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About
Prudence Mims flourished as the youngest daughter of a prominent planter in the wilderness of the Tensaw Delta in present-day Alabama. The American Revolution ended forty years before and a steady stream of settlers from the former British Colonies flooded into the southern frontier wilderness. Samuel Mims and his brother David, came to the Mississippi Territory as Indian Traders during the American Revolution acquiring a land grant from the governor of Spanish West Florida and for years the Mims family lived in peace in the ancestral home of Creek Indians. During the years he lived with the Creeks and Cherokees, Mims learned the Creek language and customs becoming friends with many prominent Creek Chiefs including Chief Alexander McGillivray and Chief William Weatherford. However, everything changed when the United States exerted their territorial claims to the southern region of the American frontier. In 1799, a survey between the Mississippi Territory and West Florida moved the boundary to the north putting the Mims Plantation squarely in lands claimed by the United States. Before long, the violence between the Settlers and Woodland Indian Tribes escalated from the Great Lakes, across the Ohio River Valley and the Southern Frontier. During this Era of violence, a Shawnee Prophet emerged. The Prophet Tecumseh began preaching that the unification of all Native American Tribes was the only way to stem the tide of white settlers into their ancestral homelands. Many Creeks became followers of Tecumseh, began to believe that the only way to return to protect themselves from white aggressors was through purification of the Creek Race and a return to the "old ways". As tensions between Native American Tribes and Americans settlers grew more and more violent, a great divide grew between factions of the Creek Tribe. The Red Sticks became followers of the Shawnee Prophet Tecumseh who began punishing Samuel Mims' Creek neighbors who'd settled in the Tensaw and become "too Americanized". In time, Mims built a fort around his home for the protection of his property from Red Stick aggressions, but soon the Mims Family would become collateral damage in a game of cat and mouse when the Mississippi Volunteer Militia set up camp at what would become known as Fort Mims. Based on family lore, Red Tears is the untold story how Prudence Mims, her mother, and brothers narrowly escaped when these worlds collided on August 30, 1813, resulting in the worst massacre by Woodland Indians in American history - forever changing the framework of a continent.