Colonel John Coffey's plan was audacious. Before dawn on November 3, 1813, roughly 900 men crept through the woods outside of a Native American village.

Sneaking up on a Native American village was difficult under any circumstance, but attempting

it with 900 fighters would require discipline and a lot of luck.

Yet Colonel Coffey's men were trying and succeeding.

Coffey's force was a mix of mounted infantrymen, Tennessee

militiamen, and Cherokee warriors. They positioned themselves to completely surround a Native American

village called Talashatchee, in what is today eastern Alabama. The village was home to a couple

hundred people from the Creek nation who were known as the

Upper Creek. Their warriors were nicknamed the Red Sticks because of the wooden clubs

they carried into battle, which were painted red. Two months earlier, 700 Redsticks had

annihilated an American fort and killed nearly everyone inside. Colonel John Coffey's force had been sent down from Tennessee to exact a measure of revenge,

but also to help one side of the Creek Civil War, which had exploded in the summer of 1813.

The Creek homeland sprawled across the modern areas of Western Georgia, all of Alabama,

and all of Mississippi. In 1813, the present-day states of

Alabama and Mississippi were still part of Mississippi territory. The Upper Creek lived in the

northern part of the territory, and the Lower Creek lived in the southern part near the Gulf

coast. Many of the Upper Creek were furious at the encroachment of American settlers.

They vowed to fight the Americans and then their own countrymen. The Lower Creek had developed

good trade relations with American settlements, and they favored assimilation into the United

States. The civil war between the Upper Creek and the Lower Creek led to the destruction of

Fort Mims by Red Stick Warriors. Now, two months later, Colonel Coffey's force wanted

payback and a chance to help the Lower Creek win the Civil War.

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