The Red Sticks decided to attack the garrison at Fort Mims in the Mississippi Territory (present-day Tensaw, in southwestern Alabama), in an attempt to reduce the influence of the Tensaw Creek who controlled the fort.
History graduate student Karl Davis interpretted the attack in a journal article treatment, in a manner contrary to prevailing scholarship at the time: as a punitive expedition specifically directed against the Tensaw, a group of Lower Creek who were "separated from core Creek values."[REF]