At the same time, other groups loyal to the French – Alibamu, Coushatta, Mobile, Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Tunica – chose to leave rather than accept British rule and crossed the Mississippi into Spanish Louisiana

In February a Chickasaw delegation arrived at Fort Assumption to make peace, and Bienville was forced to sign an agreement where the only Chickasaw concession was the resumption of French traffic on the Mississippi.

The Chickasaw had inflicted three successive defeats on the French, but it had cost them three-quarters of their population, and they could not afford any more of these “victories.

” Seeing some chance that Bienville’s departure would open a door to a permanent peace with the French, a Chickasaw delegation visited Vaudreuil in August, 1743 asking for peace.

The Chickasaw must stop their trade with the British and accept the authority of their French “father” with the added stipulation that a peace also needed the consent of the Choctaw.

So nothing came of the Chickasaw peace initiative, and the French continued to pay the Choctaw for Chickasaw scalps and enslave captured Chickasaw.

The outbreak of the King George’s War (1744-48) between Britain and France actually brought further relief when a British naval blockade cut the supply of French trade goods and weakened their control over native allies.

Raids by French allies north of the Ohio lessened, and the Chickasaw took advantage of this during 1745 to join the Cherokee in expelling the last groups of Shawnee from disputed territory in the Cumberland Basin.

With the French faction once again in control, the Choctaw resumed their war against the Chickasaw, but a combined Cherokee-Chickasaw war party inflicted a serious defeat on the Choctaw in 1750.

Raids resumed, and in 1752 Vaudreuil sent an army of 700 regulars with a large number of native allies up the Tombigbee to destroy the Chickasaw.

Occasional nuisance raids continued for the remaining years of the French presence in North America, but the northern tribes gradually lost interest, and 1752 marked the last serious French attempt to defeat the Chickasaw.

Although the outcome was no longer in doubt after the fall of Quebec to the British in 1759, the French and Indian War (1755-63) did not officially end until the signing of Treaty of Fountainbleau in February, 1763

France was gone, but in a last minute secret accord, it denied Britain Louisiana west of the Mississippi by transferring it to Spain.

However, the British had acquired a vast amount of territory east of the Mississippi River, and with it, an unhappy group of former maturesinglesonly French allies.

The reaction to this was the Pontiac Rebellion in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley which captured nine of the twelve British forts west of the Appalachians during 1763.

The only hostilities were in 1764 when the Choctaw and Tunica, in response to an appeal from Pontiac, attacked a British expedition ascending the Mississippi to take control of the Illinois country from the French at Fort de Chartres.

Otherwise, the British settled into their garrisons at Fort Charlotte (Mobile), Fort Bute (Manchac), and Fort Panmure (Natchez) without opposition.

At councils held at Augusta (1763) and Mobile (1765), Governor George Johnson explained the new order to be administered from Pensacola (Britain had also acquired Florida from Spain).

While chastising the Choctaw for their duplicity (service to the French), he pointing to the Chickasaw as an example of what would to be expected.

The British then imposed a peace between the Choctaw and Chickasaw, which also endured, but the Choctaw were not entirely happy and continued to maintain ties with former French officials, many of whom had moved west and gone to work for the Spanish.

Although the outcome was no longer in doubt after the fall of Quebec to the British in 1759, the French and Indian War (1755-63) did not officially end until the signing of Treaty of Fountainbleau in February, 1763