Final Battle of the Creek Indian War, Horseshoe Bend

Horseshoe Bend National Military Park
Final Battle of the Creek Indian War

March 27, 1814
12 miles north of Dadeville, Alabama, Hwy 49

Storming the Barricade the soldiers of the U.S. 39th Infantry followed by Tennessee militiamen pour over the log wall to attack the Creek Indians. The barricade was five to eight feet high. In the foreground, the man with an arrow in his leg is Sam Houston, later of Texas fame.

postmarked in 2010 with a 32 cent 'Remember the Maine' stamp

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Creek Indian War:

The Upper Creeks, siding with the English, sacked Fort Mims (Baldwin County, Alabama, north of Mobile) in the summer of 1813, massacring more than 500 men, women, and children. These same Indians, grown to a force of about 900 warriors, were decisively beaten at Horseshoe Bend (Tallapoosa County, Alabama) late in March 1814 by Andrew Jackson and his force of about 2,000 Regulars, militia, and volunteers, plus several hundred friendly Indians.


USA Stamp 1997
32 cents
Remember the Maine

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The USS Maine was the United States Navy's second commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship, although she was originally classified as an armored cruiser. She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor. Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain. On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew. Though then, as now, the cause and responsibility for her sinking were unclear; popular opinion in the U.S. blamed Spain, and the sinking (popularized in the phrase Remember the Maine) was one of the precipitating events of the Spanish–American War. Her sinking remains the subject of speculation, with various authors proposing that she sank due to the results of an undetected fire in one of her coal bunkers, that she was the victim of a naval mine, or that she was deliberately sunk for the purposes of driving the U.S. into a war with Spain. The cause of the explosion that sank the ship still remains a mystery.