Forty-five miles southward, at the Ten Islands of the Coosa, friendly Indians were calling for help against the hostile Creeks. By a week's march, in which he foraged on all sides and burned several villages, Jackson reached that place. The enemy were in camp at Talluschatches (now Jacksonville), thirteen miles eastward, and on the night of November 2d Colonel Coffee was sent out with a thousand mounted men and a few friendly Creeks, to attack them. At sunrise he divided his force into two columns, the heads of which united near the place, while the remainder, swinging outward and forward, made a semicircle about the little town. Within this, two companies were pushed forward to entice the Indians from their shelter. This accomplished, these companies retreated, and the whole line opened fire upon the savages and rapidly closed in upon them. "Our men rushed up to the doors of the houses," said Coffee in his report, "and in a few minutes killed the last warrior of them. The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or {185}complaining. Not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit." About two hundred Indians were killed, and eighty-four women and children were made prisoners. The Americans lost five men killed and forty-one wounded. At this point Jackson was joined after a time by the forces from East Tennessee under General Cocke, and here he built Fort Strother. But before Cocke's arrival he learned that a few friendly Indians in Fort Talladega, thirty miles south, were completely surrounded by a thousand Creeks, who would soon reduce them by starvation. The news was brought by a chief who had disguised himself in a hog-skin and escaped from the fort by night. Jackson at once put himself at the head of two thousand men, and marched to the relief of the little fort. On the 9th of November he arrived within striking distance of the enemy, when he deployed his columns, placing the volunteers on the right, the militia on the left, and the cavalry on the wings. He adopted precisely the same plan of attack that Coffee had used at Talluschatches; but it was not so completely successful, for two companies of the militia temporarily gave way, and a part of the cavalry had to dismount and fill the gap. Jackson believed that but for this he should have killed every {186}one of the thousand hostile Indians before him. As it was, two hundred and ninety-nine of them were left dead on the field, while the remainder were chased to the mountains, and left a bloody track as they ran. The loss of the whites was fifteen killed and eighty-six wounded.