Creek Nation Trilogy Part II

This movement centers on the Creek War (1813–1814), a conflict shaped as much by internal division as by external force. Creek towns split between accommodation and resistance, with the Red Stick movement rising in response to land loss, cultural erosion, and broken treaties. Violence, retaliation, and U.S. military intervention followed, culminating in devastating losses for the Creek people. The music reflects fracture, urgency, and the collapse of an old order.

title: The Red Sticks and the Burning Nation
style: bluegrass historical epic
[intro]
(low fiddle drone and snare rhythm rising, building into a rolling banjo march)

[verse]
Tecumseh rode from northern plains,
Through forests dark and deep,
To call the southern nations forth,
From hunger’s restless sleep.
He spoke of fire, he spoke of blood,
Of prophets and the sign,
Of lands reclaimed by warrior hands,
And vengeance long divine.

[verse]
At Hickory Ground the council met,
Where red sticks split the flame,
The young men swore by sacred blood,
To cleanse the white man’s stain.
They turned on kin who wore the coats,
Of Jackson’s marching line,
And brother fell on brother’s spear,
In war’s unholy rhyme.

[chorus]
Raise your rifles, sound the cry,
The rivers burn, the eagles fly,
From Tallapoosa to Tuckabatchee,
The nations bleed, the children die.
The drums of war beat loud and long,
Through thunder, smoke, and rain,
And the red earth drinks her sons again,
In the war that bears no name.

[verse]
Fort Mims went down in blood and flame,
Where women’s voices cried,
And Jackson swore by heaven’s name,
He’d see the debt repaid.
Through mud and storm his columns marched,
From Mobile’s misty sound,
Till cannon fire at Horseshoe Bend,
Tore freedom from the ground.

[chorus]
Raise your rifles, sound the cry,
The rivers burn, the eagles fly,
From Tallapoosa to Tuckabatchee,
The nations bleed, the children die.
The drums of war beat loud and long,
Through thunder, smoke, and rain,
And the red earth drinks her sons again,
In the war that bears no name.

[bridge]
Menawa fought and would not yield,
Though shot and torn he lay,
He called his warriors to the shield,
And crawled into the day.
The smoke rose high on broken pines,
Where Jackson stood and stared,
And carved a treaty line in blood,
Where no man’s soul was spared.

[final chorus]
Raise your rifles, sound the cry,
The rivers burn, the eagles fly,
The sky runs red, the drums reply,
And nations fall and fade.
The Tallapoosa whispers still,
Of glory, grief, and pain,
Where the red sticks burned and heroes died,
And nothing rose again.

[outro]
(snare and bass fade to silence, lone fiddle plays a mournful theme that echoes the first part’s river melody)