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The Canoe Fight
This year, the day was recognized on Monday, Nov. 12. Governmental offices, banks and some businesses closed for a holiday. The only real observance for veterans in the county was in Thomasville where the VFW had a brief program. There were no observances in Grove Hill or Jackson. The day has become nothing more than a holiday for those folks lucky enough to be off. **** Nov. 12th also marked the 194th anniversary of a significant event in Alabama's history but unless you are a fourth grader or an avid history buff, you may not know about it. It was a fight that happened not far from here. Every Clarke County resident needs to know something about it. It was on Nov. 12, 1813 that Captain Sam Dale, Jeremiah Austill, James Smith and Caesar, a freed black, in one canoe, took on another filled with nine or more Creek Indian warriors in the middle of the Alabama River between what is today Clarke and Monroe counties. The site isn't far downriver from the Highway 84 bridge at Claiborne.
Many of the events of that conflict happened in Clarke County or southwest Alabama. The massacre of 250 to 500 settlers (the period accounts differ that much)at Fort Mims in what is now northern Baldwin County happened just a few months earlier as did the massacre of the Kimbell and James families near present day Whatley and an attack on Fort Sinquefield, one of the many hastily constructed stockades, not far from present day Grove Hill. The accounts of the canoe fight are detailed and descriptive, perhaps overly so for the short battle. Sam Dale and Jeremiah Austill lived to be old men and may have embellished the fight over time as old warriors sometimes do. An Indian account I read differs greatly from the version I read in most Alabama history books and suggests that Dale, who was known and respected by the Indians and sometimes traded with them, tricked them into believing he had peaceful intents. However, as many have noted, history is written by the victors. At any rate, Dale's party saw the Indian canoe in the river and pushed off from the shore for it. As they came close, the settlers attempted to fire their muskets at the Indians but their priming was wet and the guns would not shoot. Dale ordered Caesar to pull the canoes close and hold them together. The Indian chief, with a panther's skin encircling his head and stretching down his back, recognized Dale and exclaimed, "Now for it, Big Sam!" The Indian chief fired his gun toward Austill (his primer apparently wasn't wet) but the 19-year-old deflected the gun with a boat paddle. Dale and Smith clubbed the chief "with deadly force" to the floor of the canoe. The blows broke Dale's gunstock and he used the barrel as club for the rest of the fight. The fighting was intense and within minutes the three men had killed eight of the Indians. One jumped into the river and swam away. One account says there were 11 Indians in the boat. The main thing to realize, however, is that Dale and his crew were greatly outnumbered. After the fight, Dale's party returned to Fort Madison, south of Suggsville. Madison was a huge stockade that sheltered many settlers. The present-day Old Line Road- the Morning Star Road as 911 has named it- runs through the old fort's boundaries. The Canoe Fight boosted the morale of the settlers. Before it, the Indians had chalked up several victories and the settlers may have been doubtful of defeating the Indians. The conquest of a boat filled with a larger Indian force by the smaller group of militiamen greatly encouraged the war effort. Dale, Austill, Smith and even Caesar became instant heroes. Gen. Andrew Jackson would go on to defeat the Indians at Horseshoe Bend in north Alabama and would begin the banishment of the Indians from their Alabama homelands. Jackson's heroics against the British and the Indians would propel him to the presidency a few years later. Sam Dale eventually settled in Lauderdale County, Miss. where he lived until he died at the age of 69 in 1841. A memorial to him at Daleville, Miss., just north of Meridian, salutes his career and illustrates his many feats, including the famed Canoe Fight of 1813.
Jim Cox is editor and publisher of The Clarke County Democrat.
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