One Promiscuous Ruin: A Novel of the Fort Mims Massacre

By James Sturdivant

In the summer of 1813, an increasingly crowded group of settlers gathered in an improvised fortification located on the Alabama River in what is now Baldwin County. They strived to avoid attack by hostile "Redsticks," Creek warriors who yearned to return to a way of life free from the advancing European and American cultures. Embracing the policies of Shawnee chief Tecumseh, these warriors, led by William Weatherford, banded together to inflict one of the most serious military defeats in American history. Such a victory was not inevitable or even likely. Rather, it was achieved due to a combination of hubris, ignorance, racism, and fickle fate. This is the story of that defeat. It is a work of historical fiction, but the broad outline of events and most characters depicted are based upon recorded history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350949247

James Sturdivant

James Sturdivant lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where he is a practicing attorney who specializes in white collar defense and complex government investigations. His family is made up of his lovely wife Susan, four sons, and one granddaughter. This is his first novel.

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Cover of One Promiscuous Ruin by James Sturdivant

One Promiscuous Ruin: The Fort Mims Massacre

©2024 by James Robert Sturdivant, Birmingham, Alabama, all rights reserved

Print ISBN: 979-8-35094-923-0

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35094-924-7

Contents

Introduction

Prologue One

Prologue Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

introduction

America and its former sovereign, Great Britain, renewed hostilities against one another in the War of 1812. In what is present day Alabama, then part of the remote and relatively isolated Mississippi Territory of the United States, an offshoot of that conflict, the Creek War, flamed from 1813 - 1814, largely unnoticed by the more populous eastern part of the United States. Encouraged and supplied by British agents, as well as by Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief and warrior who sought, unsuccessfully to unite all tribes of the then western territories – from Michigan to Louisiana – a faction of the Muscogee Indian Tribe (called Creeks by the Americans) made the decision to go to war against the white and civilized native and ethnically mixed settlers. Recently emerging from an intertribal civil war, based partly upon disagreements over the future of Creek societal structure, alarmed that a Federal Road had been cut across southern Alabama from Georgia, seeing the never-ending tide of American pioneers, and the eventual end of their way of life, they formed a loose and unofficial (on London’s part) alliance with the British, seizing the opportunity to attempt nothing short of the abandonment of American settlement efforts in the lands they claimed. PPerhaps even more naively, they also sought to establish a separate, sovereign Creek nation, with control over the vital river highways interspersed throughout Alabama, and from which the settlers had given the Muscogee Tribe its English language appellation.

Beginning in 1812, and escalating in the spring and summer of 1813, a series of skirmishes and raids, usually brutal, merciless attacks upon isolated farms or travelers, in present day Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, caused panicked settlers to congregate in make-shift stockades for purposes of defending their families, slaves and livestock. One of these, a relatively large stockade around the trading post and home of Samuel Mims, a prominent planter and wholesaler, was located at the intersection of the Alabama and Tensaw Rivers, and at the termination of the Federal Road, in what is now a remote corner of present-day Baldwin County, Alabama. By mid-summer of 1813, the ambitiously named fort was growing crowded.

William Weatherford, an opportunistic Creek leader and landowner and, like many of his followers, of mixed Creek and European descent, had decided to ally himself with the pro-British fraction of the Creek people. Fort Mims, outwardly strong in appearance but, in fact, poorly led and poorly guarded, drew the attention of Weatherford and a group of around 700 warriors who began to plan an assault on the fort in late August of 1813, which took place on the thirtieth of that month.

On September 9, 1813, Major Joseph P. Kennedy of the Territorial Militia arrived at Fort Mims for the purpose of interring the dead bodies of the victims of what was, until September 11, 2001, one of the largest massacres of American men, women and children in United States history. In his official report of this mission, Kennedy wrote that, on arriving at the location, he observed the air was black with buzzards and foul with the stench of decaying bodies. Hundreds of wild dogs and coyotes roamed about, gnawing at the corpses of the dead. Indians, negroes, white men, women and children, lay in one promiscuous ruin. All were scalped, and the females of every age were butchered in a manner which neither decency nor language will permit me to describe.

Eyewitness accounts describe how children were seized by the ankles and swung against the stockade log walls, until their brains were literally pasted on the rough timbers, while their mothers and other children who were not yet dead screamed in anguish and terror. Pregnant women’s wombs were opened while they were still alive, the embryo infants removed, and placed beside the dying mothers. Rape and mutilation of the females was virtually universal. Except for a few lucky exceptions, none of the settlers or their slaves survived.

Due to the overshadowing of the massacre by the great American naval victory by Commodore Oliver Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie, on September 10, and because most of the settlers in what was then a remote backwater of the western edge of the United States territory were at the bottom of the social and economic ladders of the day, most Americans either never learned or quickly forgot about the events at Fort Mims. Most Alabamians, let alone the overwhelming majority of Americans of today and 100 years ago, know and knew nothing of the massacre, its horrid details, its causes or its consequences. At the time, however, citizens of the western sections of the young republic, particularly those in the State of Tennessee and what would become the Tennessee River Valley in Alabama, were virtually universal in their determination, ultimately largely successful, to exterminate or exile the Creek nation. Any earlier misgivings or hesitation concerning the morality or wisdom of such a policy died in the flames of Fort Mims. Andrew Jackson, recuperating from a scandalous gun fight on the streets of Nashville with political enemies, eventually rode the wave of popular determination to avenge the Mims massacre into the White House after leading a force of Tennessee Volunteers into Alabama to achieve this goal.

This novel is based upon recorded history. In one instance, the account of what came to be called the Duck River massacres, the recorded details of two separate Creek raids are combined into one. Also, in some instances, liberties have been taken with the backgrounds and ultimate fates of some characters, or with the specific ways certain characters managed to survive. But the overall events depicted are as recorded in historical sources.

Prologue One

May, 1813

Crawley Farm

South-Central Tennessee in the Valley of the Duck Rivers

Martha Crawley smiled. She always did, anytime she held a newborn baby.

The baby, only a week old, stared vacantly up at Martha, and then began to squirm and grunt.

Oh dear, Martha, you’d better give him to me, said Virginia Manley, mother of tiny Joshua. I’m quite sure you’ve done enough changing of infant wraps in your day without having to worry with one of mine.

Nonsense, Virginia, you just rest now. I don’t mind. After all, Frank and I may still have one or two more surprises before we’re done. I may need the practice.

Virginia’s smile was tired, but warm. Thank you, Martha. It is nice to be able to just lie back and rest for a while.

Virginia’s pregnancy had gone smoothly, until the actual delivery. She’d lost blood and continued to lack an appetite. Martha was worried about her neighbor, and had sent her oldest son, William, to fetch Virginia and her children and bring them back to the Crawley Farm. Virginia could have a few days’ rest at the Crawley’s larger, and more airy, cabin while their husbands, partners now, were in Shelbyville trading for supplies with which to start a lumber and grain mill. They had left at dawn on Wednesday and were expected back Sunday. Virginia had gratefully accepted her offer to stay at the Crawley place until Saturday and had spent her first night there Thursday night. She enjoyed the breeze that came through the two windows that Frank had put in last summer. Virginia’s place had been built in the fall, and windows had not been a priority. Even though it was only mid-May, a windowless cabin was stuffy in a late spring Tennessee climate. Eugenia Mayfield, another neighbor, had also agreed to stay a couple of nights, while her husband accompanied Frank and Joseph Manley as a hired teamster.

While Martha changed Joshua’s wrappings, she saw Virginia close her eyes. After she finished with the baby, she laid him beside his mother resting on the frame bed’s rope mattress. Martha crossed the cabin to the large fireplace, in which a kettle of venison stew was slowly bubbling, with cathead biscuits on top. Next summer, Frank had promised, he would build a log kitchen out back to allow cooking to be done in a room separate from the living quarters. That would help with the heat of summer and be safer too, Martha thought. For now, the air still had enough coolness that the fire didn’t warm the cabin too much, so long as the windows were kept open.

Martha bent and scooped out a small spoonful. She nodded. It was ready. Boys! Anna! Supper’s ready. Will, run down to the barn and tell Mrs. Mayfield to come in.

Without too much complaining, Stephen, Samuel, and Jonah came running into the cabin, as usual, pushing and shoving each other all the way. Stephen and Samuel belonged to her; Jonah was the Manley’s other son. Minutes later, Anna, Virginia’s twelve-year-old daughter, came inside. She smiled when she saw her mother resting with her baby brother, and then looked up at Martha with bright blue eyes.

Ma’s feeling better? she asked.

Yes, child. We’ll let her sleep a bit longer, and then we’ll all have us some supper.

Anna’s face grew serious. I want her to be able to move around again, like after Jonah came a few summers ago. This time, she don’t seem to be getting better like she ought to.

Anna, your mother lost a good deal of blood during the birthing. That makes a woman weak for a while. She’ll be better soon.

Anna looked thoughtful. Maybe in a few more days, she’ll be stronger?"

That is exactly right, replied Martha. Now, you help set these bowls out on the table, will you please?

As Anna finished setting the table, Martha pushed aside the muslin curtain covering one of the windows and looked outside. Though the air had begun to cool noticeably, the sun still shone above the mountain overlooking the valley where the three families had settled. It was a beautiful day, thought Martha, and sunset would be in another hour or so.

That thought made her realize that William should have returned by now with Eugenia.

Eugenia was a pleasant enough woman, but the last few weeks had been most difficult for her, as she entered the last stages of her first pregnancy. Martha judged Eugenia to be about four weeks out from delivery. She and Rayford had been married two years, and had conceived in time to quell most, but not all, of the gossip surrounding how she and her husband got along after sunset.

Martha started to pull her head back inside, then stopped, suddenly realizing that she didn’t hear the dogs.

Odd. She had heard them quite clearly, a little while ago, and had even wondered if they hadn’t