Tustennuggee Emathla, Jim Boy

                                      Tustennuggee Emathla, Jim Boy

          In my last post I told the story of a panic that occurred in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory in 1845, the year my great grandfather was born. There had been a rumor that some of the Creek farms were being attacked by Pani Maha Indians (see post of Feb 28, 2011). The first to respond to the emergency was "Jim Boy" the Creek war chief. Jim Boy immediately left with a band of warriors to rescue the settlement. The report was a false alarm but the threat was real, and during the summer the Creeks acted boldly to negotiate with the hostile plains tribes and war was avoided.

          It's easy, I think, to concentrate on the exciting, dramatic stories of Indian history and forget that the characters in these dramas were just people, with families, doing their best to survive in almost impossible circumstances. I pieced together a few facts about the Creek Chief Jim Boy that illustrate some of the tragedies that he had lived through before the 1845 incident.  

          Jim Boy was born around 1790 or 95, probably in what was to become the state of Alabama. During his childhood white settlers were displacing his people from their homeland, taking their land, and pushing them out of their homes. In 1809 the Shawnee chief Tecumseh visited the Creek towns preaching a new Native American religion. Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa had been visited by the Great Spirit in a vision. The Great Spirit had told Tenskwatawa that He had punished the Indian people because they had taken up the ways of the white man. He said that if the Indians would return to the old ways He would help them drive the white man from their land. Tecumseh had left the Creeks with magic red sticks which would make them invincible in battle.

          This was the start of the Creek "Red Stick" movement. Several Creek towns including the one where Jim Boy lived, returned to the old ways by doing away with manufactured goods and returning to hunting. In their fervor the Red Sticks started raiding the homes of Creek nonbelievers who were living like white men. Some of these families fled to Fort Mims, joining white settlers living in the area. Jim Boy, a warrior in his teens called "High Head" in those days, belonged to a band of Red Sticks. The Spanish in Florida, eager to cause trouble for the new United States, were supplying the Red Sticks with ammunition, but at this time the Red Stick war was a civil war among the Creeks.

          When troops from Fort Mims found out about these trips to Florida they ambushed Jim Boy's band on their way home. Jim Boy escaped without harm but the Red Sticks decided to attack Fort Mims in retaliation. The result was a massacre. 300 people were killed, including soldiers, settlers as well as the Creek refugees, who were actually the Red Sticks' targets. Jim Boy was one of the attackers.

          This is when Andrew Jackson got involved. He had organized a band of Tennessee volunteers to fight against the British in the War of 1812, but had been told they weren't needed. The Fort Mims incident gave him an excuse to use his troops, and what resulted was the greatest slaughter of Native American people in the history of the United States. Jackson went from town to town through the Creek domain, slaughtering men, women, and children. Jim Boy and the other Red Sticks fought, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. Thousands of their people were killed. After concluding his rampage with the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (see post dated Oct 26, 2010) Jackson imposed a treaty on the Creeks which took 2/3 of their domain. Even though the majority of the Creeks opposed the Red Sticks, and actually fought with Jackson against their own people, their land was taken too.

          In 1835, when the Seminoles were fighting for their freedom down in the Florida Everglades, the U. S. government enlisted other Indian tribes to fight against them. At this time Jim Boy was known as Tustennuggee Emathla among his people. Tustennuggee was a title meaning task master, awarded to him because of his leadership, and Emathla was his family name. Jim Boy was now a farmer and he had a wife and 9 children. Settlers were threatening his home so he gathered a group of 900 warriors to fight the Seminoles, for the promise that his family would be protected.  

          When Jim Boy and his men returned from Florida, their land had been taken over by white settlers and their families had been rounded up and taken west to Indian Territory, in one of the most brutal of the Removal stories. Not only that, his family had been on the Monmouth, the Mississippi steamship which had blown up with 600 Creek emigrants on board, killing 300. Four of Jim Boy's 9 children were drowned.

          At the time of the Pani Maha incident in Indian Territory Jim Boy was in his 50's. He had led a long life filled with tragedy and disappointment.