“It was hard fighting, but we pushed the Creek warriors back toward the wall. We got there just as Sharp Knife ordered all of his men to charge from the other side. I reached the wall in time to see that one of the first to climb over the barricade was my friend Big Drunk. He looked very angry. One of the Red Stick musket balls had broken his whiskey jug.”

Once again that little smile lights up my father’s face, but it vanishes just as quickly as the sun disappearing when a dark cloud crosses over it.

“Many things happened fast then,” my father says. His voice is strangely calm. “You’d think it would be hard for me to remember it all.”

He shakes his head. “But it is the other way around. I do not think I will ever forget any of it. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I am back there again. People are screaming and shouting, I hear the whistling of arrows past my head, the sound of bullets thudding into bodies. And I smell the thick stench of guts and blood—like hogs being butchered.

“It was hard for me to stand. That was not because of my bad leg. The earth was slick under my feet with the blood of men, most of them Red Sticks. They lay everywhere around me, piled like cornstalks flattened by a great wind. Some called for water or spoke the names of their loved ones with their last breaths. I can hear them even now.”

My father lifts up the stick with which he was drawing out the lines of battle.

“Not one Red Stick surrendered. When it was done and the bodies were counted, there were exactly five hundred and fifty-five dead Red Stick warriors there inside their fort. Some managed to reach the river, but their canoes were gone. All they could do was try to swim. A few got away. But most were shot or drowned as they tried to escape. Three hundred prisoners were taken, but only three of them were men.

“On our side, eighteen Cherokees and five Creeks were killed and twenty-six Americans. That was all. Sharp Knife and his officers were pleased. It was a great victory, they said. We were praised for all that we did to win the battle for them.”

My father rubs two fingers across his chin.

“Praised,” he says. “Hah! That praise did not keep other American soldiers from pillaging our villages while we were away. We came home to find all our livestock gone, our stores of food stolen, and many of our houses burned. Sharp Knife said he was sorry that happened, but seven years have now passed and we have yet to see the money he promised to pay us for our losses.”

Sequoyah taps the end of the stick on the map he drew in the soft soil.