With this undisciplined force, he prepared for active operations; but the wisest dispositions were counteracted, and all his movements embarrassed, by the failure of unfeeling and speculating contractors. The enemy were gathering strength, and on the advance; they had already threatened a fort of Indian allies. In this situation, to retreat was to abandon our frontier citizens to the mercy of savages; to advance, was with the certainty of exposure to every privation. Jackson hesitated not on the alternative, and with but six days’ rations of meat, and less than two of meal, he moved with his army upon the Coosa; and, with Coffee’s command, gave a most decisive blow to the enemy at Tallushatchee, in less than twenty-five days after he had marched from the rendezvous at Fayetteville. The loss of the Creeks in this engagement, was 186 killed, and 84 prisoners. Though compelled by the want of supplies to return to his depots on the frontier, we find him in less than six weeks in the field, at the well fought battle of Talledega, and in the subsequent conflicts at Emuckfau, Enotichopco, and Tohopka, annihilating the hopes and expectations of the Creeks, and crushing the hydra of savage hostility in the South. [Illustration] MASSACRE OF MR. COOLY’S FAMILY. On the 6th of January, 1836, whilst Mr. Cooly was from home, a party of about thirty Indians made an attack upon his family, settled at New River, about 12 miles from Cape Florida. They murdered his wife, three children, and a Mr. Flinton, who was employed as their teacher. The children were sitting in the hall, getting their lessons, when the Indians came up by stealth, and shot them down. Flinton was killed on the threshold of the door; the little girl about eleven years old was found dead, with her book in her hand. As soon as the firing commenced, Mrs. Cooly snatched up her infant child, and endeavoured to effect their escape by a back way. She was shot at a distance of about one hundred and fifty yards from the house: the ball entered between her shoulders, and after passing through her breast, broke the arm of the child which was cradled on her bosom. The little boy, about eight or nine years of age, was found in the yard with his skull and arm fractured, probably done with a billet of wood. Having destroyed all of the white inhabitants, they shot the cattle, plundered the house of property worth from one thousand to twelve hundred dollars, took away two negroes and all the horses, and finally set fire to the house.