But it was not all a one-sided fight—they died game, even the little children—and the Indians buried six hundred of their warriors among the potato vines outside the stockade. Weatherford and Tecumseh sowed the wind. In vain the Red Eagle pleaded for the lives of the women and children of the fort. For them he almost lost his own life and with clubs and guns drawn on him was forced to flee to save his life. Not knowing this, the Americans marked him for death first and branded him “the butcher of Ft. Mims.” Five days after this massacre, which changed the boundaries of the continent and threw Jackson into an arena calling for every quality of his grit and brain for years afterwards, Jackson, all unconscious of this opportunity of his life—for the sweat-covered courier did not reach Nashville with the news until September 19th—was engaged in a street fight to a finish with Thomas H. and Jesse Benton—two men who were afterwards his political champions. It was a foolish, silly quarrel, more like that of boys than men. Jackson was drawn into it through the eternal fiber in him that forced him to make his friend’s quarrel his own. This friend was William Carroll, afterwards the gallant general who stood by him to a finish at New Orleans. Both Thomas H. and Jesse Benton were young lawyers living in Nashville. They were friends of Jackson. Thomas H. at the time was away in Philadelphia on business of great importance to Jackson. Jesse possessed much of his brother’s fluency with none of his brains. He was eccentric and excitable. In a dispute he challenged Captain Carroll. It was all because some younger officers were jealous of Carroll and wanted to break his influence with Jackson. In the duel with Carroll (which was harmless) he involved Jackson, and it ended in Jackson and the two Bentons fighting, in the streets of Nashville, a bloody duel, in which Jackson was shot, his arm and shoulder shattered, and the two Bentons found themselves, one in the bottom of a cellar, and the other’s life saved by the luckiest chance. Jackson almost bled to death. It was three weeks before he could leave his bed. That was September 4, 1813. Even then a horseman was riding day and night through the wilderness of Alabama with news of the Indian butchery. Even then the Creeks, victorious and bloodthirsty, had collected an army greater than any which confronted for years and baffled Miles, Crook, Custer and Canby, and were marching toward the Tennessee and Georgia frontiers, with Weatherford, the Invincible, at their head. And Jackson, the man who was to save them and fight the most brilliant Indian war ever fought on American soil, maimed, half-dead and soaking mattresses with his blood.