Ekanachatte, or Red Ground, was an important Creek town at present-day Neal's Landing Park during the latter half of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century. Before the English occupation of Florida began in 1763, the site was known as the Chisca (Yuchi) Old Fields, reflecting an earlier Yuchi presence. As bands of Creek Indians migrated into West Florida from towns on the Tallapoosa, Coosa, Alabama, and Middle Chattahoochee Rivers, one group settled here on the elevated banks of the Chattahoochee River, cleared the second growth of the old fields, built homes from the timber, and established a community at a strategic crossing on the Pensacola-St. Augustine Road. During the American Revolution, when the Floridas remained loyal to Britain, Colonel James Stuart's expedition from Pensacola reached the town on July 25, 1778, was welcomed by its residents, remained for six days during the Creek Busk or Green Corn Festival, and after a council held here on July 28, Creek warriors from surrounding towns joined the expedition to help defend St. Augustine. The chief involved in those negotiations was Cockee, widely known as the Bully, a trader and businessman so successful that British, Spanish, and American observers all knew him by that name; John Pope wrote in 1792 that he was one of the two wealthiest men in the Creek Nation. The Bully was also associated with William Augustus Bowles, who in 1795 declared himself Director General of the State of Muskogee, and local legend holds that treasure from one of Bowles's ships may still lie buried nearby. After the Bully died in the early 19th century, his nephew Econchattimico, or Red Ground King, became chief. Under Spanish Florida, he gave refuge to thousands of Red Stick Creeks after Horseshoe Bend in 1814, and Ekanachatte became one of the important centers of resistance in the First Seminole War. In March 1818, after learning that a large Creek force had joined the U.S. Army against the Red Stick Creek and Seminole alliance, Econchattimico hid his people in the swamps of the upper Chipola River, and the abandoned town was burned by Melintosh's warriors. Its fields were soon taken up by American settlers, and after Florida entered the United States in 1821 the site became Neal's Landing, first a ferry crossing and later a prosperous steamboat landing that remained a vital port for more than a century before river traffic declined in the 1940s.