The British employed the natives as a force multiplier/terror tool, but at the same time tended to be “queasy” about the tactics the natives used, and often attempted to restrain their more brutal tendencies. In the Revolution the British had some excellent partisan-hunter/tracker units to deploy against American irregulars — I’ve never studied the War of 1812 heavily, I wonder if they also had good irregular troops in that war, or if they had to rely much more heavily on the Indians for backwoods tactics?
We had a lot of that fighting down here in Alabama. I live about 10 miles from the Creek’s capital of Tuckabatchee, were Tecumseh spoke to the Creeks about forming a great Western Indian confederacy. Most of the tribal leaders rejected his appeals, and he went back North. He was said to have stated, on leaving, that he would bring a great disaster to the Creeks, and only a few days later, the famous New Madrid earthquake occurred. Many of the Creeks, especially the younger warriors, joined the Red Sticks on what they called, “the day Tecumseh caused the ground to shake”.
While the Kentucky militia went North to Michigan and eventually into Ontario with Harrison, most of the Tennessee militia went South against the Creeks. They were led by Andrew Jackson. He, along with two regiments of the US Army, and about 1200 Cherokee warriors allied with the Tennesseans, went south along the Tallapoosa river (about 2 miles as the crow flies from me), and decisively defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, and further South to just North of Montgomery at the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers where they formed the Alabama river, and built a fort, Fort Jackson, where the White Stick Creeks signed a peace treaty, which would eventually lead to the Trail of Tears and the expulsion of the Southeast Indians by Jackson when he became president!
After wintering at Force Jackson, he led his forces South to Mobile and then to New Orleans, and defeated the British there. His rise to the presidency started at those two battles.
Oh, by the way, the Red versus White Stick Creeks. At Tuckabatchee (which was an Indian city of about 10,000 souls) they had a bundle of sticks, at the council when Tecumseh spoke. Half were painted white, the other half red. At the end of all the talks, the chiefs were asked to choose a white stick for peace, or a red stick for war. The white sticks won, and that is why Tecumseh left in anger and made his curse. After the earthquake, many chiefs traded their whites sticks for red!
And the rest, as they say, is history!