page_title: Fort King George
section_title: Contest for empire in the Southeast
hierarchical_section_title: Fort King George / Background information / Contest for empire in the Southeast
caption_attribution_description: English: A Coehorn mortar at Fort King George, Darien, Georgia, US
context_page_description: Fort King George State Historic Site is a fort located in the U.S. state of Georgia in McIntosh County, adjacent to Darien. The fort was built in 1721 along what is now known as the Darien River and served as the southernmost outpost of the British Empire in the Americas until 1727. The fort was constructed in what was then considered part of the colony of South Carolina, but was territory later settled as Georgia. It was part of a defensive line intended to encourage settlement along the colony's southern frontier, from the Savannah River to the Altamaha River. Great Britain, France, and Spain were competing to control the American Southeast, especially the Savannah-Altamaha River region.
  Fort King George was a hardship for troops assigned there. A total of 140 officers and soldiers died, mostly from camp diseases such as dysentery and malaria, due to poor sanitation. The soldiers made up The Independent Company of South Carolina, an "invalid" company of elderly British Regulars, one hundred in all, sent over from Great Britain. Their suffering was largely caused by their own poor health, and inadequate provisions due to poor funding.
context_section_description: The Spanish were the first to arrive in the Southeast, first with explorers, then with the settlement of St. Augustine in present-day Florida in 1565. They started creating a mission system, converting the Native American tribes and using them as workers for agricultural production. The city became a base so that the Spanish could protect their treasure ships carrying gold and silver from the South. They used missions to expand the Catholic faith to the numerous tribes found in the Southeast. The converted Native Americans were incorporated into the Spanish system of repartimiento. They used an indigenous labor force capable of growing surplus grains for needy colonists in the Spanish-American Empire.
  By the mid-17th century, dozens of Spanish missions controlled the southeastern coastline with thousands of Native Americans drawn into and around them. This system centered on missions accompanied with troops occupying presidios. They created four mission provinces: Tumucua (interior northern Florida), Apalachee (northwestern Florida), Guale (Georgia coast north of the Altamaha River), and Mocama (from the Altamaha River south to the St. Johns River). The name Guale was possibly derived from a Native American chief of that name who was visited by Pedro Menéndez on St. Catherines Island in 1566. In that year, Menéndez established troops on that island. Santa Catalina de Guale would later become one of the largest and most productive missions by the mid-17th century.
  Another successful mission was Santo Domingo de Talaje. Established sometime in the early 17th century, this mission was located on a large bluff 3 miles (5 km) up the north branch of the Altamaha River. Native Americans had inhabited the bluff for thousands of years. The English later used this site as the location for Fort King George in the 1720s.
  Guale was threatened by the settlement of English Carolina immediately to the north, where Charlestown was established in 1670. Through the late seventeenth century, Carolinian forces and their Indian allies were successful at destroying the Spanish mission system. Throughout the 1670s and 1680s, they attacked and destroyed missions on Saint Catherines Island, St Simons Island, Cumberland Island, and several interior missions situated close to the coast. San Joseph de Sapala on Sapelo Island was destroyed by pirates in 1683, leading to Spanish abandonment of the Guale and Mocama provinces. Likewise, the British and allied forces reduced the Apalachee mission province during the first decade of the 18th century. The surviving mission Indians retreated and aggregated farther south until their remnants were situated just north of the Saint Augustine base near the St. Johns River. During the 1680s, the Carolina colonists had effectively driven the Spanish entirely from the modern Georgia coast. This campaign intensified hostilities between the Spanish and the English. It catalyzed British interest in settling the Savannah-Altamaha River region.
  
  Further west, the French were moving down the Mississippi and into the Gulf region. In 1699 Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville founded Biloxi, and Mobile, the first capital of French Louisiana, was settled in 1702. From these bases, French fur traders planned to move eastward to incorporate regional tribes, especially the Creek, into their business enterprise. In 1718, they built Fort Toulouse at the forks of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, in the heart of Creek country. This settlement, designed to take business from Carolina traders, was close to the Creek capital of Coweta. The British perceived it as a threat to their plans to control trade networks throughout the Southeast, especially among the Creek and Cherokee. The tribes' geographical proximity to the Carolina colony made their stability vital. The British intended to expand their trade westward to other Southeast tribes, such as the Choctaw and Chickasaw. 
  In 1702, during the War of Spanish Succession, Spain and France allied against Great Britain. South Carolinians were bordered by enemies to the south and west, which inten
caption: A Coehorn mortar
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