WILLIAM WEATHERFORD AND THE ROAD TO THE HOLY GROUND

FINDING HIMSELF THE LAST WARRIOR STANDING AT THE DOOMED HOLY GROUND, CHIEF RED EAGLE HAD ONLY ONE AVENUE OF ESCAPE-A RISKY LEAP INTO THE FRIGID RIVER BELOW. BY PAM JONES

RED EAGLE-William Weatherford as the Americans knew him-suddenly found himself alone, the last defender of the Holy Ground on that bitterly cold morning in 1813. He had to make a decision-flee as his warriors had done and surrender the Creek town, or be captured. With American troops quickly closing in, surrounding him on three sides, Weatherford's only escape was a bluff above the wintry Alabama River. In his History of Alabama (1851), Albert James Pickett describes Weatherford's belated retreat:

Coursing with great rapidity along the banks of the Alabama, below the town, on a gray steed of unsurpassed strength and fleetness. . . [he] came at length to the termination of a kind of ravine, where there was a perpendicular bluff ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the river. Over this with a mighty bound the horse pitched with the gallant chief, and both went out of sight beneath the waves.

As the story of William Weatherford's daring leap spread, it took on mythic proportions. The bluff from which he leapt became fifty feet above the river, then one hundred. In the telling and retelling, "Chief Red Eagle became a legend.

WILLIAM WEATHERFORD was an unlikely resistance leader in the Greek War. Born into a wealthy family of mixed heritage, Weatherford could just as easily have fought with American troops as against them. He was the eldest son of Charles Weatherford, a Scots trader and horse breeder, and Princess Sehoy III, the daughter of a Creek chief and the granddaughter of a French military commander. Weatherford's father, a resolute Tory, left Georgia during the early years of the American Revolution after his name appeared on a list of loyalists whose property was to be confiscated. His mother was a member of one of the most influential groups in the Creek nation, the Clan of the Wind.

While only a teen, Weatherford gained a reputation as an excellent athlete. He was also skilled at breaking horses and racing them. Throughout the Greek world, Weatherford was known for his equestrian skills. One Indian woman noted that when Weatherford would gracefully ride past a group of women, they "would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the corn-patch."

Because of his mother's status in the Wind Clan, Weatherford knew he would be in a position of power and influence in the Creek community. As he grew into adulthood, however, he seemed more interested in running his plantation and breeding race horses. He was known throughout the region as a hospitable and gregarious host. His plantation was located near the Upper Creek territory's main thoroughfare, the path that eventually became the Federal Road. Travelers through the area often noted the incongruity of seeing Creek warriors camped in his pastures while Americans dined, danced, and slept in his home. Weatherford was a tall man with reddish-blond hair who dressed in the style of the white settlers in the nation. He moved comfortably between the two disparate and contradictory worlds of the frontier.

THINGS WOULD soon change for Weatherford, however. As more and more settlers pushed into the Mississippi Territory, they also pushed into the Creek Nation. The American government, to promote safety and peace in the region, sought to "civilize" Indians by persuading them to adopt Anglo-American dress, language, and customs such as farming. Many Indians willingly adopted these white ways, and intermarriage between the groups was not uncommon. Some Creeks, however, seeing their culture slowly erode, became increasingly resentful of the American presence in their lands. The Federal Road, carved out of Creek lands between the Chattahoochee and Alabama Rivers in 1811, ensured even more contact between whites and Creeks. Seeing the overwhelming white presence as a threat to their way of life, many Creeks decided to fight back. Because red was the color of war, they became known as Red Sticks, and they were openly hostile towards both encroaching settlers and the Indians who accommodated the newcomers.

Believing that the Greeks would be at a disadvantage against American forces, Weatherford did not join the Red Stick movement initially. At a tribal council in Tuckabatchee in 1811, Weatherford argued against the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who had traveled to the area to encourage the Choctaws and Creeks to join a broad pan-Indian alliance against the Americans, a movement which had already spread throughout the Great Lake region. Acting upon a spiritual vision by his brother Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh believed that an alliance between all tribes would give the Indians enough strength to stop any further white encroachment. Opposing Tecumseh, Weatherford suggested that, should the British and Americans go to war with one another, the Greeks would do best to remain neutral; if forced to choose sides, though, they should ally themselves with the Americans.