This victory inspired the Indians with new confidence, while it spread terror among the settlers. The next hostile movement was against Fort Mims{180}on Lake Tensas, near Alabama River, forty miles northward of Mobile. This work was a stockade enclosure of about an acre, which a farmer named Mims had erected for the protection of his buildings and cattle. It was loop-holed for musketry all round, and at one corner was an uncompleted blockhouse. When the alarm of Indian raids had gone forth, the settlers flocked to Fort Mims from all sides, and Governor Claiborne sent a hundred and seventy-five volunteers, under Major Daniel Beasley, to defend it. The space was so crowded that it became necessary to extend the stockade, and another enclosure was made on the eastern side, but the fence between was left standing. On the 29th of August, a thousand Creek warriors, commanded by William Weathersford, a half-breed, arrived within a quarter of a mile of the fort, and concealed themselves in a ravine. Some of them were seen by two Negroes who had been sent out to tend cattle; but when they had given the alarm, and a scouting party had failed to find any trace of Indians, they were not only disbelieved, but severely flogged for lying. After many false alarms, the occupants of the fort had become incredulous and careless of danger, their commander perhaps most so of all. On the 30th the gates stood wide open, no guard was set, {181}and when the drum beat for dinner the soldiers laid aside their arms and went to their meal at the moment when the savages sprang from their hiding-place and with their well-known yell rushed toward the stockade. Officers and men sprang to arms at the frightful sound. Major Beasley, in attempting to close the outer gate, was knocked down and run over by the foremost of the assailants, many of whom poured into the outer enclosure, where they quickly murdered all the whites whom they found. Beasley himself crawled off in a corner to die, and the command devolved upon Captain Bailey. When the Indians attempted to enter the inner enclosure, they were stopped by a fire through the loop-holes in the partition. Five of their prophets, who had proclaimed that their charms and incantations rendered the American bullets harmless, all fell dead at the first discharge. This produced a temporary check, but new swarms of the naked savages came up, and a desperate fight through the loop-holes was maintained for several hours. The soldiers stood manfully at their posts, were assisted by some of the women and boys, and killed a large number of the Indians, who, on the other hand, were sure of hitting somebody whenever they fired into the crowded enclosure. Numbers of the red-skins were constantly dancing, hooting, and {182}yelling around the fort, many of whom were shot by the old men of the garrison, who had ascended to the attic of the largest house and cut holes in the roof.