He abandoned work as a trader between Savannah, Georgia and the border settlements and as a mill owner-operator to guide immigrants into Mississippi, over Native American lands.

Dale was involved in, many of, these confrontations, particularly in 1814, when he served as a courier bringing documents to Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, from Georgia in just eight days.

After the Indians fled, many of the militia let down their guard and immediately started looting the supply train without setting proper security.

At least 80 of the militia including Captains Samuel Dale, Dixon Bailey, and Smoot faced the Indians and bravely fought them.

Sometime later, Samuel’s scouts brought news of 80 or a hundred Indians camped on the eastside of Alabama, near what is now called Dale’s Ferry.

Crossing the river in two canoes, which Samuel Dale previously concealed, the Americans spent the night in the canebrake.

At daylight, he manned each canoe with five picked men, and directed them to move cautiously up the river, while the rest of the American militia followed the trail which ran along the bank.

[4] Samuel Dale rode with Major Cassel’s American horse-mounted militiamen to raid and destroy Creek villages.

The militia rode near an upriver and destroyed an enemy Red Stick village at the mouth of Pintlala Creek.

Samuel Dale and his militia then rode on raiding and destroying other Creek enemy villages and farms in the neighborhood.

As a legislator and distinguished veteran brigadier general, he and four other men received the visiting Marquis de Lafayette of France into Alabama.

A decade later, he was accidentally injured and was not able to carry out the illegal (against a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court) forced relocation of the local Choctaw-speaking Indians the complete distance from Alabama and Mississippi to their assigned territories in Oklahoma.

[citation needed] Dale died on May 24, 1841, in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, and was buried there near Daleville, which was named in his honor.