Editing Trail of Tears (section)

==Creek dissolution==
{{Main|Muscogee}}

[[File:Selocta.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Selocta Chinnabby]] (''Shelocta'') was a [[Muscogee (Creek)|Muscogee]] chief who appealed to [[Andrew Jackson]] to reduce the demands for Creek lands at the signing of the [[Treaty of Fort Jackson]]. ]]

After the War of 1812, some Muscogee leaders such as [[William McIntosh]] and Chief [[Shelocta]] signed treaties that ceded more land to Georgia. The 1814 signing of the [[Treaty of Fort Jackson]] signaled the end for the Creek Nation and for all Indians in the South.<ref name="Remini">{{Cite book |last=Remini |first=Robert |author-link=Robert V. Remini |title=Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 |volume=1 |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |year=1998 |isbn=0801859115 |chapter=The Creek War: Victory |orig-date=1977}}</ref> Friendly Creek leaders, like Shelocta and Big Warrior, addressed Sharp Knife (the Indian nickname for Andrew Jackson) and reminded him that they keep the peace. Nevertheless, Jackson retorted that they did not "cut ([[Tecumseh]]'s) throat" when they had the chance, so they must now cede Creek lands. Jackson also ignored Article 9 of the [[Treaty of Ghent]] that restored sovereignty to Indians and their nations.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

{{blockquote|Jackson opened this first peace session by faintly acknowledging the help of the friendly Creeks. That done, he turned to the Red Sticks and admonished them for listening to evil counsel. For their crime, he said, the entire Creek Nation must pay. He demanded the equivalent of all expenses incurred by the United States in prosecuting the war, which by his calculation came to {{convert|23000000|acre|km2}} of land.|Robert V. Remini, ''Andrew Jackson''<ref name="Remini" />}}

Eventually, the Creek Confederacy enacted a law that made further land cessions a [[capital offense]]. Nevertheless, on February 12, 1825, McIntosh and other chiefs signed the [[Treaty of Indian Springs (1825)|Treaty of Indian Springs]], which gave up most of the remaining Creek lands in Georgia.<ref>{{cite web |last=Oklahoma State University Library |title=Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties |volume=2: Treaties |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cre0214.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090106140643/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cre0214.htm |archive-date=January 6, 2009 |access-date=January 25, 2009 |publisher=Digital.library.okstate.edu}}</ref> After the [[U.S. Senate]] ratified the treaty, McIntosh was assassinated on April 30, 1825, by Creeks led by Menawa.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

The Creek National Council, led by [[Opothleyahola|Opothle Yohola]], protested to the United States that the Treaty of Indian Springs was fraudulent. President [[John Quincy Adams]] was sympathetic, and eventually, the treaty was nullified in a new agreement, the [[Treaty of Washington (1826)]].<ref>{{cite book |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cre0264.htm |title=Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties |volume=2: Treaties |publisher=[[Oklahoma State University Library]] |access-date=October 18, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170922061315/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cre0264.htm |archive-date=September 22, 2017 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all}}</ref> The historian R. Douglas Hurt wrote: "The Creeks had accomplished what no Indian nation had ever done or would do again—achieve the annulment of a ratified treaty."<ref name="Hurt_2002">{{cite book |last=Hurt |first=R. Douglas |title=The Indian Frontier, 1763–1846 (Histories of the American Frontier) |publisher=[[University of New Mexico Press]] |year=2002 |isbn=0-8263-1966-1 |location=Albuquerque |page=148}}</ref> However, Governor [[George Troup]] of Georgia ignored the new treaty and began to forcibly remove the Indians under the terms of the earlier treaty. At first, President Adams attempted to intervene with federal troops, but Troup called out the militia, and Adams, fearful of a civil war, conceded. As he explained to his intimates, "The Indians are not worth going to war over."{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

Although the Creeks 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 March 24, 1832, which divided up Creek lands into individual allotments.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Oklahoma State University Library |title=Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties |volume=2: Treaties |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cre0341.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090108173817/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/cre0341.htm |archive-date=January 8, 2009 |access-date=January 25, 2009 |publisher=Digital.library.okstate.edu}}</ref> Creeks could either sell their allotments and receive funds to remove to the west, or stay in Alabama and submit to state laws. The Creeks were never given a fair chance to comply with the terms of the treaty, however. Rampant illegal settlement of their lands by Americans continued unabated with federal and state authorities unable or unwilling to do much to halt it. Further, as recently detailed by historian Billy Winn in his thorough chronicle of the events leading to removal, a variety of fraudulent schemes designed to cheat the Creeks out of their allotments, many of them organized by speculators operating out of Columbus, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama, were perpetrated after the signing of the Treaty of Cusseta.<ref name="Winn">{{Cite book |last=Winn |first=William W |title=The Triumph of the Ecunnau-Nuxulgee: Land Speculators, George M. Troup, State Rights, and the Removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama, 1825–38 |location=Macon |publisher=[[Mercer University Press]] |year=2015 |isbn=9780881465228}}</ref>{{page needed|date=January 2025}} A portion of the beleaguered Creeks, many desperately poor and feeling abused and oppressed by their American neighbors, struck back by carrying out occasional raids on area farms and committing other isolated acts of violence. Escalating tensions erupted into open war with the United States after the destruction of the village of Roanoke, Georgia, located along the Chattahoochee River on the boundary between Creek and American territory, in May 1836. During the so-called "[[Creek War of 1836]]" [[United States Secretary of War|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. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830 it continued into 1835 and after as in 1836 over 15,000 Creeks were driven from their land for the last time. 3,500 of those 15,000 Creeks did not survive the trip to Oklahoma where they eventually settled.<ref name="history.com" />