In 1813 the Tensaw was part of Mississippi Territory, while until April Mobile and adjacent lands south of 31° latitude belonged to Spain's colony of West Florida. On April 8, American military units crossed the Alabama River at Samuel Mims's ferry on their way south to take Fort Charlotte and Mobile for the United States. That summer the Creek Indian Nation dissolved into civil war as anti-American Redstick Creeks routed the American-backed Creek National Council faction from most native towns on the Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa rivers. Métis people of mixed descent, children of Creek mothers and white or black fathers, were forced to take sides; some, like William Weatherford, fought as Redstick Creeks against American influence and control over their people, while many other métis Creeks fled into Mississippi Territory seeking refuge for their families, including prominent leaders of the anti-Redstick faction. Samuel Mims, a wealthy plantation owner who settled in the Tensaw after the American Revolution, built a stockade of about an acre around his home to protect threatened friends and neighbors. Throughout late July and August 1813, between 400 and 500 people—American settlers, enslaved Africans, métis Creeks, men, women, and children—took shelter in Fort Mims. When a Redstick Creek force arrived on August 30 intending to wipe out their enemies among the métis Creeks, Fort Mims was poorly prepared to withstand an attack. The battle and massacre of civilians that followed shocked and infuriated the American public. Seven months of U.S. military campaigning crushed the Redstick forces, and with the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August 1814, General Andrew Jackson ended the Creek War and seized 21,086,793 acres of land for the United States. In succeeding years, the story of the Fort Mims massacre fed anti-Indian sentiment and agitation for Indian removal, culminating in the Trails of Tears in the 1830s and permanently changing the social landscape of the American South.