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Gulf States: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi

miles (43 km) north of Mobile Bay. Nine years later, the settlement was moved south, to the site of present- day Mobile. It served as the capital of French Louisiana—a huge territory in the middle of North America claimed by France—until 1720. The Gulf Coast region between Florida in the east and the Mississippi River in the west changed hands several times during the 1700s. Great Britain claimed possession of the region in 1763. The British had defeated France in the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). Britain ceded the area to Spain in 1783, after the United States had won indepen- dence in the Revolutionary War. The United States gained most of the area through a 1795 treaty with Spain. Spain kept the Mobile District, a small area in present-day southeastern Mississippi and southwestern Alabama. In 1798, the U.S. Congress organ- ized the Mississippi Territory. It con- sisted of a slice of present-day Alabama and Mississippi extending

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only about a hundred miles (161 km) from south to north. In 1804, howev- er, the Mississippi Territory was expanded to the current northern bor- ders of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1812, the United States annexed the Mobile District. That area was added to the Mississippi Territory. In 1813–1814, the Creek War raged across parts of present-day Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. It On October 18, 1540, Hernando de Soto’s Spanish force fought a huge battle with Indian warriors led by a chief named Tuskaloosa. The battle took place somewhere in western or southwestern Alabama, at an Indian town known as Mabila. The Spaniards suffered only about 20 dead while killing thousands of Indians and burn- ing Mabila to the ground. Still, many historians believe de Soto’s expedition never fully recovered from the battle. The Spaniards lost a lot of their hors- es and equipment at Mabila, and many of the men were wounded.