The Second Creek War began in May 1836 when some area Creeks, angered by their treatment after the Treaty of Cusseta and facing desperate circumstances, attacked American settlements. Small battles in eastern Alabama and western Georgia during the early summer brought organized rebel resistance under pressure from American and allied Creek forces, and in July officials declared the war concluded. By fall 1836, forced removal of Creeks to the West had begun, but in Barbour County three clashes opened a new phase of the conflict as small Creek bands continued to evade military units and removal camps remained in operation. On December 29, 1836, six warriors looted and burned Dr. Cullen Battle's plantation in northeastern Barbour County, killed one of his slaves, and narrowly missed Battle himself, an attack believed to have been in reprisal for the murder of a Creek man who had briefly left a removal camp in Macon County earlier that month. Alarmed settlers expected more raids, and President Martin Van Buren's order led Alabama Governor Clement C. Clay to call for a battalion of volunteers. On January 20, 1837, about sixty warriors attacked Lewis Pugh's plantation, killing Pugh, his overseer, and several slaves; when nearby settlers arrived, a skirmish left two more white men dead before the Creeks withdrew, destroying a store and burning two houses along Cowikee Creek. Colonel William Wellborn of the Barbour Rangers pursued them and on January 28 encountered the warriors in a swamp along Martin's Creek, where after about thirty minutes of intense fighting the greatly outnumbered militia retreated with one man killed and about five wounded, including Wellborn. The renewed fighting in Barbour County during the winter of 1836-37 provoked demands to close the remaining removal camps and deport all Creeks immediately, and in February 1837 Secretary of War Joel Poinsett ordered the removal. By the end of March, more than 2,000 Creeks had been sent overland to Montgomery and then down the Alabama River to Mobile Bay for the journey up the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, though small scattered bands still remained in the area.