Soon after this, an army was raised to go to Pensacola, and I determined to go again with them, for I wanted a small taste of British fighting and supposed I would find it there. I joined old Major Russell again and followed on after the main army with about a hundred and thirty men in our company. We crossed the river near where I had crossed when I first went out; then we passed through the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations to what is called the Cut-off at the junction of the Tom Bigby with the Alabama River.
This place is near the old Fort Mimms where the Indians committed the great butchery at the commencement of the war. The fort was built right in the middle of a large old field; and before the massacre the people had been there so long and lived so quietly that they didn't apprehend any danger at all, and had therefore become quite careless. A small negro boy, whose business it was to bring up the calves at milking time, had been out for that purpose, and on coming back he said he saw a great many Indians. At this the inhabitants took alarm, closed their gates and put out guards who continued to watch for a few days. Finding that no attack was made, they concluded the little negro had lied, and again threw their gates open and sent out their hands to work their fields. The same boy set out again on the same errand, and returned in great haste and alarm, and informed them he had seen the Indians as thick as trees in the woods. He was not believed, but was tied up to receive a flogging for the supposed lie. In fact he was actually getting badly licked at the very moment when the Indians came in a troop. They were loaded with rails with which they stopped all the portholes of the fort on one side, and then they fell to cutting down the picketing. Those inside the fort had only the bastion to shoot from, and as fast as one Indian would fall, another would catch up his ax and chop away until they succeeded in cutting down enough of the picketing to permit them to enter. Then they rushed through and immediately commenced scalping without regard to age or sex. Having forced the inhabitants up to one side of the fort, they carried on the work as a butcher would in a slaughter pen.
