However, because the Chickasaw still controlled the river between Memphis and the Ohio, Willing was unable to return to Kentucky and proceeded south to Spanish-controlled New Orleans
Assured that they would side with them against the Americans, the British sent a pack train with 3,000 pounds of powder and lead to the Chickasaw Bluffs in December, 1775.
Because of the recent war with the Cherokee, the Chickasaw were reluctant to join Chickamauga raids against the Georgia and Carolina frontiers and had even less inclination to help the Ohio and Great Lakes tribes (French allies and bitter enemies during the previous fifty years) in their war with the Kentucky frontiersmen along the Ohio River.
Since the settlers near Natchez and Walnut Hill (Vicksburg) had shown themselves more neutral than Tory, there was concern at the beginning of the war that the Americans would make an attempt to capture the lower Mississippi Valley.
Kentucky frontiersmen in 1777 became aware of the British weakness in the west and passed this information back to Virginia where Governor Patrick Henry quickly gave permission for two expeditions against the British along the Mississippi.
By far, the best known of these was the one commanded by George Rogers Clark which captured the Illinois country during the summer of 1778 and six months later defeated the British effort to retake it.
Clark’s victory was responsible for the Mississippi River becoming the western boundary of the United States in 1783, but the lesser known expedition of Captain James Willing deserves a piece of the credit.
In February, 1778 Willing and 100 men slipped past the Chickasaw blockade on the Mississippi and to raid the 
Tory plantations near Natchez and Walnut Hill.
A British counterattack failed, and in the spring of 1781, the Spanish collected a force of 100 ships and 30,000 men to capture Pensacola.
Both the Savannah River and Mississippi Chickasaw participated in the British defense of their last bastion on the Gulf, but faced with overwhelming force, General Campbell surrendered in May, 1781.
Only Detroit and the Chickasaw homeland remained as British strongholds in the west, and as they had done with the French, the Chickasaw promptly closed the Mississippi River to Spanish traffic cutting St.
Their most notable exploit during the war occurred when they captured a Spanish convoy on the river which included the wife of the Spanish Governor of Missouri.
This came in 1780 when George Rogers Clark built Fort Jefferson (named for Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia at the time) in western Kentucky to protect the Kentucky settlements and break the Chickasaw stranglehold on the Mississippi.
As the war wound down after the American victory at Yorktown, the British sent word to the Chickasaw during 1782 that it would be best for them to make their own arrangements with the Americans.
The Spanish in Missouri did not have the military power to retaliate but did succeed in getting the Kickapoo near St
Governor Thomas Jefferson expressed a similar desire, and in November, 1783 the Chickasaw met with his representatives at French Lick near Nashville and made peace with Virginia.
Virginia in return promised to expel squatters from Chickasaw territory, the eastern boundary of which was determined to be the divide between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers extending from the Ohio River south to Duck Creek.
The boundaries of the new United States set by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 meant very little in the years following the war.
The British continued to occupy their forts on American territory in the Great Lakes and, in an attempt to foster the economic collapse of their former colonies, armed the Ohio tribes to keep the Americans out of Ohio.
