Alabama in 1812, seven years before statehood, could be a dangerous place. There was no law to speak of, and tensions between white settlers and native Creeks--as well as between rival Creek factions--ran high. No one knows exactly how or why Thomas Meredith came to be set upon with "knives and sticks" by Creek Indians who "killed him dead" on the banks of Pinchona Creek near present-day Montgomery in late March 1812, but historian Gary Burton has...