The horror of the dreadful scene was added to by the devouring flames. The roofs and the walls falling in on the dead, they were scorched or burned in one common heap, and Weatherford, though he afterward became a good citizen in the same region, gloated over the murderous desolation thus wrought. His delight was fiendish, his glut of revenge was ominous. This was Weatherford on August 12, 1812. The news of the horrible massacre spread dismay everywhere. It sounded the note of extinction of one or the other of the Indian or white races. Dismay gave place to revenge, and everywhere men flew to arms. From that time forth the battle cry of the whites was, "Remember Fort Mims." From the north marched Jackson from Tennessee, and from the west came Claiborne with his Mississippi militia. Weatherford had raised a storm which he would never be able to quell. INDIAN GRATITUDE From the general estimate of Indian character, one would be slow to believe the savage capable of gratitude, but even with the Indian, instances of this virtue are not altogether wanting, one among which was displayed at the horrible massacre of Fort Mims. Of the seventeen who escaped death from that tragedy of blood and fire, was a mother and her eight children. That they should have been found together by a certain Indian warrior, who was enabled to give full expression to his gratitude, was providential. The story is well worthy a place in our annals. Years before this terrible holocaust at Fort Mims, an Indian boy, an outcast and an orphan, in his friendless wandering, found his way to the home of a Scotchman in the wilds of South Alabama, whose name was McGirth, who had married a half-breed. Touched by the condition of the off-cast Indian waif, the good Mrs. McGirth not only fed and clad him, but took him into the home, cared for him, and reared him as her own son. The Indian boy, Sonata, grew to manhood beneath the McGirth roof, and shared in common with the children of the family, the moderate comforts of the frontier home. After Sonata became a man, he took leave of the home, and joined himself to the Creek tribe of which he was a member. The McGirths lost sight of Sonata, Sonata of his benefactors. Years with their changes came and went, and Sonata was in the upper counties with his people.