A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South

by Peter Cozzens

From acclaimed historian Peter Cozzens, the pivotal struggle between the Creek Indians and an insatiable United States for control over the Deep South.

The Creek War was one of the most tragic episodes in Indian history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on U.S. soil. What began as internal division between the Creek Indians metastasized like a cancer, weakening the tribes’ control, and allowing the government to forcefully remove Indians from their homes. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House. In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens vividly captures the young Jackson, describing a harsh military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a near perverse sense of honor and duty. Jackson never would have won the war without the help of Native American scouts who crossed over enemy lines, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, just as Jackson infamously did to the Cherokees many years later.

Spanning decades of conflict involving white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and Spanish, the Creek War brought white settlers to Alabama, Mississippi, and western Georgia, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Indigenous, Native American, Native Americans, Military History

480 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2023

About the author

Peter Cozzens is the award-winning author of seventeen books on the American Civil War and the West. Cozzens is also a retired Foreign Service Officer.

His most recent book is A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023). Cozzens's next book is Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West (Knopf: September 2025).

Cozzens's penultimate book, Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation, was published by Knopf in October 2020. It won the Western Writers of America Spur Award and was a finalist for the George Washington Prize.

His The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West was published by Alfred A. Knopf in October 2016. Amazon selected it as a Best Book of November 2016. Smithsonian Magazine chose it as one of the ten best history books of 2016. It has won multiple awards, including the Gilder-Lehrman Prize for the finest book on military history published worldwide. It also was a London Times book of the year and has been translated into several languages, including Russian and Chinese.

All of Cozzens' books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and/or the Military Book Club.

Cozzens’ This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga were both Main Selections of the History Book Club and were chosen by Civil War Magazine as two of the 100 greatest works ever written on the conflict.

The History Book Club called his five-volume Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars "the definitive resource on the military struggle for the American West."

His Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign was a Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2009.

He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times "Disunion" series, and he has written articles for Smithsonian Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, True West, America's Civil War, Civil War Times Illustrated, and MHQ, among other publications.

In 2002 Cozzens received the American Foreign Service Association’s highest award, given annually to one Foreign Service Officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent.

Cozzens is a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize, the Western Writers Association, the Authors' Guild, and the Army and Navy Club.

Cozzens and his wife Antonia Feldman reside in Maryland.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“No other Indian conflict in our nation’s history so changed the complexion of society as did the Creek War…A dispute that began as a Creek civil war became a ruthless struggle against American expansion, erupting in the midst of the War of 1812. Not only was the Creek War the most pitiless clash between American Indians and whites in U.S. history, but the defeat of the Red Sticks – as those opposed to American encroachment were known because of the red war clubs they carried – also cost the entire Creek people as well as the neighboring Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee nations their homelands. The collapse of the Red Stick resistance in 1814 led inexorably led to the Indian Trail of Tears two decades later, which opened Alabama, much of Mississippi, and portions of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee to white settlement. That in turn gave rise to the Cotton Kingdom, without which there would have been no casus belli for the American Civil War…”
- Peter Cozzens, A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South

You would be forgiven if you do not know much – if anything – about the Creek Indian War of 1813. While American popular culture is awash in tales of cowboys, Indians, and cavalrymen, the focus is typically on the tribes of the Trans-Mississippi West. The Creek have only seldom made an appearance on screens large or small. In fact, one of the few that comes to mind is Disney’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. That came out in 1955.

In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens – one of America’s best Indian War historians – gives this sad event the treatment it deserves. If it is not quite as good as his earlier volumes about the American Indian Wars – The Earth is Weeping and Tecumseh and the Prophet – it is still rather excellent. It is a book that is morally damning and dramatically lively, all at once.

***

From the start, Cozzens is quick to point out the complexity of the Creek Indian War. Belonging to a group once known as the “Five Civilized Tribes,” the Creek – or Muscogee – had deeply assimilated themselves within the encroaching United States. Unlike the Indians on the Great Plains, who followed the buffalo in their seasonal progresses, the Creek lived in towns; they had trading networks; they raised crops. Some also embodied racial prejudices, and enslaved black men and women.

Creek culture was vibrant and diverse, and successfully melded traditional and borrowed elements. Unsurprisingly, Indian-white proximity and exchanges led to romantic liaisons, and intermarriage resulted in a Métis population that played a huge role in the war to come. One consequence of these unions is that many Creek Indians had Anglo-European names. For example, Alexander McGillivray might have been a Scottish laird; instead, he became one of the Muscogee’s most famous chiefs. At the battle of Fort Mims, a man named Paddy Walsh played a prominent role. Paddy sounds like the goodtime guy you meet at the pub on Thursday nights; in reality, he was a Creek prophet.

The upshot is that there are a lot of characters here, and it is often quite hard to keep everyone’s roles straight. Cozzens does his best to ameliorate this, by proceeding methodically, and by including a dramatis personae at the end. Still, one has to pay close attention.

***

Before the American Revolution, the Creek managed to preserve their lands by exploiting the competition between the French, Spanish, and British Empires. This leverage eroded quickly. France was vanquished from North America in the Seven Years’ War. Spain was perpetually on the decline. Meanwhile, following the Revolutionary War, Great Britain had to contend itself with Canada. Soon, pressure mounted on the Creek, as eager American settlers eyed prime Muscogee territory.

When war between the United States and Great Britain broke out in 1812, battle lines were drawn. The Upper Creek, known as the Red Sticks, attempted to resist further expansion. The Lower Creek – who’d always had closer trading ties with the United States – sided with the whites. The Cherokee and Choctaw also allied with the young American Republic, though it would not save them in the long run.

Things exploded on April 30, 1813, at an unfinished stockade in present-day Alabama called Fort Mims. A battle there degenerated into a massacre that left hundreds of dead, including many noncombatants. From then on, it was a war to the knife, with the United States relying upon a courageous, vengeful, and relentless major general of Tennessee volunteers.

***

As noted above, the cast list here is full of intriguing personalities, men and women attempting to straddle competing cultures, races, and loyalties, and to navigate through a rapidly changing world. Above them all towers Andrew Jackson: frontier lawyer and Congressman; duelist and Tennessee Supreme Court justice; wealthy planter and owner of humans. Though his plantation – the Hermitage – made him rich, soldiering was his true calling.

For good reason, Cozzens focuses on Jackson, sometimes at the expense of others. His personality and actions greatly shaped events. Hair tempered, consumed of an abiding hatred of the British, and guided by terrible passions, Jackson eventually met the Creek at Horseshoe Bend, for what might have been the bloodiest encounter of the long American Indian Wars.

***

Here, as in his other books, Cozzens deftly balances research, storytelling, and biography. He is equally adept at explaining a situation, parsing through competing sources, and delivering a strong set piece. For instance, his handling of both Fort Mims and Horseshoe Bend is gripping.

Perhaps the one flaw in A Brutal Reckoning is its size. There is less than 400 pages of text in which to capture an extremely big event, with roots that can be traced back to the 1500s and Hernando de Soto. This is the shortest of Cozzens’s three Indian War books, and it feels like a lot was cut from this one. In particular, Cozzens makes a lot of bold statements about the impact of the Creek Indian War on subsequent events like the Trail of Tears and the American Civil War. Yet when it comes time to explain these assertions, all we get is a rather rushed final chapter that only skims over the shameful epilogue to this saga.

***

To my mind, there are three major threads running throughout American history. The first is slavery, which predated the Republic, survived the drafting of a constitution devoted to human rights, culminated in the nation’s bloodiest war, and follows us today like a stench. The second is the evolution of American capitalism, which has always worked towards a radically unequal distribution of wealth, a process encouraged by governmental policies and sold to us as “liberty.” The third is America’s continental expansion at the expense of the Native American tribes that lived here first.

Despite its importance, the American Indian Wars have not necessarily been well-served by historians. Even some of the best works have evidentiary flaws, while others are hopelessly reductive or polemical.

Cozzens does a marvelous job of treating complicated affairs as complicated affairs. He recognizes humans as moral agents driven by contradictory passions, imbued with less-than-perfect information, and capable of goodness and cruelty, compassion and callousness. Yet Cozzens also makes sure that everything takes place within a clear-eyed ethical framework that recognizes the ultimate wrongs done the Creek – and hundreds of other tribes – which cannot be explained as anything other than the application of power to expand national boundaries at the expense of thousands of men, women, and children who lost their homes, their traditions, and very often their lives.

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Jackson is one of those historical figures who is harder and harder to like the more you learn about him. I certainly didn't have a high opinion before reading Peter Cozzens' A Brutal Reckoning and it only got worse from there.

Cozzens chronicles the Creek War in the early 1800s. I knew very little about the Creek War as it is generally overshadowed by the War of 1812. I learned a lot and Cozzens knows how to keep the narrative moving and interesting. This book especially soars when recounting specific battles. Cozzens eye for detail is exceptional and he never makes the mistake of becoming too focused on any one thing. He even admits that certain chapters will contain a dizzying amount of names but ultimately I felt Cozzens could have skipped the warning. His mastery of the subjects makes it easy to follow along.

This is an excellent book on an episode in American history which is often overlooked.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor.)

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If we were to ever get an accurate account of what happened and why Native Americans have such a low population peter cousins would be the man to paint that picture but in a brutal reckoning he’s only taking on the trail of tears Andrew Jackson’s slaying of a nation of indigenous people and it’s true beginning. Almost like a three part play we get De Soto’s landing in Florida and the short but real re-examining of Andrew Jackson as a person and a military man and then the slaying that would make history. This isn’t a short book but reads like fiction and even the parts that are meant to educate or interesting and have you turning the pages. I will admit everything up to the prologue can be quite daunting but I mainly skipped all that and went right to the story but either way I found this book so interesting this is a definite 5 star read. This is an author who writes the facts and lets you make up your own mind as opposed to telling you what to think or giving you his own opinion. When it comes to non-fiction books Mr. cousins tell you everything from what they were wearing to the different tallies of those who died those who were injured and those who live to tell the tail. He doesn’t hold any punches and just give the facts and although this was the biggest massacre in the Indian wars he tells a story is it it just happened yesterday. Kudos to Mr. cousins for another great book and another great way to tell the story other people who didn’t always get the stories told fairly. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

[Vanessa M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Brutal Reckoning details the struggle between the United States and the Creek Indians for land and control in the south. It is explained how it all transpired-- in the development of the United States and of the native peoples making up the Creek confederacy being forced to move from their lands. Cozzens does an amazing job with writing about this history. There is also much detail about the civil war between the Indian nations. This book is the last in his trilogy about the Indian Wars and I hope to someday read the other two.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Cozzens, historian and retired 35-year Foreign Service Officer, has just released A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South. Author of many previous books on the Civil War and American West, Cozzens completes his trilogy on the Indian Wars with this latest book. Having begun in the Midwest with Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation and next moving to the West with The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, Cozzens concludes with the Deep South and events he believes led to the Civil War.

Divided into four parts, A Brutal Reckoning chronicles the heart-rending history of the Muscogee Creeks from the mid-16th century killing of their ancestors by Hernando de Soto and the Spanish conquistadors through the 1830s Trail of Tears--the forced removal of Southeastern tribes to Indian Territory in today’s Oklahoma. A meticulous researcher and imminently readable writer, Cozzens sets the stage in the first two parts for Andrew Jackson’s later rise from general in the Tennessee militia to general in the U.S. Army and eventually to President, a rise made possible by rapid population growth and white settlers’ desire to take over Indian land in the Deep South.

By the end of the book, readers can well understand why former President John Quincy Adams, subsequently a member of the House of Representatives, refused the chairmanship of the Committee on Indian Affairs offered to him in 1841. Feeling nothing could compensate for Jackson’s “fraudulent treaties and brutal force” and for the rest of the nation that allowed these, Adams expressed his belief that “God will one day bring them to judgment –but at His own time and by His own means.”

As an Oklahoman for more than four decades and repeat visitor to the Creek Council Oak, by which the Muskogee Creeks held their tribal council meetings and now considered the starting place of the City of Tulsa, I’m familiar with this end of the Trail of Tears and was interested in learning more about events leading up to the Creeks’ arrival in Indian Territory. Cozzens has filled in what I didn’t know and held my attention while doing so. Anyone interested in American military or Native American history should enjoy and learn from his work.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an advance reader copy of this interesting and educational history of the Creeks, the fourth largest tribe in the U.S.

Shared on Goodreads and Barnes and Noble.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insightful and dramatic history of the Creek War.

Cozzens provides a nuanced and engaging history of the Creeks and their allies, exploring such topics as their slave-trading activities, their history in the Deep South, and their struggle against white settlement on their lands. He also provides a good portrait of Jackson; Cozzens points out that he was sick for much of the war and recovering from a duel, and led an army facing massive supply issues and heavily reliant on Indian allies.

The coverage of battles is engaging, vivid and detailed. Much of the book deals with the Indians themselves, and Jackson takes up only part of the book.

A rich and well-written work.

[Zella Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic but very dense read about a historical event I had little familiarity with. Cozzens, who's also written an excellent bio of Tecumseh that I really enjoyed a couple of years ago, traces the origins and events of the very disturbing but little-known Creek War during the War of 1812, which featured the largest number of people killed in the American Indian Wars and helped kick off the Trail of Tears removals.

Cozzens does a particularly good job of outlining the various people and places involved--it's a rather byzantine amount of information, which he readily admits--and highlighting Creek culture. I was especially interested in how Creek pragmatism that advocated for neutrality in the previous decades before ended up backfiring on them as it cemented other neighboring tribes against them. Indeed, as Cozzens repeatedly demonstrated, often the most effective soldiers against them were Choctaw and Cherokee units all too happy to fight the Creeks. Cozzens also does a good job of explaining the connection between the Creek war and Tecumseh's pan-Indian movement and profiling Andrew Jackson, who played a prime role in the Creek War. Cozzens does a great job of delving into how much of Jackson's later Indian policy as president a couple of decades later were already formed by this time and capturing his extremely inflexible, harsh personality.

[Abbey Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me so much insight into everything I thought I knew about Native American history. The author also helped a lot with the index of people in back when keeping track of everyone’s role in the Creek War. It definitely became challenging to keep up with who was who so I appreciated that. He did a great job of balancing background, events, and aftermath of historical events that I truly knew nothing about. This book is heartbreakingly eye opening and I am so glad I read it.

[Kate Hartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It probably says a lot about the lack of education I received from my 7th grade history teacher (she’s wasn’t amazing), but I am from Oklahoma and knew nothing about this. The author repeats himself from time to time but with so much information it wasn’t too annoying. Overall good lesson in history of the Creek people and what lead up the the Indian Removal Act.

[Jim Gallen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the minds of many Americans, Indian Wars occurred out west and to the extent that they think of it at all, the War of 1812 occurred in Washington, Fort McHenry and New Orleans. “A Brutal Reckoning” tells of another related war against the Creek Indians occurring in what is now the Southeast, during 1813-1814. Author Peter Cozzens posits that this tragic episode in American history is one of the most significant episodes in the development of the United States.

In this, the final book in his trilogy on Indian wars, Cozzens devotes the first two parts, comprising about forty percent of the text, to the background of the Indians living in much of what is now Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and some of western Florida. It was home to the Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee and Choctaw nations, the Creek Confederacy and then Spanish West Florida. Fortunately, the author provides definitions of Indian place name and an appendix identifying Creek and Metis (mixed blood) personages.

The saga begins with events amounting to a civil war among the Indians themselves. Add to this, the lust of southern Americans for more land and British intrigue related to the War of 1812 and we have the formula for a history altering war.

The saga Peter Cozzens told in 464 pages is too complicated for me to relate in this review, so I will briefly summarize, supplemented by relevant quotations from the Ballad of Davy Crockett popularized by the Disney series of the 1950s.

After a period of internal turmoil and conflicts with whites, on August 13, 1813 Red Sticks, a group of Creek warriors known for the clubs they carried, massacred whites at Fort Mims, now Alabama, (In 1813, the Creeks uprose, Adding redskin arrows to the country's woes) setting off calls for revenge and attacks to prevent further Indian atrocities. In response, were recruited from East and West Tennessee, commanded by Andrew Jackson and including Davy Crockett (Indian fighting is something he knows, So he shoulders his rifle and thar he goes), joined U. S. regulars and Cherokee allies to administer revenge at Horseshoe Bend, also now Alabama, on March 27, 1814.

So, other than being a source of inspiration for some of the Davy Crockett stories, why is this Indian war so important in the history of the country, how is it related to the War of 1812 and why should current readers about it?

Why so important? In the words of the author, “No other Indian conflict in our nation’s history so changed the complexion of American society as did the Creek War”. Rather than the cession of small, frequently marginal, lands as was the case in some other Indian wars, this one opened Alabama, much of Mississippi and parts of Georgia and North Carolina to white settlement. The decision, finalized after the Creek War, to expel the Indians to west of the Mississippi forever changed the population mix of the modern Southeast and Oklahoma, the western end of the Trail of Tears.

Related to the War of 1812? Besides being cotemporaneous, the resources of the United States government were so heavily devoted to fighting the British that the states were forced to rely largely on their own militia and alliances they could make with Indian leaders. For centuries, Indians had balanced whites, British, French, Spanish and American, to their own advantage. In this case, the Red Sticks sought succor along the Gulf Coast from their traditional British allies, as did Indians in the Great Lakes region (documented in Cozzens’ “Tecumseh and the Prophet”). British response was conditioned by its commitments in other military theatres and Britain’s overall strategic interests.

Why should we care? Because we are still living with its consequences. Slavery was on the wane. Its employment on the worn-out soils of the Old South was growing less profitable. It seemed on the road to ultimate extinction. The lands opened by the Creek War became the Cotton Kingdom into which settlers and slaves poured. It was here that succession and Civil War arose. This war made Andrew Jackson a hero, leading to his command at New Orleans and presidency. Dare anyone doubt that we are still bobbing in the ripples from Andrew Jackson and the Civil War?

Personally, I appreciate some of the subtleties woven into this tome. Events often seem more sharply differentiated when viewed through the lens of history than when lived in real time. We think of Whites versus Reds, but as we learn on these pages it was some whites, some Metis and some Indians against other whites, Metis and Indians. We read of Metis, such as Alexander McGillivray who became a wealthy planter, slave owner and intermediary between Creeks and the whites. Is he an example of an opportunity for the assimilation of Indians that was swept away? I am intrigued by Secretary of State James Monroe’s response to the plea of the Governor David Mithcell of Georgia for protection against “incursions of hostile savages.” Monroe responded: “As the expedition against the hostile creeks is very interesting to Georgia” and “will be carried on principally within the limits of that state, and the president has high confidence in your ability to command it with advantage to the United Staes, he desires that you would take charge of it.” While foreign to our expectations, the answer may reflect a greater acknowledgement of independence of the states in the years leading up to 1861.

Readers are indebted to Peter Cozzens for this exploration of this oft overlooked but most significant time in our history. Though detailed, his writing style maintains interest. The maps are very helpful and the bibliography a useful guide to further reading.

I did receive a free copy of this book without an obligation to post a review.

[Douglas Noakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a sad, sad story of the events leading up to the Trail of Tears of America in the 1830s where thousands of Native Americans were forcibly relocated hundreds of miles across trackless wilderness and swamps to a strange country (Oklahoma) none of them had ever seen. The focus is on the Creek Indians, one of the five major tribes living in the American Southeast's Trans-Appalachian section.

If there is a main villain in this story, it must be Andrew Jackson. Roughly fifteen years before "Old Hickory" ascended to the Presidency, General Jackson led East and West Tennessee Militias and regular Army forces against a section of the Creek Nation known as The Red Sticks. Even though Jackson's forces emerged victorious only with the help of Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees, he never gave them their due in his official battle reports to his superiors in Washington and Nashville.

For his good points, well...Jackson was an adept military strategist and a man of great willpower (he was ill during much of the Creek War of 1813-14 recovering from wounds he suffered in one of his several duels).

Such was his ferocity at pursuit and harsh terms upon victory, that the Creek named Jackson "Sharp Knife". The Red Sticks were a formidable foe and had scored victories over white forces, including an ugly one at Fort Mims in present-day Alabama that took the lives of many unarmed civilians. (Cozzens does a good job of showing both sides were capable of barbarities.) The Fort Mims's bloodiness was avenged many times over and over again during the war.

As for Jackson's bad points...even among other white leaders who wished to grab the land for the profits that "King Cotton" and slavery afforded them, he seems to stand out. Jackson had enmity toward the Native Americans that seems inextinguishable. This book explains a good deal of his background as an early frontier white nationalist.

He also gives the reader profiles of the Creek leaders on both sides of the conflict. He does a great job describing the situation of British and Spanish colonial leaders and forces, explaining how the Creek War fits in the larger scope of the War of 1812 and for the American Gulf Coast.

Although this is a grim and sobering reading, it is worthwhile to understand an ugly and overlooked chapter in American history. I look forward to reading Peter Cozzens's book on the Plains Indian Wars, THE EARTH LIES BLEEDING. The latter book I understand is a well-reviewed look at the last fatal chapters of US/Native American history. Those tyrannical/genocidal policies were all fomented decades earlier by the man known bitterly to his victims as "Sharp Knife".

[Kathryn Siemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brutal Reckoning filled gaps in my historical knowledge that I didn't even know I had. My limited starting knowledge of the Creek Wars didn't prevent me from getting a lot out of this book, however. Aside from some helpful context at the start, Cozzens's narrative clearly positions the Creek Wars alongside contemporaneous events like the War of 1812 and Americans' decades-long encroachment on Southeastern Natives' territory. The battle retellings were often a bit confusing, as battle descriptions tend to be, although the rest of Cozzens's writing was accessible and engaging.

According to the people in my book club, A Brutal Reckoning and Cozzens's handling of the subject matter was controversial; I disagree. Cozzens's history of the Creek Wars was thorough and fair, with ample reputable evidence supporting his claims. He fairly showed the brutality and selfishness that pervaded all parties in the conflict, without being too partial to any one side. I don't know. Maybe, as the book club members so often like to say to me with more than a hint of condescension, it's just "a generational thing."

Either way, I recommend A Brutal Reckoning to anyone who wants a better understanding of US-Native American relations, but sensitive readers be warned: it does get quite graphic.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This concluding volume in Cozzens' trilogy on the Native American experience in early America does not disappoint. We meet many historical figures and not all are well known to the average reader. Of course, Andrew Jackson plays a prominent role; he's more than just the guy on the $20 bill. My only real complaint about the book was the sparse space given to the battle of New Orleans. I guess for a more detailed account, one needs to peruse Brian Kilmeade's book on the battle. Other than that, I found nothing bad about this book. A worthy effort.

[Michael Cawley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting history of the Creek Wars

[Brad Angle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good history, a little dry and hard to keep track of all the names and places. But leaves you with a good sense of how we screwed over the Indians once again, one little step at a time. And Andrew Jackson is a giant prick.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long been fascinated by the wars between the European settlers of America and those whom they conquered and displaced, the American Indians. I grew up near a famous battlefield memorial of those wars; maybe that is the reason I have often wondered why in North America, unlike in other conquered areas of the world, Europeans usually saw the Indians not as interchangeable savages, but as men not so different from themselves. Peter Cozzens here assists by offering another of his kaleidoscopic histories of those conflicts, portraying both whites and Indians as men in full. Virtue and vice; mercy and barbarity; glory and shame—all are on display, in a tale of a time when men were men, and did not seek to escape their nature.

Cozzens is a sometime soldier and Foreign Service Officer (he retired from the latter in 2002, before the total corruption of the State Department and its mutation into a chief enforcement arm of globohomo, though perhaps with Michael Anton now to be there as director of policy planning, the tide has turned). More relevantly, he is the author of nearly twenty books about the two wars that had the greatest impact on the United States in the nineteenth century: the Civil War and the Indian Wars. His books (two of which I have previously favorably discussed, The Earth is Weeping and Tecumseh and the Prophet, which Cozzens states form a trilogy with this book) strike a balance between the detail of a military historian and the sweep and voice of a popular historian.

The subject of A Brutal Reckoning is the Creek War, also known as the Red Stick War, from 1813 to 1815, centered around what is today Alabama and western Georgia. The Creeks (who called themselves the Muscogee) descended from the Mississippian cultures, which flourished for a thousand years in the southeast of today’s United States, until shortly before the Spanish arrived in the 1600s. Between disease and battle, the Spaniards completed a societal failure that was already well advanced. The Indians gradually regrouped, but at a more primitive level (for example, they never returned to the building of massive mounds that had characterized the Mississippians). From the time the English began to spread into North America, the Creeks were one of the Five Civilized Tribes, who adopted elements (including holding African slaves) and tools of the white man’s culture. Ultimately the rapidly expanding Americans, in the 1830s, evicted all of the Five Tribes, exiling them to Oklahoma (where around one hundred thousand Creeks live today). But that is a story that takes place after the events in this book, which nonetheless also revolve around the white man’s eagerness for land.

The Creek War was extremely complex, more so than the topics of Cozzens’s other two books (the Indian war chief Tecumseh and the later wars with the Indians of the American West), something that no doubt was challenging to Cozzens in his successful attempt to write a coherent narrative. The battle lines were not clearly drawn except at specific times and specific places. This is primarily because the Creek War was not only a war with the Americans, but also among the Creeks themselves. Moreover, many of the most important personages had a foot in both worlds, white and Indian, being métis—mixed-blood children of (usually) a white father and his Indian wife. Many of these had English (often Scottish) names, spoke fluent English and could easily pass for a white man, not just in looks but in dress and manners. For reasons Cozzens does not explain, Creek Indians regarded métis members of their tribe not with suspicion for their mixed blood, but rather, it seems, with admiration. Cozzens helpfully provides a cast of characters, but the reader has to pay careful attention to not get lost in the sea of names, and in the shifting loyalties.

The central character around whom Cozzens structures his book is not an Indian, however. It is Andrew Jackson, that archetype of the Scots-Irish who built a great deal of America through their violent ways and boundless appetite for honor and glory. He begins his book with Jackson’s near-death experience in 1813, when in Nashville he went looking for a fight with a former (and later again) close friend, Thomas Hart Benton, and was rewarded with “a slug and two balls” from the pistols of Benton and his friends (fortunately for Jackson, in those days men still used smoothbore single-shot pistols). The War of 1812 was ongoing, and while the main battles of that war took place further, often much further, north, there was great fear that the British would take advantage of the nascent war between the Americans and a portion of the Creeks, which had begun a few months earlier. This fear was certainly not without foundation, but until the very end of the Creek War, and then ineffectually, the British were not focused at all on the southeast, having bigger fish to fry towards Canada. Regardless, Jackson, with his “unwavering will,” soon became the man around whom the organized action of the Americans during the Creek War revolved—leading extensive fighting while convalescing, his arm in a sling as he rode cross-country on horseback in great pain, with a massive wound in his shoulder spitting bone fragments.

It was inevitable that the Creeks would eventually come into conflict with the Americans. As with all Indian tribes, their numbers were few and their fecundity inadequate. By the eighteenth century, they lived a hybrid life, of traditional hunting in their well-stocked hunting grounds, combined with “modern” crop and livestock farming. But on their borders was an exploding population of whites desperate for land and opportunity, who were still by treaty and practice largely confined relatively close to the seaboard.

The traditional term used for the Creek organizational structure is “confederacy,” in essence loosely-affiliated settlements, mostly in what is today western Georgia, divided into two major groupings, the Upper Creeks and Lower Creeks. Essentially, theirs was a clan structure, where squabbling among the Creeks was not uncommon, and seasonal fighting with their non-Creek neighbors expected. Each talwa, or major town, of which at the time of the Creek War there were about sixty, had between fifty and five hundred inhabitants, which in times of peace were under a micco, a clan leader who governed with the assistance of a tribal council, with the main tool to force compliance being simply public ridicule. Each talwa also had a military leader, who took command in times of war, but was otherwise merely a prominent citizen, with the loyalty of the able-bodied warriors. Creek warfare was typical for Indian tribes—small occasional seasonal raids, low body count, and frequent killing of noncombatants and seizure of prisoners for death by torture or enslavement. Rape, however, was rare, unlike among some Indian tribes, especially the Western Indians, because it was seen as diminishing a warrior’s future military prowess.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Creeks flourished, developing extensive trading networks with the British, whom they provided with tens of thousands of slaves (mostly “Carolina Indians,” captured from small Gulf Coast and Florida tribes who were allied to the Spanish). Florida was a common destination for travelling Creeks; the Seminoles there (also one of the Five Civilized Tribes), had their origin in restless or exiled Creeks who had migrated to Florida after wars among the Indians, and the Creeks generally regarded the Seminoles as allies. The Creeks were never formally allied to the British; rather, their policy was to play off the British, French, and Spanish against each other for Creek advantage.

When Georgia was first settled by the British in the 1730s, the Creeks were happy with new markets and new providers of goods, and the opportunity to make fat cash by returning fugitive black slaves. By the 1760s, with the diminution of Spanish power and the rise of British power and population, the Creeks began to wonder what the future would hold, especially as the British kept negotiating land cessions with them. The Proclamation of 1763, while it forbade white settlement beyond a set line, also expanded the rights of whites to set up trading posts inside Indian territory. Previously, white traders had been carefully selected men, who had been issued a difficult-to-obtain British license, and then formed relationships with a micco, married a Creek woman, and became an integral permanent part of the local community. Now many new traders authorized by the British arrived, with no local connections and no desire to make them, to sell alcohol by the barrel, with the usual deleterious effects on the fabric of Creek society (though not as extreme as on some of the Indian tribes in the northeast).

As Creeks overhunted their lands in order to buy alcohol and other goods, and as Creeks began to herd cattle on communal farming grounds, the fabric of Creek society tore further, and their traditional enemies the Choctaws to the north eroded Creek lands. Real trouble began toward 1790, when Alexander McGillivray, a charismatic métis leader, claimed leadership of the Upper Creeks (which meant not his rule, but that many of the miccos regarded him as their essential counselor). Creeks under his direction staged hundreds of raids on settlers from Georgia, mostly those who had settled in land that had been, McGillivray claimed, illegitimately ceded to the state of Georgia. Both sides slaughtered each other indiscriminately, and the Creeks did a roaring trade in selling kidnapped white women back to their relatives and captured slaves to the Spanish. In 1790, lacking resources or interest in fighting the Creeks full-scale, President Washington invited McGillivray to New York City, where the Americans bribed all the Indian leaders to end the conflict (including making McGillivray a brigadier general in the United States Army and giving him an annual payment of $1,200). McGillivray returned the favor by ceding more Creek land—mostly Lower Creek land, over which he had no authority, exacerbating divisions among the Creeks. He died in 1793, but the fissures among the Creeks were just getting started.

For the next two decades, Creek relations with the federal government were conducted through Benjamin Hawkins, a senator from North Carolina whom Washington made Indian agent for the Creeks. Hawkins was a highly competent man who was keenly interested in furthering the interests of the Indians, though as with all whites, he interpreted this mostly through the prism of civilizing them—that is, changing their lifestyle to be more like that of the white man, primarily through making them settled farmers. He traveled often throughout the Creek talwas, and established a National Council of miccos to negotiate collectively. As one might expect, some Creeks, especially the ones who grew rich as a result, thought this was an excellent path for the Creeks. Others, especially the young men and traditionalists, bridled. For the next several years, until the Red Stick War began, negotiations, cessions of land and of rights to build roads through Creek territory, and internal Creek dissension continued, the latter further exacerbated by famine resulting from bad weather and dwindling of the deer population, making those Creeks already rich from farming and trading even richer, while others descended into grinding poverty.

In 1811 the great Shawnee war chief and aspiring uniter of the Indians, Tecumseh, travelled to the Creeks, to persuade them to join his grand alliance. His first wife was Creek, and he hoped to convert both the Creeks and the other southeastern tribes to his cause, and take advantage of tension between the British and the United States to forge his alliance. But the Creeks, and the other tribes, rejected his overtures, in large part because of the oratory of another influential métis, William Weatherford, who played a crucial part throughout the Creek War. Tecumseh departed, but he left behind a trusted lieutenant, Seekaboo, to preach the spiritual teachings of his brother Tenskwatawa, known to the Americans as the Prophet. Seekaboo was successful among some of the Creeks (helped by the New Madrid Earthquake, taken by some as an omen of impending destruction of the Americans), and inspired Creek imitation prophets, notably Josiah Francis, yet another métis. They and their followers vowed to remove the whites forever from the continent, and they named themselves the Red Sticks, taking for their own the name used for the Creek war club, a wooden club with a metal spike, painted red. Cozzens notes that the exact content of Red Stick religious doctrine is lost, but as with Tecumseh, much of it involved admonitions to forswear the ways of the white man (other than guns), especially farming and livestock.

The Red Sticks, few in number at first, began murdering isolated white settlers and travelers on the new American postal road through Creek territory. Meanwhile, Britain and America declared war, and the Georgians and Tennesseans feared the Creeks would join the British while American attention was focused on the north. Among the Creeks, however, many of the miccos had no love for the Red Sticks, and cooperated with the Americans to hunt down those among them who had murdered whites. Such executions were common, but they also rallied more Creeks to the Red Stick cause. The Red Sticks formed three rally points, in essence large fortified encampments, in locations outside of existing talwas, and there they grew in strength. Hawkins tried to keep the friendly miccos in power and to prevent their assassination by the Red Sticks, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But by mid-July of 1813, nearly all the Upper Creek talwas were under Red Stick control, while the Lower Creeks successfully resisted Red Stick attempts to dominate them. Thus, the entire Creek confederacy suffered under a state of civil war, which, like all civil wars, featured many men with divided loyalties and family on both sides—a particularly thorny problem in a clan-based society.

The Creek War began officially on July 25, when a party of Red Sticks attacked a United States fort, Fort Madison, eighty miles northeast of Mobile, one of several forts the Americans had built in Creek country, most of which were undermanned and under the command of careless men. This began several months of skirmishes among the Red Sticks, the United States military, and various groups and types of state militias. On August 30, the Red Sticks overran Fort Mims, where several hundred civilians had taken shelter from the fighting, and killed everyone inside, massacring all the noncombatants, about three hundred in all.

The killings at Fort Mims enraged the American nation. But the federal government did not have the troops to deal with this southern conflict, because the War of 1812 was in full swing, and the action there was on the Canadian border. Jackson, however, had twenty-five hundred volunteers, fiercely loyal to him, and he, and they, were ready to fight. And fighting was what Jackson wanted to do. When Jackson was a young congressman, Thomas Jefferson said of him, “His passions are terrible. He could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seem him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.” He was a complex man, too—he adopted an Indian orphan baby, for example, Lyncoya (who died of tuberculosis in 1828). I should find a good biography of Jackson and write about him; his kind will be needed to renew America.

All the militias, of which Jackson’s was only one, formed and dissolved rapidly and often lacked for adequate supplies, but Jackson’s charisma and discipline made his forces much more effective than most. In cooperation with limited regular forces, Jackson aimed to defeat the Red Sticks by invading their territory and destroying their rally points. Cozzens narrates, for more than half his book, this sequential destruction in detail. The only real hope for the Red Sticks was that the Americans would lose focus; their hope that the British or Spanish would help was always forlorn. Jackson ensured that whatever the American government thought or wanted, the Red Sticks would be eliminated as a threat to the Americans.

The war ebbed and flowed; the Red Sticks more than once succeeded in repelling invading forces, though never Jackson’s. As so often with the Indians, they trusted in their prophets’ promises of magical protection, and prophets fell with defeats, while others rose to take their place (often accompanied by the ubiquitous habit of the American Indians of ferreting out and killing witches in their midst blamed for defeats). On March 27, 1814, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, leading nearly 3,000 Americans, along with several hundred Cherokee and a handful of Lower Creeks, Jackson broke the remaining Red Sticks, killing nearly a thousand warriors—the largest body count of Indians in any battle of the Indian Wars. (Sam Houston fought in this battle as a young man, surviving two musket balls that nearly killed him.)

The Red Sticks dissipated, mostly fleeing to Lower Creek talwas . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Mary Ana McKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not surprisingly, Andrew Jackson was awful.

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where Fables Flourish

As has been said, 'Fables flourish when facts are few.' Unfortunately, the only value in a primary and secondary school history education is the framework of names we are given along with the fables plastered around them to make them palpable for the young. That is a bad policy. Today, many Americans want to know more of the facts of history. A Brutal Reckoning is a work of history published just this year, that focuses on the Creek Wars in the Deep South. This is the third in a trilogy, but I haven't read the other two. They cover other regions of the country. I bought this hardback when I visited Andrew Jackson's Hermitage Museum in Nashville last week. It is an excellent source of information on the native groups of the Southern United States, and the life of Andrew Jackson in stark facts.

The events around the Creek Indian Wars take place predominantly in Alabama, but in Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and neighboring Southern states as well. I learned much that I didn't know about this region. Cozzens brings in numerous important historical personages in the telling; such as Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett. All the major battles are fought out in rich detail, such as the Battle of Talladega and the bloody Abeika defeat at Horseshoe Bend. This is a story, as in hisSTORY in the telling. So it is not in the least bit dry. The author brings it all to life in a realistic way that any reader can appreciate.

The book ends with the Creek removals, so it is a dramatic ending, despite all the historical focus. It is a book that I will want to re-read in future. As a matter of fact, I have little post-it flags stuck in several places in the last half of the book to turn back to again. It has numerous maps and photos as well. Having toured the Hermitage myself, I found myself picturing Jackson there before the fire in his study ruminating and thinking of the bloody British who left him orphaned after the War at fifteen years of age.

Another book I have had for years that was informative while reading A Brutal Reckoning was Atlas of Indian Nations by Anton Treuer. It provides detailed information on the indigenous peoples of North America, for those who want to know more about the people as they read Cozzens book. But, that is just something extra. And here is a single quote to sample from the book.

"Our views of their interest, and not their own, ought to govern them."- John C. Calhoun

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live in a place named for people no longer present: the Alibamu[*], part of the Creek confederacy which was driven from the southeast after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. I loved history even as a child, and it was fascinating and haunting to me to think that a people’s presence could simply be erased from where they had been. Brutal Reckoning is the story of how that came to be, which first establishes the historical background before giving a full history of the rise and collapse of the Creek Confederacy. Extensively documented and fair-minded, neither sparing grisly details nor marinating in them to shock the reader, it recommends itself easily to readers interested in the Creek peoples or the settlement of the Alabama-Mississippi territories.

Brutal Reckoning won me over in its opening pages, as it does a dive into the history and culture of the Creek Confederacy. The arrival of Hernando de Seto was calamitous for the native polities of the upper gulf region, not because of de Soto’s martial brand of tourism (what’s Latin for “I came, I saw, I grabbed some locals and left”?) but for the Old World diseases the New World’s immune system had no answer for. Cozzens covers how the Creek Confederacy emerged from that great devastation — not as an organized polity, but a highly decentralized, clan-based population of interrelated but often rivaling groups, with an economy based on hunting & some agriculture. Cozzens then tracks the ongoing effects of European trade and colonization, which created a growing number of Métis, or mixed, people — and accordingly, a mixed culture. After the British and the Creeks established regular relations, the Brits assigned a trader — to each Creek town, usually a Scots-Irish merchant who would marry into the local population. When Britain’s need for trade & tax increased, it offered more trading licenses — with deleterious results. A merchant who settled in a given town and had family ties to it felt some sense of kinship and responsibility towards its people: more mercenary traders had no compunction against soliciting as many deerskins as he could from the Creeks and rewarding them with as many ardent spirits as they’d buy. Cozzens’ account details how the Creek economy and society began reeling from this, at the same time as some Creeks were moving towards European-style agriculture and creating factionalism that would lead to civil war.

This first third of the book sets the stage for how complicated the rest of the book is, with very fuzzy and often chaotic lines between groups as both European and American & native powers vied for power on the continent. Despite the name of the Creek Confederacy, it was not an organized polity, and there were no central leaders: occasionally some talwas authority or religious figure would develop a following and inspire a movement, but if they were defeated their supporters would melt away in a moment. In addition to basic clan rivalries, there were talwas-specific rivalries. These were further complicated by the Creeks’ differing responses to European settlement, and later on the expansion of the American government: some might embrace colonial agriculture while at the same time opposing American expansion. European trade unsettled prexisting balances of power, as well as social structures, with a mixed-sex economy quickly becoming more dominated by male-led enterprises like ranching. The métis population plays an enormous role in this book, and across sides: this may owe to mixed-culture peoples having an advantage in leadership in diplomacy, with a foot in both camps, or because Cozzens draws so much on letters and memoirs from the métis themselves. Divided loyalties are a core part of what makes this history so interesting because boxed-up and convenient thinking don’t apply. Redstick leaders might militantly attack other Creeks and Americans, while at the same time maintaining their own plantations (complete with captive slaves, Creek and African) — far from being reactionaries living in the woods. William Weatherford, who led the Redstick assault on Fort Mims, didn’t even support the Redstick cause: he had been forced into it after his family was taken hostage by Redstick leaders, and then became increasingly saddled with its cause and bound in brotherhood with the men he led so that he became the man most associated with the Redsticks, so much so that it was he who surrendered himself to Andrew Jackson after the bloody Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Of course, a lot of this conflict also takes place within the context of the War of 1812: the Redsticks remained obdurate for so long, despite repeated defeats at the hands of Generals Claiborne and Jackson, in part because they believed the British would come to their aid. Both DC and London were preoccupied with the northern and eastern seaboard, though, so for the most part we have here American and Creek volunteers versus other Creeks, chiefly the Redsticks: once Jackson was able to secure regular Army troops, things come to a dramatic and bloody climax.

This is an impressively thorough history, and saturated with primary resource quotations from letters, memoirs, and reports. I suspected from the start that Cozzens would err on the side of Zinn-style history, given that he referred to the first European explorers of the region as intruders, but as the book developed I became impressed by his ability to render both the humanity and brutality of all parties involved. This is a book full of awful savagery on both sides, a grim reminder of how terrible a thing the human being at war is. Those who still subscribe to the patronizing noble savage myth will find here Creeks who delighted in taking captive brides from other Creeks long before Civilization descended upon them, and torturing male captives extensively until at least they perished — and they will shudder to read of women being raped and killed and their pregnant bellies spilled open. I’d liken it to nature red in tooth and claw, but given the human mind there’s something far more unsettling at work here: not passion, but deliberation, as victorious US Army soldiers burn towns and club children on the basis that they’ll grow up to be full-sized Indians one day. Speaking of violence, Andrew Jackson cuts a large figure here, but Cozzens does a good job of avoiding caricature. We find the backwoods orphan, coming to age amid poverty and climbing his way to respectability and authority, brooking no attack on his honor — quick to duel, and so utterly stubborn that he leads campaigns while wracked with pain and nausea and dealing with men who are unpaid and unfed. Although he’ll later catch opprobrium for the Trail of Tears, here he’s less easy to dismiss — a fierce, defiant, and resilient leader of men who — upon meeting William Weatherford — readily recognized him as a great and worthy opponent, more admirable than the men on the East Coast who Jackson supposedly answered to. (Quintessential Jackson: expressly told by President Madison to leave the Spanish alone, Jackson decides to take Pensacola regardless, because the Redsticks and Brits were using it.) He is at his worst when abandoning his former allies — all Creeks lost their lands following the Treaty of Fort Jackson, not just the Redsticks — on the basis that had the Redsticks won the inter-Creek war, those allies and their talwas would have been lost anyway.

This is substantial history, easily the most thorough treatment of the Creek War I have seen in my many years of searching for the same. I appreciate its balanced tone which does not shy away from injustice, but doesn’t attempt to turn itself into a political work; the saturation of primary source materials was especially helpful in seeing all individuals as they were, rather than heroes and villains in a narrative that excites the brain but does not have the substance of truth; the writing is easy to follow, and the illustrated plates were attractive. I will definitely be reading more of Cozzens, as he’s written several histories about the Indian Wars as well as the Civil War, including one on the Battle for Stones River which I encountered in God Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers.

[*]: It means “Thicket-clearers”.

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caesar handed Captain Dale his own musket and bayonet and steadied the boat while Dale and Smith leaped into the Indian canoe and bayoneted warriors. Within minutes, every Red Stick lay dead.

You may be shocked to read that there's a bit of unpleasantness in this book.

Two inches of blood soaked his shoes.

Only one force—the twenty-five hundred western Tennessee volunteers commanded by the fiery, forty-six-year-old militia mayor general Andrew Jackson—stood ready and eager to punish the perpetrators of the Fort Mims massacre.

A Brutal Reckoning has no issues with setting the stage then describing the events. While the maps are relatively basic, they worked well with the narrative. Cozzens also keeps the a good handle on the multiplicity of characters – if anything he’s too harsh on himself on that!

The Creek War reads like repeated sequences of (a) gathering troops/warriors to attack, (b) fighting a major engagement against a defended target, and (c) attackers and defenders running out of steam from that one action and having to withdraw. Cozzens gets across the limitations of logistics and men that affected both sides, albeit the United States always had the power to invade more often with greater forces, so that it tended to win more of (b), even if still constrained by (c).

While the actions are repetitive (no fault on the author), there is clear narrative progress in A Brutal Reckoning, especially the parts tied around the “hero” of the war, Andrew Jackson. The classic sobriquet of “complicated” applies to his portrayal here and whether it reflects Jackson’s biography as a whole, I do not know, but his actions and motivations are at least plausible in A Brutal Reckoning and explain the end result.

Another point covered off in A Brutal Reckoning is that any contingency as to who would win the Creek War most likely turned on the parallel thel War of 1812. Cozzens weave in events of the latter war, without letting it dominate the narrative - the Battle of New Orleans was described in about two sentences. This approach in A Brutal Reckoning is the correct one – the Creek War is relatively obscure, so events from the War of 1812 would only bury the former more, even the War of 1812 played a major part in restricting operations against the Red Sticks.

One thing that struck me was the regular juxtaposition of acts of cruelty with acts of kindness, especially towards civilians stuck in the crossfire – both settler and native. Knowing someone on the other side seems to have tended to improve your chances of survival, though not always. Cozzens also includes reactions of others to atrocities, which makes clear to me that those acts were not simply “of their time” – while the Frontier was relatively brutal compared to present day, people still found casual murder repulsive, even if a sense of tribalism (in the widest sense of the term) prevailed in these encounters.

Creek… …War(?)

What the diplomatists could not achieve was forthwith attempted by speculators and the Indian independence straightway began to disappear.

It says it right there in the subtitle, it’s the “Creek War”, not the “Creek sociological, economic, legal histories running from European Contact to the Trail of Tears”. Cozzens has written what he said he was going to write – right?

And yes, this is mostly a quibble. It is a very similar complaint to my one about Pacific Crucible, yet here we are with a war with relatively limited commentary. So, I will give A Brutal Reckoning at least 4 stars because it is a good narrative that is aware of the context it is within.

However, to change the perspective slightly – the Creek War covers a relatively small period within the whole narrative. Even excluding all the background information before the 19th Century, the War is about one-sixth/seventh(?) of the events covered by Cozzens. What happens is the Creek War looms large in terms of page space, however in terms of the number of other events that (briefly) get covered, particularly non-military ones, those other events possibly had a more durable effect.

There is a fine line of being too deterministic at the expense of individual events. The Creek War made Jackson’s career, which eventually put him in the White House. However, I believe there is more of a story there – that the Creek War, while probably consequential in the timing of settler takeover, was a flare up against the crushing burden of history, and perhaps less contingent than other major conflicts (such as World War II). The focus on military operations for only a short part of that period perhaps overstates their impact.

Little more than an armed mob, they wreaked havoc on the Cherokees, shooting cattle, hogs, and horses and bullying the populace for the sheer pleasure of it, outrages that an infuriated Jackson reminded General Cocke were “contrary to the rules of war, the laws of nations and civil society, and well calculated to sour the minds of the whole [Cherokee] nation against the United States.”

Do read A Brutal Reckoning. Cozzens writes good history and does place what happens within a wider context. Just don’t think that reading it leaves you versed in the travails of the Creeks and neighbouring tribes (and those metis/free slaves/unfree slaves). It’s a very good specific account of the strategic, diplomatic and military actions, while being unsparing about the brutality involved. It also indicates that there is a much wider story out there.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This moment in American history is explained perfectly in the title: Brutal reckoning. Starting with the Spanish, the book describes the Creeks’ attempts to hold on to their land, eventually leading to the Creek War during the War of 1812. Cozzens has worked hard to show the Creek side of the conflict, while introducing the harshness of Andrew Jackson to the equation. I knew very little of the history of the southeastern United States, so this book helped fill in the gap admirably.

[bob walenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. I rounded up my rating from a 3.5, and now that I'm finished with it, I've softening my opinion a bit. I found it to be a tough read: dense, wordy, filled with data and information that was overwhelming at times. It was quite a definitive book, more interested in detail, fact, and historical information.

It's a history book, and I don't want to be harsh to a book for simply being what it intends to be. It was meticulously researched and packed with pictures, maps, background information and a host of historical sources and references. The story was also complex with many variables: The U S Government, several state militias at war with several Indian tribes and nations, the Black slave population, Spain and England during the war of 1812 as they influenced Canada, Florida and Louisiana. At times it was a jumbled mass of shifting alliances, murderous rampages of war, brutal massacres, revenge, broken promises and treaties and spies and traitors.

The part of the story I enjoyed most were the early chapters that explained the background and detailed the way the Indian cultures lived in the late 17th Century in the heart of the South. There were 4 or 5 main populations of Indians, and some were friendlier than others to the White settlers. The Creek were the most angry and belligerent and the last group in that area to be crushed by the inevitable expansion of white men. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Chickamaugas were often allied against the American encroachment. They were also often neutral, paid to fight by various sides, or simply trying to exist and survive.

The book explained in clear detail how the Indians were very different from one another, free and individualized within their loosely connected communities. How they lived and what they believed was most interesting and well written.

I enjoyed learning more about Andrew Jackson as a man and soldier. Jackson was amazingly brought to life and the actual war with the Creeks that Jackson led was fascinating to learn about, both the details of it and the repercussions. It was also most brutal and cruel and harsh. Warfare in those days was very personal and up close. Flintlock rifles, bayonets, scalping knives and red stick clubs that crushed skulls in hand to hand combat were the norm. No quarter was given to Indians, women, children or the old. Prisoners were almost always sought for ransom to be sold into slavery.

So there was much to learn and enjoy about this story, sad as it was in places. It is who we are and where we came from and I simply had never looked closely into this time and place and the important events of the first couple of decades of the 1800's.

[Josh Liller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just last year I visited Horseshoe Bend NMP. While there, I picked up Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812 which taught me a lot about the Creek War I didn't know. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Peter Cozzens, an author who I've read many times before, tackled the subject in his latest book, and really takes it to another level.

Cozzens makes the inspired choice to draw parallels between Hernando de Soto's total war on the Creek ancestors with Andrew Jackson's total war on the Red Stick Creeks in 1813-1814. He also makes the bold but correct choice to barely mention Andrew Jackson until almost halfway through the book. Forged in the aftermath of De Soto and in the face of English colonization, the Creeks coalescence into a powerful force only see that power slipping away in the face of American expansion. Surrounded by enemies partly of their own making, stumbling into a cultural Catch-22, descending into poverty, and divided into reactionary and progressive factions the Creeks spiral into bloody cataclysm. The word "epic" is throw around too often in book subtitles these days, but here the drama and tragedy justify the use of that word.

Much as he once provided a nuanced analysis of Stonewall Jackson unburdened by mythos in Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, here Cozzens gives a very balanced look at Andrew Jackson. The author addresses Old Hickory's hotheaded recklessness and his prejudices, but gives credit to his leadership talent and his iron will. It's clear why Andrew Jackson was so popular in his day, but also why his image has not stood the test of time; he is a man simultaneously admirable and reprehensible.

This is some of Cozzens' best writing. There are not many maps, but with the information available and what they need to convey they are about as good as they can be. Endnotes and Bibliography are extensive, as would be expected.

My only criticism is that I think the first Seminole War warranted an entire chapter as it dovetails so much with Andrew Jackson's actions in 1813-1814. That said, I can understand why it might have been too much of a pivot. I would really love to see Cozzens write a book about the Seminole Wars.

Highest recommendation.

[Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Creeks and the longstanding, bloody history they have had with the United States is not nearly as well told as it should be. There’s almost an intentional gap in American history about the carnage inflicted onto thousands of people for the betterment of “manifest destiny” as it would come to be known as. The blame for these barbarous acts are not laid at the feet of just one person in this book, but many. However, particular attention is given to none other than Andrew Jackson, who as an individual is one whose personal animus and general disinterest in the well-being of swathes of people can be juxtaposed by his very clear empathy towards individuals within his inner circle, such as his wife, Rachel, and their adopted children. A man of contradictions in a time of such, surrounded by many others (such as those tribes who sought to equally exploit the weakened Creeks through tenuous alliances, only to be betrayed themselves), this was an often overlooked time of needless horror, selfish thievery (of lands, objects, and people), and brutal reckonings. Peter Cozzens paints battles waged in the Creek War with an exceptional eye on detail, and while some of the narratives and people can fall by the way side without resolution, and the book itself ends a bit abruptly for my liking, A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South is a powerful read diving into some of the darkest chapters of American history.

[Kevin Camp · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long-overdue account of a period in American history that has gone largely forgotten. In part, this is due to the complicated nature of this period of conflict, as well as the parade of names, dates, and notable events that resembles Russian fiction. Much of Creek (Muskogee) territory comprises the modern day U.S. state of Alabama, so I remembered some of this account from Alabama history class back in school.

This Creek War was significant in many ways. It brought Andrew Jackson to the forefront of the nation's consciousness, leading him eventually to the Presidency. In one of many ironies, Jackson's forces wouldn't have been able to defeat the Creeks had it not been for the support of other Native tribes who had long been their adversaries.

No side of the conflict looks virtuous. Atrocities were committed on both sides. And African slaves were even further down the totem pole than Indians, who had more basic rights, in part because they intermarried with whites. Wealthy Creeks even owned slaves.

The war also opened up rich, fertile territory that made cotton king and many men very wealthy. King Cotton led directly to a Civil War that tore the country apart for four long years.

[Mike Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

First history I have read dealing specifically with the Creek Indian War; usually I've encountered it in biographies of its participants (Jackson, Crockett, Houston). It is probably the most consequential of all the Indian Wars. The defeat of the Creeks led to an acceleration in the growth of slavery and enabled the addition of three more slave states to the Union, ultimately resulting in The Civil War. Cozzens begins with Desoto's encounter with the Creeks' ancestors and fully covers the events (approximately 40% of the book) that led up to the war itself and despite treaties and promises, the ruthless and cynical appropriation of all the Creek lands east of the Mississippi. Of course, Jackson with his single-minded prosecution of the war followed by the merciless and completely unjust Indian policies of his administration looms especially large. Not one of the more admirable episodes in our history.

[Brian Miracle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good account of the Creek war from 1813-1814 along with preceding and subsequent events in the Creek nation. Peter Cozzens is known for his histories of the Civil War and the Indian wars.

The Creek War is overshadowed by the War of 1812. However, the defeat of the Red Stick faction of the Creek Indians opened up Alabama and western Georgia to settlement and resulted in the Creek Trail of Tears and their forced relocation to Oklahoma.

Cozzens gives great detail on the various battles and leaders, including Andrew Jackson and his climactic defeat of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, aided by his Creek and Cherokee allies.

Cozzens also shows how some Creek leaders betrayed their own people for personal enrichment and how some whites decried the injustice committed on the Creeks.

The defeat of the Creek Indians and their removal to Oklahoma was a preview of the fate awaiting the western tribes.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

History is always unfolding and there are so many things we are not taught in school about the more brutal aspects of how America came to be. For example, until I read this book I did not know that we fought a war with the Creek Indians, mostly settled in what is now Alabama, during 1813 and 1814, as an adjunct to the War of 1812. I will add that this book also did not raise my opinion of Andrew Jackson, except to say that he bares resemblance to the current White House occupant. Jackson comes across as impulsive, mean and taking credit when perhaps others, including Cherokee allies were the real reason behind his successes. Jackson is a complicated character and people were extremely loyal to him, much like they are to the current president. This story highlights another dark episode in American history.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific book that covers the Creek Indian War of 1813-1814. The book begins by discussing the culture of the Creek Indians in present day Alabama and Georgia and their interactions with the Spanish in the 16th century and the American in the 18th century. The author did a great job in researching the story from both sides of the conflict and is fair in his appraisals of who were the good guys and bad guys on each side. The defeat of the Creeks signaled the start of the removal of the Native Americans to west of the Mississippi River and the first time that Andrew Jackson became prominent outside of the south. I was totally fascinated what an important part of history this war was and how it set the stage for so many important events later.

[Gareth Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all. A Brutal Reckoning. Neither side come out of this tract of history with much credit but sympathy must lie with the wider Creek Confederacy who end it dispossessed in every way imaginable.
A detailed, thoroughly researched and lively account with extensive footnotes. I was researching these events for the final chapter of a book I am writing and found it a useful resource that allowed me to reflect more widely on the demise of the Creeks and associated tribes at the hands of a land-hungry expansionist United States.
The Creek Trail of Tears may be less well known but it is important it not be forgotten. This book does an admirable job of making this poignant history accessible.