The American Revolution and its aftermath greatly altered an already complicated political situation for various Native American nations in North America. Tribal leaders throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attempted to navigate the three-way power struggle between the French, British, and Spanish colonial powers and their shifting alliances. In one example, the Chickasaw tribe, located in northern Mississippi and working in conjunction with the Choctaw, served as a buffer for the British, with whom they conducted trade and fought alongside in previous wars, by effectively blocking the French. Weakened by years of war and population dispersions, the Chickasaw sought to maintain their neutrality during the war, to the initial confusion and then frustration of the British.