[1]: 12 He probably spent his childhood in or near Fowltown (Tutalosi Talofa), on the east bank of the lower Flint River (Georgia), where the Hitchiti were concentrated.
The larger group were the "upper" Creeks, also called Red Sticks, from the color of a symbolic wooden club that indicated readiness for war.
"Lower" Creeks were relatively accommodating of the whites, especially Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins, and began to adapt the sedentary, farming lifestyle that he recommended.
The Red Stick leader Francis the Prophet visited, seeking allies in his plan to resist white civilization, to avoid further land cessions to the whites, and to recover the immense tracts of land lost in the Treaty of New York (1790), the Forbes purchase (1,200,000 acres (1,900 sq mi; 490,000 ha)), and, later, the Treaty of Fort Jackson (23,000,000 acres (36,000 sq mi; 9,300,000 ha)).
[1]: 14–15 The Hitchiti were enthusiastic about the plan, begun by Tecumseh and joined by Neamathla, to create a pan-Indian confederation to prevent the whites from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains.
[1]: 9 When a supply party with ammunition was attacked on its return from Pensacola — a preemptive strike — by U.S. forces, the Red Sticks defeated them at the Battle of Burnt Corn.
In response came an attack on Fort Mims (1813), led by William Weatherford and Peter McQueen (Neamathla was not present), in which the Red Sticks killed over 250 men, women, and children.
Although the battle was more than 50 miles (80 km) from Fowltown, Neamathla led a mass evacuation from the Flint River of the Red Stick Creeks that had taken part.
Across the U.S. border, white settlers believed that they would be forced to surrender, and Andrew Jackson made it known that Francis the Prophet and Peter McQueen would be hung.
[1]: 26 The situation changed when two British warships carrying muskets and other supplies landed near modern Apalachicola, Florida in May, 1814, and sent an officer as recruiter, inviting the Native Americans to take up arms.
[1]: 27 The officer also identified Prospect Bluff as a good location for the logistical base for a planned invasion of the United States via the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers.
[1]: 63 Meanwhile, the Americans were building boats on the Chattahoochee and gathering additional troops with which to destroy the British forts on the Apalachicola as well as the Red Stick villages.
[1]: 65–66 The Red Sticks, newly supplied with arms and ammunition from the abandoned Negro Fort, felt that "widespread combat" was about to break out.
[1]: 99–100, 104 Neamathla threatened Gaines with violence if he and his men crossed to the east bank of the Flint,[1]: 108109 which he considered the border of Spanish Florida.
[1]: 135 An assault, the Battle of Ocheesee, look place on a U.S. supply boat traveling upriver, one mile from the fork in the Apalachicola, at modern Chattahoochee, Florida.
[1]: 145 The following description is by Florida Territorial Governor William Pope Duval, as told by him to Washington Irving: He was a remarkable man; upward of sixty years of age, about six feet high, with a fine eye, and a strongly marked countenance, over which he possessed great command.
He seemed unwilling to acknowledge any superiority of rank or dignity in Governor Duval, claiming to associate with him on terms of equality, as two great chieftains.