Several hundred Creek (Muscogee) warriors known as Red Sticks, led by Homathlimico, with Josiah Francis in the rear, attacked an American military vessel commanded by Lieutenant Richard W. Scott.
After a bloody massacre and scalping, only seven survived, one woman, and six soldiers who escaped by jumping into the river and swimming to the opposite shore, where friendly Creeks helped them reach safety at Camp Crawford on December 2, 1817.
Scott was killed by having splinters of fatwood driven into his body and set afire,[1]: 67 "an excruciating form of execution that had its roots deep in the ancient traditions of the Creek Indians".
[2]: 10 News of the massacre was immediately sent by the camp commander, Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, and Gen. Andrew Jackson.
"An infuriated President James Monroe directed that General Jackson be ordered to the frontier and that the Seminoles and Red Sticks be punished without regard to whether they were in the United States or Spanish Florida.