Red Sticks - Aftermath

Aftermath

The massacre had significant short and long-range effects. Alarmed by the fall of the fort and understanding little of internal Creek tensions, European-American settlers demanded government protection from the Creek. With federal forces otherwise engaged in the War of 1812, Georgia, Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory raised state militias for defense and engaged Native American allies, such as the Cherokee, traditional enemy of the Creek. The historian Frank L. Owsley, Jr. suggests that the state-sponsored military activity in the area likely prevented the British from occupying an undefended Gulf Coast in 1814.

General Andrew Jackson commanded the state militias to campaign against the Red Sticks. The US forces finally defeated the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) on March 27, 1814. His forces killed or captured most of the Creek, but some survivors escaped to Florida, where they joined the Seminole tribe and continued the resistance to the United States.

The war heightened the hostility between the Creek and the Americans in the Southeast. European Americans had steadily encroached on Creek and other tribes' territories, forcing land cessions under numerous treaties but always demanding more. The war had begun over internal divisions among Creek who resisted the assimilation and loss of traditions, led by the chiefs William Weatherford, Menawa, and Peter McQueen of the Upper Towns. After the war, the Creek were forced to cede half their remaining lands to the United States. Within 20 years, they lost the remainder of lands to the United States as a result of the Indian Removal Act and forced removal to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Some remnant Creek chose to stay in Alabama and Mississippi and become state and US citizens; the treaty provisions to secure their land were not followed, and many became landless. Some Creek migrated to Florida, where they joined the Seminole.