Two hundred and fifty scalps were carried away on poles, and when troops arrived they found nothing but heaps of ashes, mutilated bodies, and buzzards feeding on the carrion.
From Fort Mims the Indians overran the country like a frightful scourge, murdering and burning, until a vast region was emptied of its people.
First to respond to the pitiful calls for help was Tennessee, and within a few weeks twenty-five hundred infantry and a thousand cavalry were marching into Alabama, led by Andrew Jackson, who had not yet recovered from a wound received in a brawl with Thomas H.Benton.Among Jackson's soldiers were two young men after his own heart, David Crockett and Samuel Houston.

The villages of the fighting Creeks, at the Hickory Ground, lay beyond a hundred and sixty miles of wilderness, but Jackson would not wait for supplies.

He plunged ahead, living somehow on the country, until his men, beginning to break under the strain of starvation and other hardships, declared open mutiny.

But Jackson cursed, threatened, argued them into obedience again and again.

When such persuasions failed, he planted cannon to sweep their lines and told them they would have to pass over his dead body if they refused to go on.
The failure of other bodies of troops to support his movements and a discouraged Governor of Tennessee could not daunt his purpose.