The evening twilight was fading away.  The whole party was concealed in a dense canebrake which fringed the stream.  Two of the Indians were sent forward as a decoy—­a shameful decoy—­to lure into the hands of two hundred warriors an unarmed man, two women, and eight or ten children.  The Indians picked out some of their best marksmen and hid them behind trees and logs near the river.  They were to shoot down the Indians whom others should lure to cross the stream.

The creek which separated the island from the mainland was deep, but not so wide but that persons without much difficulty could make themselves heard across it.  Two of the Indians went down to the river-side, and hailed those at the wigwams, asking them to send a canoe across to take them over.  An Indian woman came down to the bank and informed them that the canoe was on their side, that two hunters had crossed the creek that morning, and had not yet returned.  These were the two men who had been so inhumanly murdered.  Immediate search was made for the canoe, and it was found a little above the spot where the men were hiding.  It was a very large buoyant birch canoe, constructed for the transportation of a numerous household, with all their goods, and such game as they might take.

This they loaded with warriors to the water’s edge, and they began vigorously to paddle over to the island.  When the one solitary Indian man there saw this formidable array approaching he fled into the woods.  The warriors landed, and captured the two women and the little children, ten in number, and conveyed their prisoners, with the plunder of the wigwams, back across the creek to their own encampment.  This was not a very brilliant achievement to be accomplished by an army of two hundred warriors aided by a detachment of sixteen white men under Major Russel.  What finally became of these captives we know not.  It is gratifying to be informed by David Crockett that they did not kill either the squaws or the pappooses.

The company then marched through the silent wilderness, a distance of about thirty miles east, to the Conecuh River.  This stream, in its picturesque windings through a region where even the Indian seldom roved, flowed into the Scambia, the principal river which pours its floods, swollen by many tributaries, into Pensacola Bay.  It was several miles above the point where the detachment struck the river that the Indian encampment, to which the two murdered men had alluded, was located.  But the provisions of the party were exhausted.  There was scarcely any game to be found.  Major Russel did not deem it prudent to march to the attack of the encampment, until he had obtained a fresh supply of provisions.  The main body of the army, which had remained in Florida, moving slowly about, without any very definite object, waiting for something to turn up was then upon the banks of the Scambia.  Colonel Blue was in command.

David Crockett was ordered to take a light birch canoe, and two men, one a friendly Creek Indian, and paddle down the stream about twenty miles to the main camp.  Here he was to inform Colonel Blue of Major Russel’s intention to ascend the Conecuh to attack the Creeks, and to request the Colonel immediately to dispatch some boats up the river with the needful supplies.