The period 1814-1818 had been costly for Forbes and Company, and it passed into the hands
of Colin Mitchel of Havana, Cuba, and others.
They reorganized it, after the Forbes Spanish land grant was declared
legal in 1835, as the Apalachicola Land Company. The Indians no longer occupied the area
of Apalachicola Bay nor the ceded lands of the Forbes purchase. Some seventy chiefs met at
Moultrie Creek near St. Augustine and, having elected Neo Mathia their spokesman,
negotiated a treaty with the commissioners from the U. S. War Department and Governor
William Duval of Florida.
Small reservations were given to six chiefs near the Apalachicola River.
In 1833, under pressure from settlers, attacks by other Indians, floods and disease, and
with their annuity cancelled and no government protection, they sold these reservations to
Florida and agreed to leave.
They were gone by 1838. In 1802, the U. S. promised the State of Georgia
to relocate the Indians in that state elsewhere within a reasonable time. The Treaty of
Fort Jackson opened for settlement all lands in the southern part of the state. Two
additional grants in 1818 and the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1821 left the Creeks
concentrated between the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers.
At Broken Arrow in 1824, the Lower Creeks seemed willing to move west of
the Mississippi, but the Upper Creeks did not want to consider another land grant. At
Indian Springs in 1825, the Lower Creeks named William McIntosh their spokesman and sold
their land for five million dollars and an equal area west of the Mississippi.
The Lower Creeks later objected, and William McIntosh was subsequently
killed. The Council for the entire Creek Nation repudiated this treaty. The Lower Creeks
under Chilly McIntosh, son of the murdered chief, went to Washington, as did a delegation
from the Upper Creeks.
The Treaty of Washington ( 1827) resulted. By this treaty, the Creeks in
Georgia were moved west of the Mississippi. In Alabama, farmers encroached on Creek
territory, and the Treaty of Cusseta ( 1832) resulted. Land was to be obtained by the
Indians, sold, and the Indians were then to move west. Intruders flooded the area, and at
one point Francis Scott Key was sent to Alabama to stop encroachments.
Frauds were widespread, however, and speculators started an Indian war to
prevent an investigation. The Creek War (1836-1837) resulted in the Creeks moving west.
General Winfield Scott, from the Seminole Wars, his force augmented by some 1800 Creeks,
fought some 1500 hostiles. In 1837, some Creeks paid their debts by joining the U. S.
forces in the Florida wars.
While there were some remaining incidents, the Indians were gone by 1843.
The departure of the Indians saw the farmers and the planters move in. On the river,
Columbus, Georgia, was started in 1828, Eufaula in 1833 and Albany by 1836.
