Indian resistance would continue, but the unity he preached and imperfectly accomplished couldn’t survive without its apostle and ablest practitioner. Neither whites nor Indians had ever seen his like or would see it again. Jackson applauded the death of the Shawnee leader and would have appreciated it more had he not been utterly occupied trying to hold his own army together. The men were constantly hungry. Provisions never arrived on time, and when they did arrive they fell far short of the need. Clothing wore thin and then out. Hundreds of miles of marching had put holes in shoes and boots, finally leaving the worst-shod unshod entirely. The weather turned cold, and the men shivered in the rain. The one thing that kept many of the volunteers from abandoning the field dishonorably was the knowledge that their honorable discharge would come in early December. Or so they interpreted their terms of enlistment. Much of Jackson’s force had accompanied him to Natchez the previous winter, and these men counted their twelve-month enlistment as starting with their muster in December 1812.
