Andrew Jackson
On August 9, 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson ending the Creek War. The agreement provided for the surrender of twenty-three million acres of Creek land to the United States. This vast territory encompassed more than half of present-day Alabama and part of southern Georgia.
The war began on August 30, 1813, when a faction of Creeks known as the Red Sticks—because of their red war clubs—attacked American settlers at Fort Mims, near Lake Tensaw, Alabama, north of Mobile. This attack is considered a primary cause of the Creek War. In response, Jackson led a force of militiamen in the destruction of two Creek villages, Tallasahatchee and Talladega. On March 27, 1814, Jackson’s forces destroyed the Creek defenses at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. More than 800 Creek warriors were killed defending their homeland.
Tensions between the frontier settlers and the Creeks had been brewing since the Revolutionary Era. During the years preceding the Creek War, the Continental Congress received numerous reports on the status of Indian affairs in the South. The following excerpt, from a 1787 report, identifies settler greed as a major cause of the conflict:
An avaricious disposition in some of our people to acquire large tracts of land, and often by unfair means, appears to be the principal source of difficulties with the Indians…various pretences seem to be set up by the white people for making those settlements, which the Indians, tenacious of their rights, appear to be determined to oppose.
“The committee consisting of Mr. Kearney, Mr. Carrington, Mr. Bingham, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Dane, to whom was referred the report…relative to Indian affairs in the Southern Department….” [New York 1787]. Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789. Rare Book & Special Collections Division
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- The Andrew Jackson Papers is one of twenty-three presidential collections in the Library’s Manuscript Division. The Jackson archival collection contains more than 26,000 items dating from 1767 to 1874. Included are memoranda, journals, speeches, military records, land deeds, and miscellaneous printed matter, as well as correspondence reflecting Jackson’s personal life and career as a politician, military officer, president, slave holder and property owner.
- Andrew Jackson: A Resource Guide compiles links to materials related to Jackson found throughout the Library of Congress website. A select bibliography and curated listed of additional websites is also provided.
- Search Today in History on Native American and Indian to read additional features about Native Americans, including pages on the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Jim Thorpe, Sarah Winnemucca, and Cherokee chief John Ross. Search on Andrew Jackson to learn more about his political and military career, events such as the Battle of New Orleans, his inauguration, and the nullification crisis.
- Search on Indian in Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789 to learn more about early conflicts between settlers and Native Americans.
- The George Washington Papers include many references to Indian treaties and rights; to explore this aspect of Washington’s correspondence, search the collection on Indian rights and Indian treaties.
- Primary Documents in American History includes links to documents on the American Revolution and The New Nation, 1763-1815, in the period before the Creek War.
- Land Cessions by Tribes is included in Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894, Part 2 of the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896-97. These volumes are part of the collection A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875.
- Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera contains the full (one-page) text of “Proposals for publishing by subscription the life of Major General Andrew Jackson…“, by John Reid, Brevet Major U.S. Army. Nashville, 1815.
- Among the most unique items in the Library’s Digital Collections is a 1771 map documenting the confrontation between Native and European Americans of the middle British colonies in America. Found in the American Revolution and its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750 to 1789, the map documents the “antient & present seats of the Indian nations.”