In that war there was one man more conspicuous than any other--more relentless, more daring, more desperate in his refusal to give or to accept quarter, and at the same time more brilliant in attack and defence, abler in counsel, and having greater skill in the field than any of his fellow-chiefs--a man who fought Jackson, Claiborne, Flournoy, Floyd, and Coffee, whose troops, coming from different quarters of the country, surrounded him on every side and outnumbered him on every field; fighting them with credit to his own skill and daring, and with no little damage to these skilled enemies--a man of whom Jackson said, "He is fit to command armies." This man was Red Eagle, or, in his native Muscogee tongue, Lamochattee. To the white men with whom he lived a great part of his life, and to his enemies in war, he was better known as William Weatherford; and as the historical accounts of the war in which he won his renown were all written by white men, because Red Eagle could not write, his white name, Weatherford, is the one by which he is generally known in books. His fame was won as an Indian, however; it was the Indian warrior Red Eagle, not the half-breed planter Weatherford, who did the deeds which gave him a place in American history; and this neglect of his Indian name in all historical works which refer to him is an example of the sarcasm of destiny. It reminds one of the hero of whom Byron tells us, who, falling in battle covered with glory, lost his only chance for fame by the blunder of a printer, who misspelled his name in the gazette. We have preferred to call the great commander of the Creeks by his Indian name, Red Eagle, on the title-page of this book, but in writing of him it will be necessary frequently to use the name Weatherford instead. The story of the Creek war naturally follows the life of Tecumseh, with which this series of Indian biographies was introduced; and indeed the one story is necessary to the complete telling of the other. It may be best told in the form of a life of Red Eagle, who commanded on one side, and whose genius for command alone made the war an affair worth writing about; but, unluckily for the biographer, the materials for a biography of Red Eagle, in the strict sense of the word, are meagre and difficult to get at.