the Government's policy; and the expenses of the troops on
the return march were fully met out of the national treasury. But
Jackson drew from the experience only gall and wormwood. About the
time when the men reached Natchez, Congress definitely authorized the
President to take possession of Mobile and that part of Florida west
of the Perdido River; and, back once more in the humdrum life of
Nashville, the disappointed officer could only sit idly by while his
pet project was successfully carried out by General Wilkinson, the man
whom, perhaps above all others, he loathed. But other work was
preparing; and, after all, most of Florida was yet to be won.

In the late summer of 1813 the western country was startled by news of
a sudden attack of a band of upwards of a thousand Creeks on Fort
Minis, Alabama, culminating in a massacre in which two hundred and
fifty white men, women, and children lost their lives. It was the most
bloody occurrence of the kind in several decades, and it brought
instantly to a head a situation which Jackson, in common with many
other military men, had long viewed with apprehension.

From time immemorial the broad stretches of hill and valley land
southwards from the winding Tennessee to the Gulf were occupied, or
used as hunting grounds, by the warlike tribes forming the loose-knit
Creek Confederacy. Much of this land was extremely fertile, and most
of it required little labor to prepare it for cultivation.
Consequently after 1800 the influx of white settlers, mainly cotton
raisers, was heavy; and by 1812 the great triangular area between the
Alabama and the Tombigbee, as well as extensive tracts along the upper
Tombigbee and the Mobile, was quite fully occupied. The heart of the
Creek country was the region about the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers,
which join in central Alabama to form the stream which bears the
State's name. But not even this district was immune from encroachment.

The Creeks were not of a sort to submit to the loss of their lands
without a struggle. Though Tecumseh, in 1811, had brought them to the
point of an uprising, his plans were not carried out, and it remained
for the news of hostilities between the United States and Great
Britain to rouse the war spirit afresh. In a short time the entire
Creek country was aflame. Arms and ammunition the Indians obtained
from the Spaniards across the Florida border, and Colonel Edward
Nicholls, now stationed at Pensacola as provisional