The Battle of Fowltown took place a few

miles south of

Bainbridge

in what is now

Decatur County, Georgia. It was the first

significant action of the Seminole Wars.



The exact site of the encounter has been lost,

but military reports indicate it took place three

to four miles south of a crossing on the Flint

River where Bainbridge stands today. At

about that distance below the city can be

found Fowlstown Swamp, which also was

shown on land lot surveys of the 1820s.

Since army officers said the Creek Indian

village of Fowltown, where the battle was

fought, was almost completely surrounded

by swamp, it is logical to believe the battle

took place somewhere in the vicinity of

Fowlstown Swamp.



In 1817 the village of Fowltown (Tutalosi

Talofa in the Hitchiti language of the Lower

Creeks) was led by the chief Neamathla. The

name as usually given today is actually a

corruption of the Creek title Eneah Emathla

or "Fat Warrior."



Neamathla was not overweight. The title

actually means that he was a "large" or

"exceptionally brave" warrior. As he would

demonstrate over the remaining years of his

life, the title was a well-earned distinction.



Neamathla had led his people south to

occupy the Fowltown site during the winter of

1813-1814. A war party from his original

village near what is now

Albany, Georgia

, had

been defeated by William McIntosh and his

warriors from the U.S.-allied Creek town of

Coweta at the Battle of Uchee, Alabama. For

the safety of his followers, Neamathla took

them down the Flint River to their traditional

lands near the Florida border.



The site where the new village of Fowltown

was built had been the location of an earlier

town of the same name. The 1778 Stuart-

Purcell Map shows a stream in the vicinity of

Fowlstown Swamp that was then called

"Tootoloosa-Hopunga." The word "Hopunga"

means "to break up" or "broken up" in Hitchiti

and the notation on the map clearly referred

to an old Fowltown site that had been

abandoned years before the American

Revolution.



After returning to this vicinity, Neamathla and

his followers established a new village. The

town was the center of a ranching operation

and a U.S. Army officer reported in 1818 that

the people of Fowltown had many head of

cattle. They also raised chickens or fowl and

had adopted spinning and weaving as well

as the production of row crops.



Neamathla and his warriors allied with the

British when they landed a force on the



Apalachicola River

in 1814 during the final

phases of the War of 1812. Lt. Col. Edward

Nicolls, the commander of this effort, gave

Neamathla a British uniform coat and one of

his officers presented the chief with a written

letter stating that the chief had always been a

faithful friend of the English.



The British also gave the Fowltown chief

arms and ammunition for his warriors, a

drum and other military supplies. By the time

the British withdrew from the region in 1815,

Neamathla and his followers were militarily

powerful and prepared to follow Col. Nicoll's

instructions to defend their homes.



During the summer of 1817, U.S. troops

began construction of a permanent fort on a

Flint River bluff about 12 miles east of the

Fowltown settlement. The site had been

occupied for six months the previous year

and was called

Fort Scott

.



Neamathla was not pleased with the building

of the fort and warned its commander, Major

David E. Twiggs, not to cut timber on the east

side of the Flint or even to cross to that side.

The land there, Neamathla said, was his and

he was directed by the "Powers above" to

defend it.



The United States saw it differently. Most of

Southwest Georgia had been ceded to the

U.S. by the

Treaty of Fort Jackson

. Twiggs

demanded that the chief leave and go with

his followers to lands designated for the

Creeks. Neamathla refused, pointing out that

he had not been party to the Treaty of Fort

Jackson and did not consider himself bound

by it.



As the war of words intensified, Maj. Gen.

Edmund P. Gaines ordered the 4th and 7th

U.S. Infantry regiments to Fort Scott and then

headed there in person. The troops reached

the fort on November 19, 1817, and on the

following day Gaines ordered Major Twiggs

to go to Fowltown with 250 soldiers and bring

Neamathla back to the fort.

