Creek War of 1836

The Creek War of 1836 was a conflict fought between the Muscogee Creek people and non-Native land speculators and squatters in Alabama in 1836.

Although the Creek people had been forced from Georgia, with many Lower Creeks moving to the Indian Territory, there were still about 20,000 Upper Creeks living in Alabama.

However, the state moved to abolish tribal governments and extend state laws over the Creeks. Opothle Yohola appealed to the administration of President Andrew Jackson for protection from Alabama; when none was forthcoming, the Treaty of Cusseta was signed on 24 March 1832, which divided up Creek lands into individual allotments.^[1] Creeks could either sell their allotments and receive funds to remove to the west, or stay in Alabama and submit to state laws. Land speculators and squatters began to defraud Creeks out of their allotments, and violence broke out, leading to the so-called “Creek War of 1836”. Secretary of War Lewis Cass dispatched General Winfield Scott to end the violence by forcibly removing the Creeks to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

Notes

References

• Leitch Wright, James, Creeks & Seminoles : the destruction and regeneration of the Muscogulge people, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
• Vandervort, Bruce, Indian wars of Mexico, Canada and the United States, 1812-1900, New York ; London : Routledge, 2006.