Horseshoe Bend, Battle of

Decisive battle of the Creek Wars in which a militia led by General Andrew Jackson killed an entire force of 800 Creek warriors on the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River, at Tohopeka, Alabama, on 27 March 1814. The Creeks were subsequently forced to cede more than 23 million acres of land in present-day Alabama and Georgia to the USA.

The Creeks had allied themselves with the British during the War of 1812. The attack at Horseshoe Bend was part of a retaliatory campaign for the Creek massacre of more than 500 settlers at Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama, on 30 August 1813. Jackson's force of 3,000 men equipped with armaments and cannon devastated the Creek defences. The Treaty of Fort Jackson, signed on 9 August, provided for the ceding of the vast American Indian lands.