When the sun came up in present-day Houston County 200 years ago today, on October 30, 1817, there weren't any families of American pioneers living on this land but that was ALL about to change. On that day, President James Monroe authorized his Secretary of War to send a letter to General Edmund P. Gaines (namesake of Ft. Gaines, Georgia & Ft. Gaines on Dauphin Island along with the Gainesvilles in Florida, Georgia, Texas & New York. Gainesville, Alabama is named after his brother. ) authorizing him to move more troops from Fort Montgomery on the Alabama River to Fort Scott near present-day Bainbridge. The stage had now been set for THE END OF THE FRONTIER. The Indian Treaty Line  had been marked  and the word had gone out that every Indian was expected to begin packing their bags and make a decision either to move north to the reservation that began just below Thomas Mill Creek on present-day Lake Eufaula or to head south across Ellicott's Line, our present-day Alabama-Florida line below Madrid. Of course, even with their gruesome defeat at Horseshoe Bend a little over three years earlier, the Indians weren't prepared to leave their native homeland quietly. One month later, on November 30, 1817, the bloodiest battle of the ENTIRE FIRST SEMINOLE WAR occurred on the Apalachicola about 60 miles below present-day Dothan when the Indians attacked a supply boat coming upriver on a voyage that originated from Mobile Point (present-day Fort Morgan).  Appropriately, Dothan commemorates this horrific, landmark event with a mural on East Main. It is one of THREE MURALS dedicated to the first Seminole War in the Circle City.