On August 9, 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson...
signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson ending the Creek War. The agreement provided for the surrender of twenty-three million acres of Creek land to the United States. This vast territory encompassed more than half of present-day Alabama and part of southern Georgia. The war began on August 30, 1813, when a faction of Creeks known as the Red Sticks attacked a contingent of 553 American settlers at Lake Tensaw, Alabama, north of Mobile. In response, Jackson led 5,000 militiamen in the destruction of two Creek villages, Tallasahatchee and Talladega.
On March 27, 1814, Jackson's forces destroyed the Creek defenses at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Eight hundred Creek warriors were killed and 500 women and children captured.
Tensions between the frontier settlers and the Creeks had been brewing since the Revolutionary era. During the years preceding the Creek War, the Continental Congress received numerous reports on the status of Indian affairs in the South. The following excerpt, from a 1787 report, identifies settler greed as a major cause of the conflict:
- Search the Today in History archive on Native American and Indian to read additional features about Native American, including pages on the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Jim Thorpe, Sarah Winnemucca, and Cherokee chief John Ross. Search on Andrew Jackson to learn more about his political and military career, events such as the Battle of New Orleans, his inauguration, and the nullification crisis.
- Learn more about the career of Andrew Jackson, elected president in 1829, by visiting Presidents in American Memory, a feature presentation of the Learning Page.
- Search on Indian in Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 to learn more about early conflicts between settlers and Native Americans.
- The George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 includes many references to Indian treaties and rights; to explore this aspect of Washington's correspondence, search the collection on Indian rights and Indian treaties.
- Browse by Tribe through Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894. Click on Creek to read about the boundaries set for the Creeks and that nation's concessions to the U.S. government. This feature is part of the collection A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875.
- Among the most unique items in American Memory is a 1771 map documenting the confrontation between Native and European Americans of the middle British colonies in America. Found in Map Collections (1500-Present), the map documents the "antient & present seats of the Indian nations."
