Natchez (Nat ches), an extinct tribe that had a marked similarity to Mississippian Mound Builder culture in the early historic period. They were the largest, most powerful tribe on the Mississippi in the mid-sixteenth century.
Location The early historic location of the Natchez was along St. Catherine’s Creek, near present-day Natchez, Mississippi. Their lands were fertile but protected against chronic flooding.
Population The Natchez population was about 4,000 to 4,500 in 1650 and 300 in 1731.
Language Natchezean languages may have been related to the Muskogean language family, with possible Tunican influences.
Historical Information
History With other Muskogean people, the Natchez may have come to their historical territory from the northwest. The Natchez had clear cultural ties to the Mississippian Mound Builder civilization, which may in turn have been influenced by Mesoamerican Indian cultures.
Contact with the Hernando de Soto party in 1542 was likely casual and not particularly friendly. French explorers entered the region in the later seventeenth century, and Catholic missionaries soon followed. The little nation soon divided its loyalties between France and Britain. By 1715 it was raiding nearby Indians such as the Chawasha in the service of British slave traders.
The Natchez population was greatly reduced by wars with the French beginning in 1716. The final conflict began when a governor of Louisiana moved to take over the site of the Natchez Great Village. In late 1729, partly at British instigation, Natchez warriors sacked Fort Rosalie and other French settlements, killing and capturing hundreds of people. The Yazoo Indians soon joined in, but the Choctaw sided with the French. In 1731 the French achieved a decisive victory. They killed many people and sold even more (including the last Great Sun) into slavery. Some people managed to escape to local tribes, especially to the Chickasaw and also to the Creek and Cherokee.
Three to five Natchez towns continued among the Creek into the nineteenth century. After removal to Oklahoma, Natchez descendants formed communities in the eastern part of the reservation. By about 1900, intermarriage had ended a distinct Natchez identity. The Natchez held their last formal ceremony in 1976; the last native speaker died in 1965. Some traces of Natchez ceremony and culture remain among various groups, such as the Muskogee Creeks of the Arbeka Stomp Grounds and the Cherokee Red Bird Smith Ceremonial Ground.
Religion The sun was the supreme deity. Its son was said to be responsible for Natchez culture, and its authority was continued in the sun caste. The people also recognized many minor servant spirits. Natchez society was a theocracy. An absolute monarch called the Great Sun wore a crown of red-tasseled swan feathers. Sitting on a throne of goose feathers and furs high on a mound, he directed some ceremonies and guided the sun every morning.
A ceremonial center in the main village included a partitioned, rectangular sun temple and the house of the Great Sun, each built on mounds of adobe and covered with woven mats. A fire, tended by a select group of eight people, always burned within the temple, and the roof was decorated with three carved and painted birds. The door faced east. Other villages had smaller ceremonial centers as well.
The Natchez also offered human sacrifices, especially upon the death of a chief. They observed the Great Corn ceremony, which corresponded to the Creek Busk, in mid to late summer. Most ceremonies were led by the Great Sun and/or other suns. There was also a priesthood, whose members shaved their heads. Doctors acquired supernatural powers by fasting for nine days in a cabin while shaking a gourd rattle. Failure to cure or to correctly foretell the weather might be met with death. Curing consisted of sweating, bleeding, dancing, singing, and evoking spirits of plants or animals. There were also many plant medicines. Curers were usually old men, but women might be herbalists.
Government The Great Sun was a hereditary monarch. Although his power was absolute, it was tempered in part by his personal abilities as well as by his respect for the opinions of the council.
Customs The Natchez recognized two social classes, nobles and commoners. The former included the king, or Great Sun; the king’s brothers and uncles (little suns), from whom were chosen the war chief and head priest; hereditary nobles; and honored men and women, a status obtainable by merit. Commoners (or Stinkards) farmed, built the mounds, and did most of the manual labor. They gave food and other presents to the suns, and the Great Sun redistributed some of it.
There were elaborate deferential codes of behavior and speech between the classes. Members of the higher classes, even the Great Sun, were required to marry commoners. The offspring of a male of high rank and a commoner were a step below the man’s rank, but the offspring of a highly ranked woman and a male commoner kept the mother’s rank.
When a person of high rank died, his or her commoner spouse, if there was one, and several servants were killed for companions in the afterlife. Much ritual attended the deaths of nobility. Dead suns were placed in the temple, their bones preserved and later buried nearby. Dead nobles were dried on platforms; commoners were buried in the earth or placed on a scaffold and enclosed in a plaster vault, to which food and water were periodically brought. Houses of the dead were burned. The afterlife destination was based on earthly conduct: There was a paradise of equality and freedom from want and a hell full of mosquitoes.
Women enjoyed a high degree of sexual license before marriage, although fidelity after marriage was the norm, and divorce was rare. Men occasionally lent their wives to other men. Women generally married around age 25. The Natchez practiced infant head flattening. Babies nursed until they stopped voluntarily or the mother became pregnant. Children’s bodies were rubbed with bear oil, in part to keep off flies. Older male relatives were responsible for boys’ discipline and education. People older than three bathed at least daily.
Men engaged in generally cooperative work, such as hunting, fishing, cultivating the sacred fields, fighting, playing games, dressing skins, building houses, and making canoes and weapons. They were fed before women and generally enjoyed a higher status. Women prepared food; kept the fires going; made pottery, baskets, mats, clothing, and beadwork; and tended crops. Much of their work was performed alone. Berdaches assumed women’s economic as well as sexual roles.
As part of the Great Corn ceremony, men played a hand ball game with as many as 1,000 or more players, the object of which was to keep the ball from touching the ground. They also played chunkey and staged an occasional deer surround for sporting or diversionary purposes. Women played dice or split cane games. There were also contests and many games of chance.
Dwellings Nine villages were scattered among woods and fields. Low, windowless square adobe houses with domed, thatched roofs over cane matting were built in rows around a central plaza. Platform beds stood along the walls. There were no smoke holes.
Diet Diet was agriculture based. Men and women grew corn as well as pumpkins and beans and also melons and peaches in the historic period. They made corn into at least 42 different dishes, including gruel (hominy) and bread. Sowing and harvesting were highly ritualistic activities. The people also grew a particular grain-bearing grass as well as tobacco.
Women gathered wild rice, nuts, berries, grapes, mushrooms, and persimmons; the latter were made into bread. Men hunted deer, turkey, and buffalo as well as a host of other game. They stalked deer with deer head disguises and went on communal buffalo hunts in the fall. Hibernating bears were routed with fire shot into their hollows. Bear fat oil was an important seasoning. The people also ate duck, other fowl, fish, and shellfish. Fish and meat were preserved by smoking and cooking. The people may have eaten dog on ceremonial occasions.
Key Technology Wooden items, carved and/or hollowed by fire, included mortars, stools, and bowls. Bows were fashioned of black locust wood, their strings of sinew and tree bark. Arrow tips were fire hardened or made of bone. Men used cane spears, perhaps with flint tips, for hunting large game. Many other items were made of cane as well. Fish were netted or harpooned. Women made pottery, mats, and baskets. Curved hickory sticks as well as buffalo shoulder blades became hoes. Bead belts recorded certain significant information, such as the line of Great Suns. Food was stored in pottery or gourd containers.
Trade Natchez Indians participated in local trading. Among other items, they obtained salt from Caddo tribes to the northwest.
Notable Arts Women made incised pottery, dyed cane baskets and mats, and white fabric from the inner bark of mulberry trees. They also wove baskets and nets. Men carved and painted religious figures, such as birds and rattlesnakes. They also made pipes from a black stone, especially in the later eighteenth century.
Transportation Men burned logs to fashion dugout canoes, some up to 40 feet long. Travelers used cane rafts to cross bodies of water. Women transported goods using bearskin shoulder straps or tumplines. Chiefs and high nobles were carried on litters.
Dress Clothing and personal adornment indicated differences in rank. Most clothing was made of mulberry tree inner bark fabric and/or deerskin. Women wore a knee-length skirt. Men wore a deerskin breechclout. Both wore high, laced moccasins, a long deerskin shirt, and leggings in colder weather. Other winter wear included buffalo robes and feather mantles. Girls remained naked until about age 10, when they wore a two-piece tasseled mulberry net apron. When they were no longer virgins, the garment was replaced with the standard skirt. Boys remained naked until puberty, when they donned the buckskin breechclout.
Both sexes painted and tattooed faces and bodies. Women also blackened their teeth with tobacco and ash and wore spike-shaped earrings. Warriors were tattooed from head to foot; they slit the lower part of their ears and decorated them with wire. Some men roached their hair and some wore it long, at least on one side. Women wore their hair long, tied in a queue with mulberry netting and tassels. Belts and garters were made of spun and woven buffalo and opossum hair. The Great Sun wore a crown of feathers in a beaded cap. Children, depending on their social rank, wore shell and pearl ornaments.
War and Weapons The Natchez recognized three classes of warriors, and war was seen a means of social advancement. Most war parties were led by the head war chief. Warriors wore breechclouts, belts, and ear pendants and carried rattles. Weapons included war clubs, bows and arrows with garfish points, axes, and sometimes shields. There were various prewar rituals, including drinking an emetic, feasting on dog meat, dancing and relating war stories, and planting the war post. Warriors carried fetishes of war spirits with them. Male captives were generally scalped and burned alive, whereas women were kept as slaves.
