In Georgia and Alabama the painted prophets and medicine men were spreading tales of Indian victories over the white men at the river Raisin and Detroit.

British officials, moreover, got wind of a threatened uprising in the South and secretly encouraged it.
The Alabama settlers took alarm and left their log houses and clearings to seek shelter in the nearest blockhouses and stockades.

One of these belonged to Samuel Mims, a half-breed farmer, who had prudently fortified his farm on a bend of the Alabama River.

A square stockade enclosed an acre of ground around his house and to this refuge hastened several hundred pioneers and their families, with their negro slaves, and a few officers and soldiers.

Here they were surprised and massacred by a thousand naked Indians who called themselves Red Sticks because of the wands carried by their fanatical prophets.