The Creek Indians, whom Tecumseh had war, had been driven into Florida by Jackson. But they fancied that as they had made war to please the British, the latter would arrange, in the treaty of Ghent, that their lands in Alabama should be given back to them. Great Britain did nothing of the kind, however, and when the Creeks saw that they had been forgotten, they came over the border to take their lands by force.
The Creeks and their allies, the Seminoles, murdered some white settlers, so Monroe sent troops southward to bring them to order. The leader of this force, General Jackson, was such a hard fighter that he soon drove the Indians back into Florida. There, finding the Spaniards had helped them, he burned a few small towns, and killed two English traders, who had also helped the Indians.
This might have made trouble, for the United States was just then trying to agree with Great Britain about our frontiers. Still, the work went smoothly on, until part of the northern boundary of the United States (that is, of the Louisiana purchase) was fixed as the 49th parallel of latitude, from the Lake of the Woods to the top of the Rocky Mountains. It was also decided that the Oregon country, then a large tract of wild woodland reaching from these mountains to the Pacific, should be jointly occupied by Americans and British for the next ten years.
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