Launched in retaliation for the attack on Creek warriors by territorial militia at Burnt Corn Creek, on August 30, 1813, a force of about 700 Creek Indians destroyed Fort Mims in the first major battle of the Creek War of 1813-14. The massacre of civilians rallied U.S. armies under the cry “Remember Fort Mims” and the ensuing Creek War culminated in the Creek Nation’s subsequent cession of over 21 million acres of land.
Some 400 American settlers, U.S.-allied Creeks, and enslaved African Americans had taken refuge inside a stockade hastily erected on the plantation of Samuel Mims, a wealthy resident of the Tensaw District of the Mississippi Territory. The Creek attack on Fort Mims, and particularly the killing of civilian men, women, and children at the end of the battle, outraged the U.S. public, thus prompting military action against the Creek Nation, which controlled what is now much of modern Alabama.
Fort Mims is a historic property of the Alabama Historic Commision.
Photos courtesy of: Alabama Department of Archives and History