On the far distant southwestern borders of the English colonies were the southern possessions of France.
The French sphere of influence extended up the Mississippi, and thence by way of rivers and the Great Lakes to its base in Canada on the borders of New England and New York.

In South Carolina dwelt the Yamasi tribe of about three thousand warriors, their chief towns only sixty or eighty miles distant from the Spanish town of St.Augustine.On the west, about the same distance northeast of New Orleans, in what is now Alabama and Georgia, lay the Creek nation.

There French garrisons held Mobile and Fort Alabama.

The Creeks at this time numbered over four thousand warriors.

The lands of the Choctaws, a tribe of even larger fighting strength, began two hundred miles north of New Orleans and extended along the Mississippi.