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Cozzens’s retelling of the Creek War is as garish as it is gruesome, especially when it comes to events such as the Fort Mims massacre and Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Approximately 700 Muscogee attacked Fort Mims on Aug. 30, 1813, in what is now Alabama, and in a matter of hours, they overpowered its defenders.

Despite being originally limited to Creek Country and its boarders, the violence quickly transformed into a frontier struggle between the young United States and the resistant Red Stick forces following the attack of Fort Mims.

Then major general of the Tennessee militia, Jackson saw this intratribal conflict, and the public opprobrium leveled at the Red Sticks in the wake of the Fort Mims killings, as weaknesses he could exploit in his ongoing quest to force Creek lands into Anglo hands.

The whites, maddened by the memory of Fort Mims, fought like tigers; the Indians, sullen and revengeful at the prospect of losing their homes and their hunting-grounds, neither asked nor gave quarter, and fought heroically.