While the armies of Great Britain and the United States grappled for the Old Northwest and along the Canadian front from 1812 to 1813, a new war erupted with the Creek Nation on the southern frontier. The conflict traced its roots to the end of the American Revolution. With independence won, American settlers pushed into Creek homelands of western Georgia and Alabama. The onslaught evoked a series of treaties in which the Creeks ceded lands to the United States. This encroachment split the tribe as factions evolved that both resisted and embraced the expansion of white society.Tensions rose when the Shawnee chief Tecumseh visited the Creek towns in the spring of 1811. Tecumseh brought a message of Indian unification and resistance to further American settlement. His words further split the Creeks as the militant sect, known as Red Sticks, asserted their control and a small civil war exploded within the tribe.The internal conflict amongst the Creeks soon turned into an all-out war. On A...
