The Osage, who had a bad habit of “borrowing” other people’s horses, soon had more enemies than they could handle
When the trade in native slaves had slowed during the 1720s, the Chickasaw and other southeastern tribes turned to supplying the British with deerskin.
The deer populations in their homelands quickly disappeared forcing native hunters to range far afield – first the Cumberland Plateau and southern Illinois, and then west of the Mississippi as far as eastern Oklahoma.
The Quapaw who lived there were old Chickasaw enemies, but by the 1760s they had lost so many of their people to epidemic they were no longer able to oppose intrusions by Chickasaw hunters.
Francis River during 1802, and its warriors were routinely reinforced by their relatives from east of the Mississippi who came and stayed for about six months each year
They were also having problems with the Osage who, because of wars with the Sauk and Fox, had been forced south and were compensating themselves with Quapaw territory.
By the time the Spanish took over Louisiana in 1763, there were 200 Chickasaw living more or less permanently west of the Mississippi along the lower Red and Arkansas Rivers.
A small band of pro-French Cherokee arrived shortly afterwards to escape British rule and were joined – ironically enough – twenty years later by a group of pro-British Cherokee trying to escape the Americans.
A severe drought during the summer of 1792 caused massive crop failures throughout the south, and to survive, many Choctaw were forced to hunt west of https://hookupdate.net/lutheran-dating/ the Mississippi.
At the same time, the Spanish after 1763 added to the volatile mix by inviting several large groups of Shawnee and Delaware to settle near Cape Girardeau in southeast Missouri. Read more →