Canoe Fight

On November 12, 1813, militiamen from the Mississippi Territory under Captain Samuel Dale clashed with Red Stick warriors in an engagement that became known as the Canoe Fight, one episode within the broader Creek War. Much of the combat unfolded aboard canoes themselves, and when the exchange ended, Dale's men had come out on top, suffering just a single wounded man in the process. Though the encounter did little to shift the course of the wider Creek War strategically, the men involved found themselves widely celebrated for their roles in it afterward. Artists have rendered the confrontation in several illustrations over the years, yet today only a historical marker stands near the location where it happened.

Background

During the Creek War, the young republic found common cause with those Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee fighters who backed its interests against the Creek factions determined to resist it. These allied Creeks had pushed for expanding the National Council, the tribe's governing body, and had cleared debts owed to the United States through land sales in what is now Alabama and Georgia. Their opponents, the Red Sticks, resented the National Council's swelling authority, believing that clan structures rather than a centralized body should carry out governmental functions. Beyond this dispute, the Red Sticks bristled at the loss of ancestral territory through these sales and at the steady arrival of settlers onto Creek soil. Tensions over the council's role had already sparked civil conflict among the Creeks even before the war began. Washington, meanwhile, wanted to keep the Red Sticks from throwing their support behind Britain during the ongoing War of 1812. As settlers pushed further into Creek territory, Red Stick fighters launched scattered strikes against them, prompting Mississippi Territory residents to erect defensive forts while federal forces moved against the Red Sticks directly.

Following the massacre at Fort Mims, local militias formed across what is now southern Alabama to shield settlers gathering their autumn crops, even as Red Stick attacks in the region persisted.

Captain Samuel Dale, still healing from injuries sustained at Burnt Corn, stepped forward to command a mixed force of 30 Mississippi Territory volunteers and 40 more drawn from nearby communities, aiming to push back the Red Stick fighters. The group departed Fort Madison on November 11, moving southeast toward the Alabama River. They forded the river at French's Landing, shown as Brasier's Landing on the accompanying map, near present-day Gainestown, and made camp there. After securing two canoes, the men shifted course northward along the waterway. A detachment of six to eight, led by Jeremiah Austill, took to the canoes while the rest advanced on foot along the river's eastern bank. Austill caught sight of a canoe carrying Red Sticks moving downstream, though it soon turned back the way it came. Shots rang out near where Randon's Creek met the river as Dale's men fell upon a group of warriors caught preparing a meal, killing one of them. Dale later identified the dead man as a métis named Will Milfort, the son of Le Clerc Milfort and Jeannet McGillivray, herself the sister of Alexander McGillivray. The volunteers set about collecting the abandoned food and supplies. Rough terrain along the eastern bank led Dale to order a crossing to the western side. All the men made the crossing except twelve, among them Dale, Austill, and James Smith, who stayed behind to finish gathering the seized provisions. It was then that they heard warnings shouted from across the river that Creek warriors had encircled them.

Battle

When the volunteers reached the riverbank, neither canoe had come back yet from carrying the other soldiers across. It was then that they caught sight of a canoe holding eleven Red Stick warriors making its way downstream. Upon spotting the volunteers, the warriors quickly turned back the way they had come. Strangely, the warriors who had encircled the soldiers on the eastern side never launched an attack. Two of the men in the canoe leaped into the water and swam for shore, and Smith shot one of them dead.

Dale ordered eight men waiting on the far bank to bring the larger canoe across and paddle out to meet the threat. Once they got a look at how many warriors were in the approaching canoe, though, these soldiers turned back. Meanwhile the smaller canoe, guided by a free Black man named Caesar, had already reached the eastern shore. Rather than wait, Dale chose to push out into the river in this smaller vessel, bringing Austill and Smith along with him. As Caesar rowed, all three men tried to fire on the approaching warriors. Wet primers left the guns belonging to Austill and Dale useless, and Smith's shot went wide. Caesar kept rowing straight toward the enemy canoe. Just before the two vessels collided, the warriors' chief is said to have shouted "Now for it, Big Sam!", a nickname the Creeks had given Dale.

What happened next is remembered differently depending on the source, though most versions agree that the chief struck Austill in the head using the stock of his gun. Once Austill recovered, he was hit again, this time with a war club. Caesar kept the two canoes locked together as both sides traded blows, wielding their rifles like clubs in the chaos. Austill managed to turn the tables, seizing the very war club used against him and killing one of his attackers with it. Somewhere in the middle of this violent exchange, Dale leaped directly into the warriors' canoe, fighting not only with blunt blows but also with a bayonet.

By the end of it, all nine of the Red Stick warriors still aboard the canoe lay dead. All four of the Mississippi volunteers came through alive, and only Austill had suffered any serious injury. Once the fallen warriors had been tipped into the river, the warriors still positioned on the eastern bank opened fire on the small canoe and its occupants. Despite this, Dale, Austill, Smith, and Caesar managed to reach the eight soldiers waiting on that side and ferry them safely back to the western bank. From there, the reunited group pushed another two miles upriver before finally making their way back to Fort Madison.

Aftermath

Though celebrated locally, the fight carried little weight in the broader course of the Creek War. Dale himself emerged as a celebrated figure among early Alabama settlers, earning the nickname "The Daniel Boone of Alabama." His later career included a seat in the Alabama General Assembly and a commission as brigadier general in the state militia. Eventually he settled in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, where his life ended in the town of Daleville.

Austill's path led him first to a clerkship with the Mobile County Court, and afterward to a plantation in Clarke County, where he passed away in 1879. Smith remained active in further clashes of the Creek War before relocating to Mississippi, where he eventually died.

Accounts diverge when it comes to Caesar's fate following the encounter. According to Austill, Caesar stayed on with Josiah Fisher, a Creek métis, until passing away a decade after the battle. Henry S. Halbert offered a different version, claiming that Caesar had been sold to Dale and that he died in Kemper County, Mississippi, in 1866.