Pénicaut mentions an intertribal war between them and the Cha'hta, and relates a case of treason committed by a Cha'hta chief in 1703.[56] A war with the Creeks occurred in 1793, in which the Americans stood on the Chicasa side.
The policy of the Chicasa in regard to the white colonists was that of a steady and protracted enmity against the French. This feeling was produced as well by the intrigues of the British traders residing among them as by their hatred of the Cha'hta, who had entered into friendly relations with the French colonists, though they could not, by any means, be called their trusty allies. By establishing fortified posts on the Yazoo and Little Tombigbee rivers,[57] the French threatened the independence of these Indians, who began hostilities against them in 1722, near the Yazoo post, and urged the Naktche to a stubborn resistance against French encroachments. They sheltered the retreating Naktche against the pursuing French,[58] besieged the commander Denys at Fort Natchitoches, though they were repulsed there with considerable loss, defeated the French invading their country at Amalahta (1736), at the Long House, or Tchúka faláya (Adair, p. 354), and other points, and in the second attack of 1739-40 also baffled their attempts at conquering portions of Chicasa territory.
The relations of these Indians with the United States were regulated by a treaty concluded at Hopewell, 1786, with Pio mico and other Chicasa chiefs. Their territory was then fixed at the Ohio river on the north side, and by a boundary line passing through Northern Mississippi on the south side. They began to emigrate to the west of Arkansas river early in this century, and in 1822 the population remaining in their old seats amounted to 3625. Treaties for the removal of the remainder were concluded at Pontotoc creek, October 20th, 1832, and at Washington, May 24th, 1834.
After their establishment in the Indian Territory the political connections still existing between them and the Cha'hta were severed by a treaty signed June 22d, 1855. The line of demarcation separating the two "nations," and following the meridian, is not, however, of a binding character, for individuals of both peoples settle east or west of it, wherever they please (G. W. Stidham).
No plausible analysis of the name Chicasa, which many western tribes, as well as the Chicasa themselves, pronounce Shikasa, Shíkasha, has yet been suggested. Near the Gulf coast it occurs in many local names, and also in Chickasawhay river, Mississippi, the banks of which were inhabited by Cha'hta people.
In language and customs they differ but little from their southern neighbors, the Cha'hta, and must be considered as a northern branch of them. Both have two phratries only, each of which were (originally) subdivided, in an equal manner, into four gentes; but the thorough-going difference in the totems of the 8-12 gentes points to a very ancient separation of the two national bodies.
The Chicasa language served as a medium of commercial and tribal intercourse to all the nations inhabiting the shores of the great Uk-'hina ("water road"), or Lower Mississippi river. Jefferys (I, 165), compares it to the "lingua franca in the Levant; they call it the vulgar tongue." A special mention of some tribes which spoke it is made by L. d'Iberville[59]: "Bayagoula, Ouma, Chicacha, Colapissa show little difference in their language;" and "The Oumas, Bayogoulas, Theloël, Taensas, the Coloas, the Chycacha, the Napissa, the Ouachas, Choutymachas, Yagenechito, speak the same language and understand the Bilochy, the Pascoboula." As we have seen before, three of the above tribes, the Naktche portion of the Théloël settlements, the Taensa and the Shetimasha had their own languages, but availed themselves of the Chicasa for the purposes of intertribal barter, exchange and communication. The most important passages on this medium of trade are contained in Le Page du Pratz, Histoire (II, 218. 219): "La langue Tchicacha est parlée aussi par les Chatkas (sic!) et (corrompue) par les Taensas; cette langue corrompue est appelée Mobilienne par les Français," etc., and in Margry V, 442, where Pénicaut alleges to have studied the languages of the Louisiana savages pretty thoroughly for five years, "surtout le Mobilien, qui est le principal et qu'on entend par toutes les nations." Cf. the article Naktche.
A few terms in which Chicasa differs from main Cha'hta are as follows:
| Chicasa | kuíshto panther, | Cha'hta | kuítchito |
| kóe domestic cat, | káto (Spanish) | ||
| ísto large, | tchíto | ||
| iskitinúsa small, | iskitinĕ | ||
| húshi bird, | fúshi |