Every day the two parties among the Alabama Indians became more truculent, and frequent encounters ended in bloodshed. In the spring of 1813, the prophet Francis (made to order and ordained by Tecumseh), Peter McQueen, and High-Head Jim began a predatory warfare upon the peaceful Indians and half-breeds, who had good houses and farms. With more than three hundred followers, the hostile leaders set out for Pensacola with their plunder. Under Colonel Caller, assisted by so many lieutenant-colonels, majors, and captains, that his force was like Artemus Ward’s regiment of brigadier-generals, a force of two hundred American volunteers overtook the Indians at Burnt Corn, sent them flying, and proceeded to divide the plunder left by the enemy. Before they had finished this, the Indians attacked them in turn, having rallied when no longer pursued, and the volunteers were driven back and dispersed. As they are not known to have lost more than two of their number, they do not seem to have been very desperate fighters. When Hurricane Ned, an old hunter of Hurricane Fork, brought the news of this to Franklin County, he predicted an attack by the Creek war party, who were being urged by British agents to paint themselves for battle. Red Eagle would have temporized with his chieftains, but they seized his children and his negro slaves as hostages while he was away from home, so he prepared, perforce, to strike a decisive blow at the progress of civilization. The red sticks were thrown away day by day, until but few were left. When the last was gone, and the tom-toms were beating, the frenzied braves smeared themselves with vermilion till their naked bodies were like flames of fire. The white settlers and the friendly Indians flocked to the various forts, hastily built of logs. In Fort Mims three or four hundred men, women, and children, with about two hundred volunteers sent as a garrison by General Claiborne, came together in the middle of August.