78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Lower Creeks moved to Florida or inland to the Chattahoochee River, 

 and it was some time before British prestige was restored among the 

 Creeks. It was injured still further by the French when they estab- 

 lished Fort Toulouse in 1717 in the midst of the Upper Creek country. 

 However, the Natchez War was much more damaging to England's 

 rivals than the Yamasee War had been to them, and it was not long 

 before the English had enlisted the support of a considerable faction 

 among the Choctaw. This was, indeed, suppressed by the French 

 party and, in spite of French failures in their attacks upon the Chicka- 

 saw, British progress in this quarter was held up until the conclusion 

 of the French and Indian war in 1763. Toward the north, also, they 

 encountered obstinate resistance from the Cherokee, who sustained 

 a long war against them from November 1759 to September 1761, 

 during which Fort Loudon was captured and the so-called Fort 

 Loudon massacre took place. 



Southward, however, British influence continued to increase, espe- 

 cially after the founding of Georgia. As we have seen, the Indian 

 tribes under Spanish protection were rapidly decimated and their 

 places taken by Lower Creek Indians, who were much more favorably 

 inclined toward the English. Finally, in 1763, Florida and all the 

 French possessions east of the Mississippi were ceded to Great Britain, 

 and, as we have also seen, the French possessions west of that river had 

 passed into the hands of Spain. These cessions effectually interfered 

 with that political trading between the British, Spaniards, and French 

 which was a characteristic policy of the Creek Indians, particularly 

 since the latter were usually on bad terms with the Choctaw between 

 their territories and Louisiana or actively fighting them. In 1783 

 the new American republic replaced Great Britain as the dominant 

 Anglo-Saxon power on the North American continent, but it required 

 some time to acquire the friendships and live down the antipathies 

 which the mother country had acquired among the various tribes, es- 

 pecially as Spain was in control of Florida again and the entire Gulf 

 coast as far as the mouth of the Mississippi, besides most of the conti- 

 nent beyond that river. The Cherokee had already taken sides with 

 the mother country, and after the war was officially closed they con- 

 tinued to maintain hostilities until 1794. 



But settlers were pouring in from the Atlantic seaboard in ever 

 increasing streams, and Spain became proportionately weaker year by 

 year. In 1803 all of the territory to which Spain had fallen heir in 

 1762, except that included in the present State of Florida, was ac- 

 quired by th3 United States, but English sympathizers, both white and 

 Indian, were not lacking in the region of the Gulf, and they were 

 tacitly supported by most of the Spanish officials in Florida, so that 

 these two elements were factors in the first serious Indian war waged 



