General Andrew Jackson had, in July, 1814, been appointed a major-general in the United States army, and assigned the command of the Southern department, with headquarters at Mobile. His daring and successful campaigns against the Indian allies of the British the year previous had won for him the confidence of the Government and of the people, and distinguished him as the man fitted for the emergency. At the beginning of the war British emissaries busily sought to enlist, arm, and equip all the Indians of the Southern tribes whom they could disaffect, as their allies, and to incite them to a war of massacre, pillage, and destruction against the white settlers, as they did with the savage tribes north of the Ohio River. In this they were successfully aided by Tecumseh, the Shawanee chief, and his brother, the Prophet. These were sons of a Creek mother and a Shawanee brave. By relationship, and by the rude eloquence of the former and the mystic arts and incantations of the latter, they brought into confederacy with Northern tribes--which they had organized as allies of the English in a last hope of destroying American power in the West--almost the entire Creek nation. These savages, though at peace under treaty and largely supported by the fostering aid of our Government, began hostilities after their usual methods of indiscriminate massacre and marauding destruction, regardless of age or sex or condition, against the exposed settlers. The latter sought refuge as they could in the rude stockade stations, but feebly garrisoned. At Fort Mims, on the Alabama River, nearly three hundred old men and women and children, with a small garrison of soldiers, were captured in a surprise attack by a large body of warriors, and all massacred in cold blood. This atrocious outbreak aroused the country, and led to speedy action for defense and terrible chastisement for the guilty perpetrators. The British officers offered rewards for scalps brought in, as under Proctor in the Northwest, and many scalps of men and women murdered were exchanged for this horrible blood-money.