the western expansion of the United States. Formed from thick layers of the river's silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile regions of the United States. During the American Civil War, the Mississippi's capture by Union forces marked a turning point towards victory, due to the river's strategic importance to the Confederate war effort; because of substantial growth of cities and the larger ships and barges that replaced steamboats, the first decades of the 20th century saw the construction of massive engineering works such as levees and dams built in combination. A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya River and bypassing New Orleans.
Since the 20th century, the Mississippi River has experienced major pollution and environmental problems – most notably elevated nutrient and chemical levels from agricultural runoff, the primary contributor to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, Misi-ziibi. In the 18th century, the river was the primary western boundary of the young United States, since the country's expansion westward, the Mississippi River has been considered a convenient if approximate dividing line between the Eastern and Midwestern United States, the Western United States; this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase "Trans-Mississippi" as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, it is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, such as "the highest peak east of the Mississippi" or "the oldest city west of the Mississippi". The FCC uses it as the dividing line for broadcast call-signs, which begin with W to the east and K to the west, mixing together in media markets along the river.
The Mississippi River can be divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, the river from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River. The Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri, it is divided into two sections: The headwaters, 493 miles from the source to Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca, 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, Minnesota; the name "Itasca" was chosen to designate the "true head" of the Mississippi River as a combination of the last four letters of the Latin word for truth and the first two letters of the Latin word for head. However, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, the waterway's flow is moderated by 43 dams. Fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation.
The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all contain locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river. Taken as a whole, these 43 dams shape the geography and influence the ecology of the upper river. Beginning just below Saint Paul and continuing throughout the upper and lower river, the Mississippi is further controlled by thousands of wing dikes that moderate the river's flow in order to maintain an open navigation channel and prevent the river from eroding its banks; the head of navigation on the Mississippi is the Coon Rapids Dam in Minnesota. Before it was built in 1913, steamboats could go upstream as far as Saint Cloud, depending on river conditions; the uppermost lock and dam on the Upper Mississippi River is the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock an
Menawa
Menawa, first called Hothlepoya, was a Muscogee chief and military leader. He was of mixed race, with a Creek mother and a fur trader father of Scots ancestry; as the Creek had a matrilineal system of descent and leadership, his status came from his mother's clan. He grew up among the Upper Creek in present-day Alabama and, as an adult, became part of the "Red Sticks", a group that opposed assimilation and worked to revive traditional practices. During the Creek War, he survived the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. To carry out punishment for the crime of an unauthorized land cession, in 1825 Menawa led about 150 lawmenders in an attack on chief William McIntosh, who had signed the Treaty of Indian Springs that year without the consent of the Creek National Council, they killed him, burned his mansion, confiscated his property, including livestock and 100 slaves. He was born at the village of Oakfuskee, located on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Alabama; the site is now covered by the lower part of Lake Martin, created by a dam.
His mother was a high-status Creek woman and his father a Scots fur trader. As the Creek were matrilineal, Menawa was reared within the Creek tribe and gained his status from his mother's clan, her eldest brother would have acted as his mentor, teaching him men's ways and introducing him to the men's societies. When Hothlepoya became the second chief of Oakfuskee, he was given the name Menawa. During the early 1800s, he was one of the principal leaders of the "Red Sticks" or Upper Creeks, who worked to revive traditional practices and resisted assimilation to European-American ways, he emerged to lead warriors in the Creek War, which began as a civil war among the Creek people, where strong divisions had arisen with the Lower Creek, who comprised the majority of the population. During this period, the British were at war against the United States during the War of 1812, they supported the Red Sticks' resistance to United States settlers' incursions into their territory. Menawa was second in command of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, when they were defeated by General Andrew Jackson commanding militias of Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory, as well as allied Cherokee.
Menawa was wounded seven times during the battle. After the war, Menawa continued to oppose the European-American encroachment on Creek lands. Lower Creek chiefs had ceded town lands in 1790, 1802 and 1804. In 1825, Chief William McIntosh, a Lower Creek, was one of several chiefs who signed the Treaty of Indian Springs with the US, ceding most of the remaining Creek land east of the Mississippi River; the tribe had been under severe pressure from Georgia, but the Upper Creek, the majority, continued to oppose such cessions. The Creek National Council had passed a law declaring land cessions a capital crime, declared the signers of the 1825 treaty to be traitors, it ordered their execution. On April 30, 1825, Menawa led a party of 120-150 lawmenders from towns of the ceded land, they burned down McIntosh's mansion at Indian Springs, confiscated his 100 slaves and produce. That day they caught Samuel and Benjamin Hawkins, his sons-in-law and signatories to the treaty, they hanged Samuel and shot Benjamin.
In 1826, Menawa was a member of the Creek National Council, led by Opothleyahola, that went to Washington D. C. to protest the Treaty of Indian Springs. The Creek leaders signed the Treaty of Washington with the US government, which nullified the Treaty of Indian Springs. In this new treaty, the Creek still ceded land to Georgia—in compensation, they received an immediate payment of $217,660 and a perpetual annuity of $20,000; the state of Georgia worked to evict the Creek from their lands. Menawa is said to have been among the hundreds who died during the general removal of the Creek to Indian Territory in the 1830s. According to the memoirs of Lt Edward Deas, who lead the third detachment of 2,420 Creeks from Alabama to Oklahoma, Menawa is said to have been alive on December 21, 1836, in Little Rock Arkansas. According to Deas, "The land party arrived near Little Rock but Tuscoona Harjo and four hundred of their people, refused to travel much farther beyond that that. Menawa was too intoxicated to travel while Harho'evinced a stubborn obstinate disposition.'
" Menawa is not listed on the muster rolls after the group reached Fort Gibson in Indian Territory on January 23, 1837. Menawa, therefore died between those two places and his burial place was along the way and is unknown. However, it is unusual for someone as important as Chief Menawa to have died along the trail and not have it reported by Deas or others to authorities in Washington, D. C. In a personal email to Bob Aldrich, dated February 14, 2018, from Professor Christopher D. Haveman "Regarding Menawa, I don't know what happened to him, but I doubt he died on the journey west. You're right, a death that important would not only have been reported by Deas in his journal, but in letters sent back to Washington from Fort Gibson; that suggests he arrived in I. T. and lived there for some time. I'm not quite sure where the myth that he died en route came from, but it wasn't from any documentation that I've found, I scoured NARA during 15 trips to D. C." Haveman is an assistant professor of history at W
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