Colonel and Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins, there were "200 troops white and black and an assemblage of 500 [Creek] Warriors", "well supplied with cloth[e]s and munitions of War".
The British abandoned both of its forts on the Apalachicola, leaving them in the hands of the black Corps of Colonial Marines that Nicolls had trained, and of Red Stick Creek Neamathla and his warriors.
"The council included representatives from towns or groups of Lower Creeks, Red Sticks, Miccosukee, Alachua, Yuchi and Choctaw.
"[3] In retrospect, this was the founding of the Seminoles, a loose alliance of various groups of indigenous refugees in Spanish Florida, although they did not set up a central authority, which was "extremely difficult for the United States military to understand.
The hope was that Britain would provide them with protection against the United States, so they could recover the land taken since 1811, more specifically that taken in the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which they, the Red Stick Creeks, had not signed and which, they claimed, did not apply to them.
The British government, in no way interested in further conflict with the United States, summarily rejected the Treaty, sent Francis home, and chastised Nicolls.
[2]: 84 A historical marker has been erected at the site: Atop this large prehistoric mound stood Nicolls' Outpost, a British fort of the War of 1812.
Nicolls was assigned the task of forming a battalion of Royal Colonial Marines by enlisting and training both free blacks and liberated slaves from Spanish Florida and the United States.
The outpost provided protection for Nicolls' main base at today's Fort Gadsden Historic Site in the Apalachicola National Forest.