Colonel Richard M. Johnson managed the charge of the Americans. One division of his regiment, under command of his brother, attacked and quickly routed the British regulars under General Proctor. The other division he himself led against Tecumseh's Indians.
The Indians waited under protection of the thick brush until the horsemen were within close range; then in response to Tecumseh's war cry all fired. Johnson's advance guard was nearly cut down. The horses could not advance. Johnson ordered his men to dismount and a terrible struggle followed. Soon Tecumseh was shot, and, the Indians missing him, gave up the battle and fled. One of them afterwards described the defeat in a few words: "Tecumseh fell and we all ran."
The war was now ended in the Northwest. The Americans had regained the posts taken by the British; they had subdued the Indians, and gained possession of the lands in the Wabash Valley. The power of the Prophet was destroyed. Tecumseh was dead. The Long Knives had crushed forever the Confederacy of Tecumseh, but it had taken upward of five million dollars and an army of twenty thousand men to do it.
The sun was low in the west and sent long shafts of light across the tops of the trees that bordered a quiet, shining lake in northern Florida. It shone upon a company of Indians who were straggling along the shore, and made their bright turbans and many colored calicoes look gay in spite of dirt and tatters.
The company was a large one. In it were not only braves, but also squaws and pappooses, and a few negroes. They trooped along with the unhurried swiftness and easy disarray of men and women who have journeyed for many days and have many days of travel still before them.
Here and there a strapping brave bestrode a horse, while his squaw trudged beside him, sharing with a black slave the burden of household goods. But for the most part ceremony had given way to necessity and the warriors went afoot, leaving the horses and mules to carry the old men, aged squaws, and young children, who were too feeble to walk.
This was a band of Red Stick Indians who had left forever the camping grounds of their fathers on the Chattahoochee River, to escape the oppression of their powerful kinsmen, the Creek Indians. They had rebelled against the rule of the Creeks, because the Creeks refused them their share of plunder in battle, and laid claim to their lands and their slaves. The Red Sticks hated the Creeks so bitterly that they could no longer live near them. They were resolved to leave altogether the territory that the United States government recognized as belonging to the Creeks, and seek homes with the Seminoles or runaways in Florida.