During the last part of the 17th century, the Spanish maintained their tenuous hold on
Northwest Florida through the missions and the small fort at St. Marks. When Indian allies
of the English at Charleston, S.C., raided Spanish territory, Indian allies of the Spanish
desert- ed eastern Ceorgia in favor of the Chattahoochee River.
Dr. Henry Woodward, a soldier of fortune, led the English activities in
this contest for the Indian trade. The Spanish tried to control their Indian allies by
building a fort near the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers known as Santa
Cruz de Sabacola.
This lasted only a few years (1689-1691) because the Indians, incensed at
the Spanish fort in their territory and preferring English trade goods, began moving
closer to English settlements. They left the Chattahoochee River to settle on Ochese Creek
of the Ocmulgee River. The name of Ochese Creek Indians was shortened by English traders
to Creek Indians.
Later, Upper Creeks came to mean those in Alabama, and Lower Creeks those
in Georgia. An alliance between France and Spain at the time of the War of the Spanish
Succession, when Louis XIV of France tried to place his grandson on the throne of Spain
(1701-1714), upset Great Britain, Holland and other European states, and threatened
British control of the Indian trade. This was successfully resisted by the British
Governor in Charleston, James Moore, from 1702-1704. In the process, however, he
transported several thousand Indians from the Apalachee and Apalachicola River countries
to a town on the Savannah River.
This forced migration caused hard feelings. A large-scale Indian uprising
momentarily threatened Charleston in 1715 and resulted in the Indians returning to the
Chattahoochee River, the Creeks near Columbus, Georgia, and the Apalachicolas north of the
forks of the Chattahoochee-Flint Rivers. The years 1717-1739 saw France allied to her
former foes, Great Britain and Holland, against Spain, much dissatisfied over the losses
from the War of the Spanish Succession.
The Spanish from St. Marks and Pensacola (1696) dominated most of the
Lower Creeks and blocked French advances along the Gulf Coast. The settlements at Biloxi
and Mobile (1702), while not thriving, were bases of French power which extended over the
Upper Creeks in Alabama. The French attempted to control the Lower Creeks with a fort at
St. Joseph Bay (1718), but this was successfully countered by the Spanish and abandoned.
Pensacola was captured and held by France from 1719-1723. The British
steadily pushed westward from Charleston to establish hegemony over the Cherokee, some of
the Upper Creeks, and several Lower Creek towns. The Seven Years' War, or French and
Indian War, and the Treaty of Paris (1763) marked the end of French power in the New
World, and,because Spain had assisted France after 1761, transferred the Floridas to Great
Britain in return for British evacuation of Havana.
The War of the American Revolution (1776-1783) of the British North
American colonies brought many refugees or Loyalists to Florida. As Spain was allied with
France and the British North American colonies in 1781, the Spanish Governor of New
Orleans captured Pensacola, and, although the British trading houses remained, most of the
British left. By the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Spanish once again occupied Florida.