The Battle of Flint River was a failed attack by Spanish and Apalachee Indian forces against Creek Indians in October 1702 in what is now the state of Georgia. The battle was a major element in ongoing frontier hostilities between English colonists from the Province of Carolina and Spanish Florida, and it was a prelude to more organized military actions of Queen Anne's War. The Creeks, assisted by a small number of English colonists led by trader Anthony Dodsworth, ambushed the invaders on the banks of the Flint River. More than half of the Spanish-Indian force was killed or captured. English and Spanish colonial authorities reacted to the battle by accelerating preparations that culminated in the siege of St. Augustine in November 1702. Background English and Spanish colonization efforts in South-eastern North America began coming into conflict as early as the middle of the 17th century. The founding of the Province of Carolina in 1663 and Charles Town in 1670 by English colonists significantly raised tensions with the Spanish who had long been established in Florida. Merchants and slavers from the new province penetrated into Spanish Florida, leading to raiding and reprisal expeditions on both sides. In 1700, governor of Carolina Joseph Blake threatened the Spanish that English claims to Pensacola, established by the Spanish in 1698, would be enforced. Carolina-based merchants such as Anthony Dodsworth and Thomas Nairne had established alliances with Creek Indians in the upper watersheds of rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico, whom they supplied with arms and from whom they purchased slaves and animal pelts. The Spanish population of Florida at the time was fairly small. Since its founding in the 16th century, the Spanish had established a network of missions whose primary purpose was to subdue the local Indian population and convert them to Roman Catholicism. In the Apalachee region (roughly present-day western Florida and southwestern Georgia) there were 14 mission communities with a total population in 1680 of about 8,000. Many, but not all, of these communities were populated by the Apalachee; others were from different tribes that had migrated southward to the area. The Spanish had a policy of not arming these Indians with firearms, and Spanish missions for the Apalachee began to be targeted by Carolinian raiders and their Creek allies starting from 1701. In January 1702, French naval officer and founder of Mobile Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville encouraged the