Assessment
B. F. French stated 'The war was rashly brought and rashly conducted. Bienville entered the enemy's country without any means of siege, made one attack on a fort, and then, without attempting by scouts to open a communication with D'Artaguette, whom he had ordered to meet him in the Chickasaw country on the 10th of May, or making any attempt to give him proper orders, without even taking one Chickasaw prisoner to get any information of D'Artaguette's proceedings, he retreated, and ended the campaign disastrously.' Atkinson described as 'stupid' the frontal assaults against positions that were practically invincible. A Frenchman's relation of the observations of a Choctaw chief named Red Shoes is quoted by Atkinson: 'The French did not know at all the way to carry on war; we had been able to take only a little village of thirty of forty men; that on the contrary we had lost many men without being able to say that we had killed a single one; that our troops heavily clad marched with too slow a step and so close together that it was impossible for the Chickasaws to fire without killing some of them and wounding several.'
The Chickasaw were amply equipped with English arms via a trade route from the English and small Chickasaw settlements in South Carolina and Georgia. Their rectangular palisade forts with loopholed walls were complemented by round fortified houses, also with loopholes. With this technology the Chickasaw invincibly maintained their homeland against relentless pressure from the French and Choctaw, including a repeat campaign in 1739 and numerous small attacks by Choctaws for the next 20 years.
A village once thought to possess archaeological remains of Ackia battleground was made a U.S. National Monument in 1938. The National Park Service realized only a few years after establishment of the National Monument that Ackia and the battle were not located there, and it was absorbed into the Natchez Trace Parkway in 1961. It is now called 'Chickasaw Village.' Research 25 years later, however, determined that the actual site of Ackia and its neighboring villages are in a developed area of south Tupelo. A subdivision called 'Lee Acres' covers the site of the 1736 Battle of Ackia, cited by historians as a pivotal rebuff to French territorial ambitions in the Southeast.
Read more about this topic: Chickasaw Campaign Of 1736
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