Natchez

Karl Lorenz

Natchés, Challaouelles, Chelouels, Thécloel, Théloël, Théloelles.

The Natchez were an autonomous American Indian nation located in the Natchez Bluffs region in southwestern Mississippi. Their cultural traditions, as well as dated excavation levels from their settlements, demonstrate ancestral roots going back into the late prehistoric period around AD 1200, associated with the Plaquemine Mississippian archaeological tradition. During the late prehistoric (AD 1200-1500) and proto-historic (AD 1500-1680) periods their ancestral territory stretched over 200 kilometers, from the Homochitto River in the south to the Big Black River in the north near present-day Vicksburg. By the historic period (AD 1680-1730) their territory decreased to cover about 65 kilometers, from the small Mississippi River tributaries of St. Catherine’s Creek in the south to Fairchild’s Creek and the South Fork of Coles Creek in the north. In 1699, an informant from a neighboring tribe told the French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville of a tribe known as the Thécloel, who inhabited nine settlement clusters or towns. The village names were given in the Mobilian Muskhogean-related trade language as: Natchés, Achougoulas, Cogoucoula, Ousagoucoula, Pochougoula, Thoucoue, Tougoulas, Yatanocas, and Ymacachas. Of the nine towns, the French named the Thécloel tribe “the Natchez,” after the largest town in which the paramount chief, called the Great Sun, and his brother, the principal war chief, called Tattooed Serpent, resided. This town was known as the Great or Grand Village of Natchés.

Population estimates vary widely over the period of time when the Natchez were in close, prolonged contact with French explorers, soldiers and missionaries. Upon earliest French contact in 1682, they are estimated to have had 300 warriors in nine villages. In 1698 the estimate was 3,500 people in total; by 1704 it had declined to 2,500. By 1721 the total population had decreased to 2,000 and, by 1730, after the Natchez Revolt, their remaining fighting force was reduced to 200 warriors. By 1732, after the final siege just west of the Mississippi River in Louisiana on the Black River, chroniclers estimate that 200-300 Natchez people were dispersed among the British-allied tribes of the Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee.

Once thought by linguists to speak a language that is distantly related to Muskhogean (the language of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek), linguists as recently as 2005 were in agreement that the Natchez language was an isolate that shared no ancestry with Muskhogean. Instead, their language was similar to one spoken by the Taensa and Avoyel Indians located immediately to the west, in what is now Louisiana. Both of these groups are now extinct and their language is no longer spoken. In the early twenty-first century efforts have been made by Natchez descendants living among the Creek in Oklahoma to revive the Natchez language, despite the fact that maybe only a handful of people still speak a few words of it.

It was after this reduction of Natchez population and territory that a series of hostilities between them and the French unfolded, to be known as the First, Second, and Third Natchez Wars, and the final Natchez Rebellion in 1729. In 1715, four French traders were murdered by a faction of Natchez that resided in the villages that engaged in trade with the British. In retaliation, the French commander Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, leading a small force, demanded the heads of those Natchez responsible for the murders of the French traders. The three Sun (elite rank) brothers who were chiefs of districts friendly to the French agreed to Bienville’s demands that the war chiefs be put to death for their hostile actions against the French, and that labor and supplies be provided by the Natchez to build the French Fort Rosalie in the Natchez Bluffs, thus effectively ending the First Natchez War.

The Third Natchez War of 1723 was the result of livestock from the St. Catherine’s French Concession being killed—for food, or to get manes, tails or horns for personal ornamentation—by Natchez from the British-allied White Apple village district. When Bienville heard of this, he organized a punitive expedition of French, Canadians, and native warriors from the Tunica, Yazoo, and Choctaw totaling over 700 men. Bienville proceeded to burn all three of the British-allied villages of White Apple, Jenzenaque, and Grigra and demand that Tattooed Serpent bring him the head of the chief of White Apple village (likely a member of the ruling hereditary Sun lineage), or else he would attack Tattooed Serpent’s village for allegedly giving sanctuary to refugees from the three burned village districts. Tattooed Serpent delivered the head of the rebellious chief of White Apple to Bienville at Fort Rosalie three days later thus ending the Third Natchez War, but leaving a very bitter resentment of the French from those Natchez whose villages were destroyed.

The final chapter in the relations of Natchez and French would ultimately lead to their demise as an autonomous people in 1730, only seven years after the last dispute with the French was resolved by Tattooed Serpent. In 1725, the stalwart French ally Tattooed Serpent died, followed in 1728 by the deaths of the other two major French allies among the Natchez, the Great Sun and the old chief of French-allied Flour village district. The successor to the recently deceased Great Sun was young and ineffective as an arbiter of peace, and older, British-allied chiefs from the White Apple village district usurped his authority. The new commander of Fort Rosalie, Sieur de Chépart, known for his abusive behavior toward both settlers and the Natchez, made a final demand that the Natchez abandon their villages of White Apple and Flour Area districts so that a French plantation could be established. Because the Grand Village was located in the Flour Area district, this would mean abandoning the most sacrosanct territory where all of the former Sun chiefs were buried and where their principal temple of worship was located. This unreasonable demand, coupled with the increased political influence of the pro-British faction of Natchez, set the stage for what would be called the Natchez Revolt or Massacre of 1729. Pretending to go on a deer hunt, the Natchez entered Fort Rosalie fully armed and, after having sung their calumet song, they massacred the soldiers, priests, and colonists, and burned down the fort. Of the original population of 400, the final count of French dead totaled 138 men, 35 women, and 56 children. Only 20 French men escaped the massacre, with the remaining French women and children and African men, women, and children being taken hostage in Grand Village. Two months later, a retaliatory force of up to 700 Choctaw, Colapissa, and Tunica warriors was organized by the French to recover the French and African hostages. The Natchez abandoned their territory to escape the French, and built a fort across the Mississippi River to the west on the Black River, a tributary of the Red River. In January of 1731 that fort was besieged and bombarded with cannon for four days, until the Natchez negotiated the surrender of the pro-French contingent of remaining Natchez—including the young Great Sun chief of Grand Village, more than 45 other men, and 200 women—most all of whom were taken prisoner and sold into slavery on sugar plantations in the French West Indies. The Flour chief and the White Woman, senior female of the Sun matrilineage, managed to escape and seek sanctuary among the British-allied Chickasaw and Upper Creeks to the north and east, relinquishing any claim to their ancestral homeland.

Shortly after Fort Rosalie was built, a French settlement began to grow and attract French colonists looking to profit from growing tobacco in the rich soils of the Natchez Bluffs. In 1720, the French colonist Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz established a small farm near the Natchez Grand Village of the Great Sun, the paramount chief of the Natchez, and befriended the Tattooed Serpent, the Natchez principal war chief, providing some of the most detailed information about Natchez customs and beliefs to date. It is from du Pratz and a French soldier stationed at Fort Rosalie, Dumont de Montigny, that we have a detailed accounting of the events precipitating the Second Natchez War of 1722. In a dispute over a debt of corn owed to a soldier from Fort Rosalie, a fight broke out between a small group of Natchez and French, leading to the death of one of the Natchez. The failure to punish the soldier with anything more than a reprimand led a contingent of about eighty Natchez from the British-allied White Apple village district to stage an uprising in which they attacked one of the French plantations at the St. Catherine Concession and wounded the concession inspector. Tattooed Serpent was called on by the commander of Fort Rosalie to restore peace. About a week later the chief of White Apple and Grigra districts brought the calumet to Le Page du Pratz as a gesture of peace. In turn, Tattooed Serpent brought the calumet to Bienville in New Orleans to smoke, thus ending the Second Natchez War.

Natchez relations with early Europeans goes back to the proto-historic period (1500-1680) when reference was made in the narratives of the Spanish conquistador, Hernando de Soto, to the great province of Quigualtam located along the banks of the Mississippi River in the vicinity of people historically known as the Natchez. While de Soto never actually visited the paramount chief of Quigualtam, his expedition narrowly escaped pursuit by Quigualtam warriors as they fled down the Mississippi River. Archaeology of the Natchez Bluffs region reveals proto-historic occupations of at least five mound centers across a much larger region than that witnessed by the French in the historic period (1680-1730). Many historians and archaeologists suspect that the proto-historic Emerald mound center was the political capital of the Quigualtam chiefdom. However, as the 150-year period unfolded between Spanish and French explorations, European-introduced epidemics of smallpox, measles, influenza, yellow fever, and typhus decimated native populations, leaving the historic period survivors reduced to smaller, less powerful chiefdoms and even less powerful tribal confederacies. By the time the Natchez enter the historic record as a named people the number of populated villages was reduced to nine, with the Grand Village as the only occupied mound center—the seat of the paramount chief and his brother, the principal war chief of the nation.

Natchez settlements were concentrated within five miles of the eastern banks of the Mississippi River along its tributaries in the Natchez Bluffs to take advantage of the rich loess soils for cultivating the crops that provided their staple diet. One early eighteenth century account notes that their nine village districts consisted of over 400 huts spread out over 24 miles. An estimate of 4-6 people living in each household gives a total population of 1,600-2,400 people. Historical accounts mention that small tribes of Koroa, Tioux, and Grigra sought refuge with the Natchez from Chickasaw slave raiders. Thus, two of their village districts were occupied by the smaller refugee tribes of the Tioux and Grigra, who spoke a Tunican-related language. All of these villages supported a single ceremonial center at the Grand Village of the Natchez, where a large ceremonial dance plaza was flanked by at least three and possibly as many as six earthen platform mounds. Upon one mound was the residence of the Great Sun (paramount chief) of the entire nation. Upon another mound stood the temple where a sacred fire was kept burning continuously to maintain contact with the ancestors whose carved stone images were kept inside. The bones of past chiefs were kept inside as well, before final burial in another mound. Archaeological excavations revealed evidence that some mounds were occupied from AD 1350–1730.

Natchez subsistence was focused on a combination of maize, beans and squash agriculture, fishing, hunting, and gathering at the household level of production. Their annual calendar of thirteen lunar cycles celebrated the principal foods gathered or harvested each month with a communal feast. The calendar began in March and was marked by deer hunting and the ensuing feast. May was marked by the first harvest of maize (the principal crop) when green, to be eaten fresh off of the cob. This was known as the feast of the Little Corn. In the summer months, feasts of European-introduced watermelons and peaches were celebrated, along with the catch of fish from rivers and streams. The second maize harvest took place in September, when the Great Corn Ceremony was celebrated to harvest and store all of the dried corn for the leaner winter months until the following spring’s harvest of the Little Corn. The fall harvest feast included turkeys (hunted with dogs) in October, bison in November, and black bear in December, with the January and February feasts featuring harvested nuts and dried corn meal.

Because very little stone was available to the Natchez, their tools were more often made from sharpened cane, bone, wood or shell. The manufacture of ceramics maintained pre-contact practices, such that even the incised swirl designs on their bowls and bottles show continuity with the late prehistoric Plaquemine Mississippian archaeological tradition.

Trade with the French and British provided the Natchez with utilitarian and luxury items that served to undermine the political authority of the hereditary Great Sun (paramount chief) who, prior to European contact, would have been the sole mediator in the redistribution of foreign exchange goods among his supporters. With the advent of the deerskin and human slave trade, however, any skilled hunter or slave raider could acquire valuable trade goods from French or British traders without having to rely on the paramount chief as sole mediator with foreigners. Goods obtained by the Natchez in exchange for their tanned deerskins, human captives, or shares from their harvests or hunts included western goods like guns, gunpowder, lead bullets, wool cloth, glass trade beads, bottles of wine, brass kettles, and iron axes and knives.

As in a typical matrilineal society, Natchez women provided a majority of the labor in the planting and harvesting of agricultural crops. Men helped to clear the land; otherwise, it was the women, with the assistance of their children, who tended the fields, and who gathered wild fruits, nuts, and seeds. There were two exceptions to this general rule for the agricultural division of labor. The first involved the exclusive male role in planting and harvesting of tobacco for ceremonial use. The second was related to the maintenance of the Great Sun’s (paramount chief’s) ceremonial plot: those fields were cleared, planted, and harvested by men for use in feasts orchestrated by the Great Sun. Women were responsible for maintaining the household, including cooking and the production of pottery using the coiling method. Women also were known to soften animal hides for use as clothing, to make feathered cloaks, to dye and weave porcupine quills for ornamentation, and to spin the wool of bison and opossum to make woven belts worn by men. Men’s work roles, in general, involved hunting and fishing, using spears, bows and arrows, fishing weirs, and nets. Men also engaged in the manufacture of tools and weapons, in trading, and in raiding.

While the historic accounts are not entirely clear, typically matrilineal descent groups—be they lineages, clans or moieties—held usufruct rights to land, not actual ownership of the land itself. French accounts suggest that the Natchez practiced avunculocal residence, which would mean that bride would live with the groom’s matrilineage after marriage.

Natchez descent was matrilineal, with the Great Sun’s (paramount chief’s) eldest sister, called the White Woman, perpetuating the royal sun matrilineage for all who descended from her. Although French accounts refer to the descent system as class-based, anthropologists argue that Natchez descent was more likely based on ranked-exogamous matrilineages, clans, or moieties in which the Suns and Nobles in descending order outranked the commoner (“Stinkard”) descent group. An Honored rank was also mentioned by the French, but only as an honorific title for esteemed commoners who served the Great Sun in some reverential way, or for the children of men of noble rank.

The kinship system would have been similar to that of the matrilineal Crow, with the exception that the terms for father and father’s brother were kept distinct, along with that of mother and mother’s sister, to denote the prominence of the hereditary ranking of the matrilineages. Cousins belonging to the same matrilineage would be referred to as brothers and sisters, while those cousins of the opposite matrilineage would be referred by kin terms, making them unmarriageable according to the incest taboo.

When a couple, typically between 20-25 years old, wished to marry the young man would offer gifts to the young woman’s parents as a form of bride price. The skills of the future husband as a hunter, warrior, and overall hard worker could affect the amount of the bride price. Once the marriage was agreed to by both families, the groom would go hunting and fishing and bring back enough to provide a wedding feast to unite the two families. Sun (chiefly rank) males practiced polygyny more often than men of commoner rank. The Natchez also practiced sororal polygyny: when a man’s wife died he would be obligated to marry all of her unmarried marriageable sisters.

The Natchez adhered to one very basic marriage rule that required their matrilineages be exogamous, leading to the mistaken impression by the French and later historians that members of the highest ranking Sun matrilineage were required to marry among the commoner rank. The universal incest taboo prohibiting marriage between close relatives (followed by the majority of world cultures in the present day and throughout history) led to the Natchez marriage prohibition to within three degrees of consanguineal relationship (brother/sister, first cousins, second cousins). Consequently, Suns could not marry Suns, Nobles could not marry Nobles, and commoners within three degrees of kin relationship could not marry one another. Another reason for the marriage rule forbidding Sun intermarriage was related to the prohibition of any Sun being put to death; in this way, when a Sun died, his or her spouse from the noble or the commoner rank could be sacrificed in order to accompany them into the afterlife. When Tattooed Serpent (principal war chief) died in 1725, the French witnessed a woman of Noble rank, as well as men of Honored rank, volunteer themselves for sacrifice to accompany their great chief, but no member of the Sun rank was recorded among the slain retainers.

Although women maintained the genealogical traditions of each household, it was the eldest matrilineal male who was the household authority and the principal decision-maker and mediator within the extended family. Elders of both genders taught the children oral traditions related to Natchez history, religious beliefs and cultural values, which were passed on to select youth chosen to pass them down from one generation to the next.

Elite Sun rank or status was inherited within three levels of consanguinity through descent of the ruling matrilineage headed by the eldest female of the Sun rank, called White Woman. On the male line of descent from ruling male Suns, like that of the Great Sun (paramount chief) and Tattooed Serpent (principal war chief), each successive generation of their children would inherit one rank below that of their fathers, unlike the children of female Suns who would retain their status as Suns.

From birth, all children’s heads were flattened for aesthetic reasons, with a plank attached to their cradleboard. By age three, all children began to learn how to swim. Both boys and girls lived work-free lives until around age twelve, when each gender began to help out the same gender parent and learn particular skills. Girls learned to grind maize, gather firewood, tend the fire, and to make pottery, mats and animal skin clothing. Boys, like men, are said to have worked far less around the village than the women and girls; they instead focused on tasks beyond the village, such as hunting, fishing, cutting firewood, and making tools and weapons. After puberty, both young men and woman were encouraged to engage in premarital sex. If a pregnancy should occur, the young woman’s parents would help to raise the child if their daughter wished to bear and keep it. If not, then the infant would be strangled outside the house and buried with little fanfare.

The Sun matrilineage was the highest ranking lineage; its members held the hereditary right to leadership positions of the nation based on their close genealogical relationship to the mythical founding ancestor, Thé, who came down from the sun. The Sun elite rank was within three degrees of relationship (brother/sister, first cousins, second cousins) to the matrilineage of the common founding ancestor, with Nobles being another three degrees removed (third cousins, fourth cousins, fifth cousins). This continued onto commoners who were referred to by the Natchez elite as “Les Puants” or “Stinkards,” and were the most distantly related to the founding ancestor.

The absolute power of the Great Sun (paramount chief) is implied in many of the eighteenth century French accounts, but only rarely is it documented. The French chronicler Le Page du Pratz contradicts himself when he says that the Great Sun ruled with despotic authority, yet raised no stated impositions on his people. There was a council of elders who presided over matters of war and peace. While the Great Sun and the principal war chief, Tattooed Serpent, could speak out and persuade other council elders, they more often agreed with the decisions reached by the council. Like many Southeastern native people—such as the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek—the Natchez political sphere was divided into peacetime civil authority (symbolized by the color white) wielded by the Great Sun (paramount chief) and other village chiefs, and wartime authority (symbolized by the color red) wielded by the Tattooed Serpent and other village war chiefs. (This may explain why the British-allied Natchez war chiefs had more authority in their own villages than the Great Sun of Grand Village had regarding decisions to trade with the British and to engage in hostilities with the French.) While the Great Sun had the peacetime authority to give feasts, receive tribute, punish those who had committed crimes against other Natchez, and mediate with the Sun (elite rank) ancestors, the Tattooed Serpent had the authority to hold councils to forge alliances or to incite his people to go to war. It would appear that the Great Sun’s authority rested in adherence to the prescribed customs of the nation, and that a breach would result in social disgrace.

An elaborate administrative body was described in French accounts, whereby the Great Sun nominated the most important offices of leadership, which included war chiefs, caretakers of the temple, inspectors of public works, and those who were responsible for arranging festivals for the nation and for visiting strangers. The Great Sun benefitted when commoners went out hunting and brought back game for his personal consumption, not out of obligation, but as voluntary homage and testimony to their loyalty to their leader, brother to the sun and master of the great temple. Some of the scant evidence for chiefly redistribution is in harvest festivals, when the Great Sun would ritually distribute a small amount of corn that was expressly grown and harvested from the communal fields. Each family was given scarcely enough corn for one grinding, to be communally eaten by the entire feasting group. In addition, the household heads of Natchez families carried the first fruits of their monthly harvest of grains and vegetables to the door of the temple, as offerings to the spirits. The temple guard presented these offerings to the spirits, then brought them to the Great Sun’s house, where the chief either consumed them or distributed them as he chose.

With respect to the power of the Great Sun (paramount chief) of the Grand Village over the other Natchez villages, French accounts give a mixed impression. Despite French claims of the absolute authority of the Great Sun and Tattooed Serpent (principal war chief) over their Natchez subjects, even the Tattooed Serpent admitted to having less influence over the people of the British-allied Natchez villages than their own village war chiefs. In most cases, the Tattooed Serpent apologized to the French for the hostile actions of his British-allied Natchez brothers, many of whom were members of the Sun elite matrilineage, just like him. Slaves and servants were relegated to the commoner ranks. Slaves were acquired through raids, while servants to the Suns were chosen upon the birth of an heir to the chief. At this time, each commoner family with an infant at the breast was obliged to offer their child as a servant to the future Great Sun. A certain number of those offered were chosen for this duty as soon as they were old enough to begin their employment as hunters, fishermen or farmers to the Great Sun. They served him their entire lives; when he died they were sacrificed to accompany him in the afterlife.

The causes for war were described in French accounts as involving insults, hostilities committed against the Natchez, or disturbances in their hunting territory. In the event of inter-tribal conflict, an embassy of warriors was sent with the calumet (peace pipe), not to explicitly request a peace, but to explain themselves and prove their friendly intentions. The embassy was entertained and treated as distinguished guests, and if the host nation did not want war they gave large presents to the ambassadors to make up for the losses accrued from the hostilities. If unjust hostilities were committed against the Natchez, allies were assembled in a general council consisting of the Great Sun (paramount chief), the Tattooed Serpent (principal war chief), the war chiefs of the allies, and all of the older warriors. The Tattooed Serpent made a speech and tried to convince the allies to take vengeance. If the council agreed upon war, then all of the warriors went hunting to procure game for the war feast. Attacks usually took the form of surprise skirmishes with enemy groups detached from the main force. Characteristically, women and children were taken prisoner and made into slaves; male prisoners were brought back to camp, tied up, and tortured to death.

The Natchez believed in a supreme spirit who was the beneficent creator of all things. After this creation, including that of human beings, a man and a woman came down from the sun, bringing its sacred fire down to the people. They also brought rules of social conduct, including the rules of descent. The royal lineage of Suns was the result of the marriage of these two solar deities with the Natchez people. A temple was built to preserve the eternal fire brought down from the sun. One principal task of the temple guardian was to keep the fire burning perpetually to maintain the connection to the solar deities. If the fire went out, a great dying would afflict the Natchez nation from the loss of contact with their Sun ancestors. The bones of each deceased Great Sun (paramount chief) were kept for a time in a cane coffin within the temple before being interred in a burial mound where all past Sun chiefs were laid to rest.

The Great Sun (paramount chief) was the principal mediator to the Sun ancestors. Each morning he would greet the rising sun with a series of chants from atop the mound of his chiefly residence. In return for the people’s monthly tributary offerings, the Great Sun ensured his people that the sacred fire would always be kept burning to maintain contact with the Sun ancestors who would grant the Natchez good health, protection from their enemies, and success in their endeavors, be they in the hunt or in military raids.

Natchez ceremonial ritual recorded in the early eighteenth century French accounts usually took place around three principal mounds and the large dance plaza in the Grand Village. The first mound held the sacred fire and was the temporary ossuary of recently deceased Sun chiefs. Rituals associated with communication with the Sun ancestors by the Great Sun (paramount chief) would have taken place there, as well as any funeral ceremonies involving members of the Sun matrilineage in the village districts controlled by the Great Sun. The second mound held the residence of the Great Sun, and it is from this location where the Great Sun greeted the sun in the sky each day, and where diplomatic meetings were held to smoke the calumet with allies, and foreigners like the French. The third mound was the burial mound that was the final resting place of the bones of past Sun chiefs after having been kept for a time in the temple of the sacred fire. Although mound building ceremonies were never witnessed by the French, ceremonies held atop the mounds were witnessed, like the war feast in which warriors and the war chiefs would gather in the Sun chief’s house at the initiation of hostilities. At this feast, ritual consumption of roasted dog denoted fidelity and attachment to their chief, and consumption of deer denoted the swiftness that would be exhibited by the warriors in battle. A war drink of Ilex vomitoria, an intoxicating emetic known as the black drink, was ingested to commemorate this feast. Additionally, large, ceremonial, village-wide feasts and alliance feasts were held in the large dance plaza flanked by the three principal mounds.

French descriptions of Natchez arts are quite limited. Women were the makers of pottery bowls and bottles, and jugs for storing bear oil for cooking and rubbing on the skin. A red pigment (probably the same vermillion used as face paint and to cover the deceased Great Sun’s body for his funeral) was rubbed onto the outside surface of the pots before the clay dried and was fired. Archaeological excavations at the Grand Village reveal assemblages of bowls and bottles that were decorated with curvilinear scrolls incised on their exteriors. The Natchez of both sexes and of all ages and ranks were quite fond of tattooing designs of suns and snakes on their faces, arms, legs, and chests. Male youths were only allowed tattoos on their faces until they had distinguished themselves in battle, at which time they could have other parts of their bodies tattooed as a mark of valor. Warriors sometimes even had war clubs with the symbol of the conquered nation tattooed on their shoulders. Tattooing was done by piercing the skin and rubbing in blue, black or red pigments. European colored glass beads were made into necklaces. There is one account of pearl necklaces being inherited from the ancestors and worn by Sun children until they were ten years old, at which time they would be returned to the temple for safekeeping.

French accounts refer to healers, who they called “jugglers,” that performed the shamanic role of exorcising malevolent spirits from the afflicted persons. This was done by piercing of the skin of the sick person with a splinter of cane or sharpened flint at the place the pain was felt, and sucking out blood. Shamans also prepared poultices to heal injured limbs, infected eyes, and even gunshot wounds, which the French claimed could be healed better by the Natchez than by their own surgeons. They also prescribed tea infusions of roots and herbs to cure internal sicknesses. The chronicler Le Page du Pratz noted that the balsam of the sweet gum was used in a broth to lower fevers. A poultice of ground ivy was used to heal ulcerated tissue and cure headaches. A kind of wild onion was pressed onto rattlesnake bites to neutralize the poison. Spanish moss was used to cure muscle cramps and internal disorders in a kind of sweat bath.

Burial customs were recorded for the funeral of the principal war chief, Tattooed Serpent. He was dressed in his finest clothes; his face was covered with vermillion (a red pigment made of mercury sulfide) and he was buried in the temple with his weapons and all the calumets of peace that he had received in his lifetime, along with his wives and his retainers. Those to die were strangled by eight of their own relatives, who were elevated from commoner to Honored rank for their actions. One of Tattooed Serpent’s wives described the country of the spirits as being an idyllic place where no one dies, the weather is always fair, one never goes hungry, and there is no war.

The culture summary was written by Karl Lorenz in January 2017.

Knight, Vernon James, Jr. (1990). “Social Organization and the Evolution of Hierarchy in Southeastern Chiefdoms.” Journal of Anthropological Research 46(1):1-23.

Le Moyne d'Iberville, Pierre (1981). Iberville's Gulf Journals. Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams, translator and editor. University, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Le Page Du Pratz, Antoine S. (1758). Histoire de la Louisiane. 3 Vols. Paris: De Bure, La Veuve Delaguette, Lambert.

Barnett, James F. (2007). Natchez Indians: A History to 1735. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Lorenz, Karl G. (1997). “A Re-Examination of Natchez Sociopolitical Complexity: A View From The Grand Village And Beyond.” Southeastern Archaeology 16(2):97-112.

Brain, Jeffrey P. (1971). “The Natchez Paradox.” Ethnology 10(2):215-222.

Lorenz, Karl G. (2000). “The Natchez of Southwest Mississippi.” In Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory, edited by Bonnie G. McEwan. University Press of Florida, pp. 142-177.

Brain, Jeffrey P. (1982). “La Salle at the Natchez: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective.” In La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley, edited by Patricia Galloway. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Martin, Jack B. (2004). “Languages.” In The Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14, The Southeast, edited by Raymond D. Fogelson. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 68-86.

Brown, Ian W. (1985). Natchez Indian Archaeology: Culture Change and Stability in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Archaeological Report No. 15. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Neitzel, Robert S. (1965). Archaeology of the Fatherland Site: The Grand Village of the Natchez. Anthropological Papers, v. 51, pt. 1. New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Brown, Ian W. (2007). “Plaquemine Culture in the Natchez Bluffs Region of Mississippi.” In Plaquemine Archaeology, edited by Mark A. Rees and Patrick C. Livingood. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 145-160.

Neitzel, Robert S. (1983). The Grand Village of the Natchez Revisited: Excavations at the Fatherland Site, Adams County, Mississippi, 1972. Archaeological Report No. 12. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Dumont de Montigny, Louis François Benjamin (1753). Memoires Historiques sur la Louisiane. 2 vols. LeMascrier, Paris.

Pénicaut, André (1953). Fleur de Lys and Calumet: Being the Penicaut Narrative of French Adventure in Louisiana. Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams, translator and editor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Galloway, Patricia and Jason Baird Jackson (2004). “Natchez and Neighboring Groups.” In The Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14, The Southeast, edited by Raymond D. Fogelson. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 598-615.

Swanton, John R. (1911). Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 43. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

White, Douglas R., George P. Murdock, and Richard Scaglion (1971). “Natchez Class and Rank Reconsidered.” Ethnology 10:369-388.