For a long time Menawa stared out over the grand sweep of the land and the tiny town. His people called him, but he stood there like a stone man until the sun had set. At last he turned away. When his warriors asked why he had stayed in one spot so long he replied:

"Last evening I saw the sun set for the last time, and its light shine upon the tree-tops, and the land, and the water, that I am never to look upon again. No other evening will come, bringing to Menawa's eyes the rays of the setting sun upon the home he has left forever!"

Menawa, whose personal bravery in war had earned him the title of the Crazy War Hunter, was leading his people across Alabama's Tallapoosa River for the last time, headed for the dark lands beyond the Mississippi where the Great Father had insisted they must now live.

[...]

Menawa was the strong men of the Creek. Colonel McKenney called him the Rob Roy of the southern frontier of the early 1800s. Drover, marauder, crafty trader, warrior, and skillful war captain, he was hated, feared, but respected by the white settlers along the Cumberland River.

In the Battle of the Horseshoe, March 27, 1814, he was wounded seven times but fought until he collapsed. At twilight the battle was over; a thousand of warrior had gone to war, only seventy survived. Menawa advised his men to return to their homes and "submit to the victors, and each man make his own peace as best he might."

When the Creek nation was split over the Indian removal question, Menawa led the anti-American faction against William McIntosh, the Creek chief who supported Washington. After McIntosh signed the treaty of Indian Springs on February 12, 1825, in which the Creek sold their lands, the Creek council ordered the death of McIntosh and the other chiefs who had signed the treaty. Menawa was selected as executioner. Seventy-five days after the treaty signing, Menawa and a band of warriors killed McIntosh and his followers.

[...]

During the Seminole War, General Thomas Sidney Jesup, a former aide to Jackson, asked Menawa to serve with another Creek chief, Opothe-Yoholo, as mediator in the Seminole War. After both chiefs were unsuccessful as arbitrators, Menawa led his warriors into the swamps to fight at the side of the white men he detested. Like Opothe-Yoholo he had one request, that he and his family be permitted to remain on their land and not be forced to travel across the Mississippi.

He returned to find his lands confiscated, his herds gone, his family moved west. Menawa quietly packed his few belongings and prepared to join his wife and children. The night before he left he gave the copy of his portrait to an old friend, a white man.

"I am going away," he said, "I have brought you this picture-I wish you to take it and hang it up in your house, that when your children look at it you can tell them what I have been. I have always found you true to me, but great as my regard for you is, I never wish to see you in that new country to which I am going-for when I cross the great river, my desire is that I may never again see the face of a white man!"