At noon, August 30, when the drum beat for dinner no patrols were out, the gates were open, and sand had drifted against that on the eastern side so that it could not quickly be closed. Suddenly a swarm of Indians raising the warwhoop rushed toward the fort. Beasley had time to reach the gate, but could not close it, and was tomahawked on the spot. The Indians got possession of the loop-holes outside, and of one inclosure. The whites, under Dixon Bailey, held the inner inclosure and fought with desperation; but at last the Indians succeeded in setting fire to the house in the centre, and the fire spread to the whole stockade. The Indians then effected an entrance, and massacred most of the inmates. Fifteen persons escaped, and among these was Dixon Bailey mortally wounded. Most of the negroes were spared to be slaves. Two hundred and fifty scalps became trophies of the Creek warriors,--a number such as had been seldom taken by Indians from the white people on a single day. CHAPTER X. THE battle at Burnt Corn was regarded by the Indians as a declaration of war by the whites. Till then they seemed to consider themselves engaged in a domestic quarrel, or civil war;[337] but after the massacre at Fort Mims they could not retreat, and yet knew that they must perish except for supernatural aid. Their destiny was controlled by that of Tecumthe. Ten days after the massacre at Fort Mims, Perry won his victory on Lake Erie, which settled the result of the Indian wars both in the North and in the South. Tecumthe had expected to capture Fort Meigs, and with it Fort Wayne and the line of the Maumee and Wabash. On the impulse of this success he probably hoped to raise the war-spirit among the Chickasaws and Choctaws, and then in person to call the Creeks into the field. Proctor’s successive defeats blasted Indian hopes, and the Creeks had hardly struck their first blow in his support when Tecumthe himself fell, and the Indians of the Lakes submitted or fled to Canada.