The battles of Hobdy's Bridge and Pea River grew out of Creeks' desperate effort to avoid removal to the West by fleeing toward Florida along trails near the Pea and Conecuh Rivers, and they became the last large-scale confrontations of the Second Creek War in Alabama. Both were fought near Hobdy's Bridge, the first span over the Pea River, built by Harrel Hobdy about 1835, and afterward the war's focus shifted to northwestern Florida. By January 1837, small groups of Creeks had already begun covert migrations through this area, with many seeking not continued war but escape from American authority and a chance to live unmolested in sparsely populated northwestern Florida. As Creeks moved southward, worried American settlers petitioned Alabama Governor Clement C. Clay to authorize militia companies. At the Battle of Hobdy's Bridge on February 10, 1837, more than 100 American militiamen under Captain Jack Cooper intercepted about 75 Creeks heading for Florida, divided into two groups, and surprised them at their camp, where a brief fight centered on two fallen trees used as a natural breastwork. Short of ammunition, some Creeks fired nails from their muskets, but the Americans overran the position and captured the camp, finding goods recently plundered from area plantations; exact casualties are unknown, though four or five Creeks and perhaps one American were believed killed, and Harrel Hobdy was wounded. The Creeks, though stripped of supplies, continued south while skirmishing with other American troops and, near the Florida border, killed two American settlers. At the Battle of Pea River on March 27, 1837, more than 250 Alabama and Georgia militia under General William Wellborn pursued about 400 Creek fugitives whose route was marked by looted and burned plantations. After locating a temporary camp in a swamp, Wellborn split his force into two wings, one under his own command and the other under Colonel Jefferson Buford, but the Creeks detected the movement, attacked, and scattered Buford's wing. When Wellborn's men reached the camp through waist-high water, a fierce four-hour battle unfolded across a lagoon. Creek warriors, some using bullets made from melted pewter plates, launched several unsuccessful charges before being overrun, after which the fighting turned into a massacre in which at least fifty Creek men, women, and children were killed and an unknown number captured. Survivors fled south in small groups, and according to tradition some captives were later enslaved by local planters; only five Americans were killed, including Wellborn's teenage son James H. Wellborn.