In 1813, people on the United State’s southwestern frontier feared war as the Redstick faction of the Creek Indian Nation opposed growing American influence and had voted for war, while Creeks in the Tensaw area had intermarried with European and American settlers and were close allies. After local American militia and allied Creeks attacked a group of Redsticks at Burnt Corn Creek early in the summer, tensions grew and many families along the Tensaw, Alabama, and Tombigbee rivers took refuge in quickly fortified sites, including a stockade built around Samuel Mims’s plantation and later enlarged with help from volunteer troops from Mississippi. As weeks passed without an attack, the people there grew complacent. At midday on August 30, about 700 Redstick warriors attacked, entered through an open gate, and fired into the fort through poorly designed gun ports. Major Daniel Beasely died in the first wave, but part-Creek Dixon Bailey rallied the defenders. After five hours of fighting, more than 500 attackers and defenders were dead, including most of the women and children there. News spread quickly throughout the South, and troops from surrounding states and territories joined to crush the Creek War by the following summer. On August 9, 1814, defeated Creek leaders met at Fort Jackson near Wetumpka and ceded 23 million acres of their land to the United States.