The Creek War

The war began as a civil war within the Creek Nation over American encroachment and escalated a month later when Creek Red Sticks destroyed Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama, killing more than 250 settlers and soldiers and turning this civil war into the southern front of the War of 1812.

The U.S. Army and various tribal nations, including Chickasaws, joined the battle. Chickasaw leader George Colbert and his brothers commanded about 230 warriors in 1814 to fight in present-day Alabama and then joined the U.S. Army for the remainder of the war.

On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, destroyed the Creek Red Sticks as a military power. Close to 900 Native Americans were killed, more than in any other battle in American history.

The subsequent Treaty of Fort Jackson forced the Creeks to cede over 23 million acres of land in Georgia and Alabama to the United States and cleared the way for an influx of non-native settlement in the neighboring Mississippi Territory. This cession was uncomfortably close to the Chickasaw Homeland.