The Chickamauga Wars (1776–1794) were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles which were a continuation of the Cherokee (Ani-Yunwiya, Ani-Kituwa, Tsalagi, Talligewi) struggle during and after the American Revolutionary War against encroachment by American frontiersmen from the former British colonies. Until the end of the Revolution, the Cherokee fought in part as British allies. After 1786, they also fought along with and as members of the Western Confederacy, organized by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, in an effort to repulse European-American settlers from the area west of the Appalachian Mountains.