ighting is akin, and it was but a change of scene
and purpose that turned the man of the tavern brawl into the man of The
Horseshoe and New Orleans; for it happened that there was nowhere in the
Southwest, perhaps nowhere in the country, any other man quite so sure
to have his way, whether in a street fight or in a battle.

III

TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA

The call that now came to Jackson was chiefly due to a very picturesque
character of the times: the man who is said to have been the only rival
of Burr and Jackson in the impression he made upon all beholders by his
manner and bearing. The call came, indeed, from the southward, but
probably it would never have come but for the work of Tecumseh (or
Tecumthe), the famous Shawnee warrior and orator, whose home was in the
Northwest. For years Tecumseh had been striving to unite the red men of
the West and South in a supreme effort to roll back the swelling tide of
white immigration. In 1811 he made a pilgrimage to the southern tribes,
and his most fervent appeal was to that powerful body of Indians known
as the Creek Confederacy, who lived in what is now the eastern part of
Alabama and the southwestern part of Georgia. These proud and warlike
Indians were divided into two branches. The Upper Creeks had their homes
along the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and their villages extended some
distance down the Alabama, which is formed by the junction of those two
streams. The Lower Creek towns were on both sides of the Chattahoochee,
which now separates southern Georgia from southern Alabama. The
so-called Confederacy, a loose sort of alliance, claimed for a hunting
ground the lands extending westward to the watershed between the Alabama
and Tombigbee rivers, which unite to form the Mobile. But in the fork of
these two rivers and along the Mobile and the Tombigbee were growing
settlements of white men. The growth of these settlements was watched
with disfavor and suspicion by the Creeks. A strong party, the Red
Sticks, or hostiles, listened readily to Tecumseh's teaching. When he
left for his home in the distant Northwest many were already dancing the
"war-dance of the Lakes."

The outbreak of the war with England came in good time for Tecumseh's
plans. He at once put himself in alliance with the British, and in the
summer of 1813 the Creek Red Sticks heard that they could get arms and
ammunition at Pensacola, the capital of Spanish Florida. Spain was at
peace with the Un