The Fort Mims massacre took place on August 30, 1813, during the Creek War, when a force of Creek Indians belonging to the Red Sticks faction, under the command of head warriors Peter McQueen and William Weatherford (also known as Lamochattee or Red Eagle), stormed the fort and defeated the militia garrison. Afterward, a massacre ensued and almost all of the remaining mixed Creek, white settlers, and militia at Fort Mims were killed. The fort was a stockade with a blockhouse surrounding the house and outbuildings of the settler Samuel Mims, located about 35 miles directly north of present-day Mobile, Alabama.
Background
The Creek Nation split into factions, coinciding with the War of 1812. One group of Creek nativists, the Red Sticks, argued against any more accommodation of the white settlers while the other Creeks favored adopting the white lifestyle. The Red Stick faction from the Upper Towns opposed both land cessions to settlers and the Lower Towns' assimilation into European-American culture. The Natives were soon called "Red Sticks" because they had raised the "red stick of war," a favored weapon and symbolic Creek war declaration. Civil war among the Creeks erupted in the summer of 1813 and the Red Sticks attacked accommodationist headmen and, in the Upper Towns, began a systematic slaughter of domestic animals, most of which belonged to men who had gained power by adopting aspects of European culture. Not understanding internal issues among the Creek, frontier whites were alarmed about rising tensions and began 'forting up' and moving into various posts and blockhouses such as Fort Mims while reinforcements were sent to the frontier.
American spies learned that Peter McQueen's party of Red Sticks were in Pensacola, Florida, to acquire food assistance, supplies, and arms from the Spanish. The Creek received from the newly arrived Spanish governor, Mateo González Manrique, 45 barrels of corn and flour, blankets, ribbons, scissors, razors, a few steers, and 1000 pounds of gunpowder and an equivalent supply of lead musket balls and bird shot. When reports of the Creek pack train reached Colonel Caller, he and Major Daniel Beasley of the Mississippi Volunteers led a mounted force of 6 companies, 150 white militia riflemen, and 30 Tensaw under Captain Dixon Bailey to intercept them. James Caller (Call/Cole) ambushed the Red Sticks in the Battle of Burnt Corn in July 1813 as the Creek were having their mid-day meal. While the United States forces were looting the pack trains, the warriors returned and successfully drove off the Americans. The United States was now at war with the Creek Nation.
In August 1813, Peter McQueen and Red Eagle (Weatherford) were the Red Stick chiefs who led the attack on Fort Mims. Nearly 1,000 warriors from thirteen Creek towns of the Alabamas, the Tallapoosas, and lower Abekas gathered at the mouth of Flat Creek on the lower Alabama River.
The mixed blood whites who were called Creeks of Tensaw, who had relocated from Upper Creek Towns with the approval of the Creek National Council, joined European-American settlers in taking refuge within the stockade of Fort Mims. There were about 517 people, including some 265 armed militiamen in the fort. Fort Mims was located about 35 to 45 miles (50–70 km) directly north of Mobile on the eastern side of the Alabama River.
On August 21, 1813, a Choctaw warrior arrived at Fort Easley with news that over four hundred Red Stick warriors planned to attack Fort Easley, then Fort Madison. This news was relayed to General Ferdinand Claiborne at St. Stephens, who in turn sent reinforcements to Fort Easley. Claiborne reportedly felt Major Daniel Beasley, the commander of Fort Mims, was capable of handling an attack and that Fort Easley was in more immediate danger.
Attack
On August 29, 1813, two black slaves tending cattle outside the stockade reported that "painted warriors" were in the vicinity, but mounted scouts from the fort found no signs of the war party. Major Beasley had the second slave flogged for "raising a false alarm". Beasley received a second warning the morning of the assault by a mounted scout, but dismissed it and took no precautions, as he was reportedly drunk. Some of the reported sightings were by occupants of nearby Fort Pierce, which caused the military leadership of Fort Mims to feel that these sightings were falsely reported to ensure Fort Pierce would be supplied with additional military support.