The confederacy was gradually extending itself by taking in smaller peoples driven from their own country or suffering from more powerful neighbors, among them the Yuchi and a part of the Shawnee. Even the Chickasaw, though sometimes at war with them, had a sort of semi-official membership and it is probable that more of the tribes east and south would have been gathered into the league had it not been for the coming of the whites. They were, however, equalled and probably excelled in numbers by the Cherokee on their northeastern border, and the Choctaw to the southwest, with both of which tribes they waged bitter wars as well as with the Apalachee and Timucua southeast of them. These differences were, however, aggravated considerably by the rival Spanish, English, and French colonists. It should be understood that the Creek Confederacy was a growing American national organism, comparable to the Iroquois Confederacy, the states of Central America and Mexico and some of those of the Old World.