They dwelt among the blue-topped ridges and lofty peaks of the southern Alleghanies,[4] in the wild and picturesque region where the present States of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas join one another.
To the west of the Cherokees, on the banks of the Mississippi, were the Chickasaws, the smallest of the southern nations, numbering at the outside but four thousand souls;[5] but they were also the bravest and most warlike, and of all these tribal confederacies theirs was the only one which was at all closely knit together.

The whole tribe acted in unison.

In consequence, though engaged in incessant warfare with the far more numerous Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, they more than held their own against them all; besides having inflicted on the French two of the bloodiest defeats they ever suffered from Indians.
Most of the remnants of the Natchez, the strange sun-worshippers, had taken refuge with the Chickasaws and become completely identified with them, when their own nationality was destroyed by the arms of New Orleans.
The Choctaws, the rudest and historically the least important of these Indians, lived south of the Chickasaws.

They were probably rather less numerous than the Creeks.[6] Though accounted brave they were treacherous and thievish, and were not as well armed as the others.

They rarely made war or peace as a unit, parties frequently acting in conjunction with some of the rival European powers, or else joining in the plundering inroads made by the other Indians upon the white settlements.