There was indeed cause for alarm.  Many of the Indian chiefs displayed military ability of a very high order.  Our officers were frequently outgeneralled by their savage antagonists.  This was so signally the case that the Indians frequently amused themselves in laughing to scorn the folly of the white men.  Every able-bodied man was called to work in throwing up breastworks.  A line of ramparts was speedily constructed, nearly a quarter of a mile in circuit.  An express was sent to Fayetteville, where General Jackson was assembling an army, to summon him to the rescue.  With characteristic energy he rushed forward, by forced marches day and night, until his troops stood, with blistered feet, behind the newly erected ramparts.

They felt now safe from attack by the Indians.  An expedition of eight hundred volunteers, of which Crockett was one, was fitted out to recross the Tennessee River, and marching by the way of Huntsville, to attack the Indians from an unexpected quarter.  This movement involved a double crossing of the Tennessee.  They pressed rapidly along the northern bank of this majestic stream, about forty or fifty miles, due west, until they came to a point where the stream expands into a width of nearly two miles.  This place was called Muscle Shoals.  The river could here be forded, though the bottom was exceedingly rough.  The men were all mounted.  Several horses got their feet so entangled in the crevices of the rocks that they could not be disengaged, and they perished there.  The men, thus dismounted, were compelled to perform the rest of the campaign on foot.

A hundred miles south of this point, in the State of Alabama, the Indians had a large village, called Black Warrior.  The lodges of the Indians were spread over the ground where the city of Tuscaloosa now stands.  The wary Indians kept their scouts out in all directions.  The runners conveyed to the warriors prompt warning of the approach of their foes.  These Indians were quite in advance of the northern tribes.  Their lodges were full as comfortable as the log huts of the pioneers, and in their interior arrangements more tasteful.  The buildings were quite numerous.  Upon many of them much labor had been expended.  Luxuriant corn-fields spread widely around, and in well-cultivated gardens they raised beans and other vegetables in considerable abundance.

The hungry army found a good supply of dried beans for themselves, and carefully housed corn for their horses.  They feasted themselves, loaded their pack-horses with corn and beans, applied the torch to every lodge, laying the whole town in ashes, and then commenced their backward march.  Fresh Indian tracks indicated that many of them had remained until the last moment of safety.

The next day the army marched back about fifteen miles to the spot where it had held its last encampment.  Eight hundred men, on a campaign, consume a vast amount of food.  Their meat was all devoured.  They had now only corn and beans.  The soldiers were living mostly on parched corn.  Crockett went to Colonel Coffee, then in command, and stating, very truthfully, that he was an experienced hunter, asked permission to draw aside from the ranks, and hunt as they marched along.  The Colonel gave his consent, but warned him to be watchful in the extreme, lest he should fall into an Indian ambush.