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

Cozzens (Tecumseh and the Prophet) concludes his trilogy on the dispossession of Native American lands with a fine-grained and often gruesome account of the 1813–1814 Creek War in present-day Alabama. After a vivid opening scene introducing Andrew Jackson as he recovered from his duel with Thomas Hart Benton, Cozzens details the historical and cultural context for the war, which pitted Jackson and other U.S. military leaders against the Upper Creeks. Sometime in the 18th century, Cozzens explains, the Creeks split into two affiliated but nearly autonomous groups: the Upper Creeks, who were further from Europeans in distance and culture, and the Lower Creeks, who were nearer to and partook more heavily of European trade. Tracing the origins of the conflict to a brutal raid on a white homestead near the Tennessee border in 1812, Cozzens details how it grew to involve England, France, Spain, and the Choctaw and Cherokee tribes. Recounting minor skirmishes and major battles, he viscerally describes the miserable conditions and lack of supplies that led to mutinous behavior among U.S. soldiers and draws conclusive links between Jackson’s pivotal victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and his signing of the 1830 Indian Removal Act that inaugurated the Trail of Tears. It’s a gut-wrenching account of a tragic chapter in American history. (Apr.)