Image credit: Tom Stelling

Year Erected: 1965

Marker Text:  Early in 1702 Joseph de Zuñiga, Spanish Governor of Florida, and Pierre le Moyne Iberville, French founder of Louisiana, made plans to check steadily increasing English trade with the Indian tribes in the interior, and perhaps to drive them out of the Southeast. To accomplish this, they agreed to an expedition against the English and their allies, the Creek Indians, in the Carolina territory which is now Georgia.

In August, Governor Zuñiga sent a force northward of more than 800 Spaniards and Apalaches commanded by Captain Francisco Romo de Uriza. Forewarned by the Indians, Anthony Dodsworth and other traders at Coweta (near present Columbus), marshalled about 500 Creek warriors, lured the invaders into an ambush on the Flint River near here and routed them.

An outstanding authority on Southern frontier history, Dr. Verner W. Crane, said that this battle, “´the prelude to Queen Anne’s War on the Southern frontier,” was in effect “the first blow struck by the English for the control of the Mississippi Valley.”