This project adopts an international relations perspective to examine how the Chickasaws conceptualized their position within the unraveling system of western imperial involvement in North America from the American Revolution until the end of the nineteenth century. In their attempts to assert their right to sovereignty during the Early American Republic, the Chickasaws transformed from a coalescent society into a consolidated nation-state. As a result, the Chickasaws established a strong political organization that prolonged their ability to thwart American attempts to subjugate them to the status of domestic dependent nations further than conventional historiography admits. Whereas most scholars credit removal with establishing an understanding among Native Americans that they must accept United States hegemony, I argue that the federal-state power struggle offered opportunities for the Chickasaw to negotiate for autonomous sovereignty through the end of the Civil War. In settling the debate over authority within the United States, the process of reconstruction--not removal--demonstrated to the Chickasaws that the United States was able to impose a permanent semi-sovereign status on Native Americans. By developing a native understanding of the debates concerning the nature of authority during the first century of the United States' existence, therefore, I reexamine the process through which Native Americans understood that a semi-sovereign status under the United States became permanent.