Coffee’s mounted men returned October 24. Then, October 25, in the hope of finding food as he went, Jackson plunged into the mountains beyond the river, intending to make a raid, as far as he could, into the Creek country. Except fatigue and famine, he had nothing to fear. The larger Creek towns were a hundred miles to the southward, and were busy with threatened attacks nearer home. After a week’s march Jackson reached the upper waters of the Coosa. Within a short distance were two or three small Creek villages. Against one of these Jackson sent his mounted force, numbering nine hundred men, under General Coffee. Early in the morning of November 3, Coffee surrounded and destroyed Talishatchee. His report represented that the Indians made an obstinate resistance.[340] “Not one of the warriors escaped to tell the news,--a circumstance unknown heretofore.” According to Coffee’s estimate, Talishatchee contained two hundred and eighty-four Indians of both sexes and all ages. If one in three could be reckoned as capable of bearing arms, the number of warriors was less than one hundred. Coffee’s men after the battle counted one hundred and eighty-six dead Indians, and estimated the total loss at two hundred. In every attack on an Indian village a certain number of women and children were necessarily victims, but the proportion at Talishatchee seemed large. “I lost five men killed, and forty-one wounded,” reported Coffee,--“none mortally, the greater part slightly, a number with arrows. Two of the men killed was with arrows; this appears to form a very principal part of the enemy’s arms for warfare, every man having a bow with a bundle of arrows, which is used after the first fire with the gun until a leisure time for loading offers.” Meanwhile Jackson fortified a point on the Coosa, about thirty-five miles from his base on the Tennessee, and named it Fort Strother. There he expected to be joined by a division of east Tennessee militia under General Cocke, approaching from Chattanooga, as he hoped, with supplies; but while waiting, he received, November 7, a message from Talladega, a Creek village thirty miles to the southward, reporting that the town, which had refused to join the war-party, was besieged and in danger of capture by a large body of hostile warriors. Jackson instantly started to save Talladega, and marched twenty-four miles November 8, surrounding and attacking the besieging Creeks the next morning. “The victory was very decisive,” reported Jackson to Governor Blount,[341] November 11; “two hundred and ninety of the enemy were left dead, and there can be no doubt but many more were killed who were not found.... In the engagement we lost fifteen killed, and eighty-five wounded.”