and assigned to
port-holes, in order that each might know where to go to do his part of
the fighting whenever the Indians should come. Even those of the women
who knew how to shoot, insisted upon being provided with guns and
assigned to posts of duty. There was not only no use in flinching, but
every one of them knew that whenever the fort should be attacked the
only question to be decided was, "Shall we beat the savages off, or
shall every man woman and child of us be butchered?" They could not run
away, for there was nowhere to run, except into the hands of the
merciless foe. The life of every one of them was involved in the defence
of the forts, and each was, therefore, anxious to do all he could to
make the defense a successful one. Their only hope was in desperate
courage, and, being Americans, their courage was equal to the demand
made upon it. It was not a civilized war, in which surrenders, and
exchanges of prisoners, and treaties and flags of truce, or even
neutrality offered any escape. It was a savage war, in which the Indians
intended to kill all the whites, old and young, wherever they could find
them. The people in the forts knew this, and they made their
arrangements accordingly.

Now if the boys and girls who read this story will get their atlases and
turn to the map of Alabama, they will find some points, the relative
positions of which they must remember if they wish to understand fully
the happenings with which we have to do. Just below the junction of the
Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on the east side of the stream, they will
find the little town of Tensaw, and Fort Mims stood very near that
place. The peninsula formed by the two rivers above their junction is
now Clarke County, and almost exactly in its centre stands the village
of Grove Hill. A mile or two to the north-east stood Fort Sinquefield.
Fort White was several miles further west, and Fort Glass, afterwards
called Fort Madison, stood fifteen miles south, at a point about three
miles south of the present village of Suggsville. On the eastern side of
the Alabama river is the town of Claiborne, and at a point about three
miles below Claiborne the principal events of this story occurred. It
will not hurt you, boys and girls, to learn a little accurate geography,
by looking up these places before going on with the story, and if I were
your schoolmaster, instead of your story teller, I should stop here to
advise you always to look on the map fo