The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 is the story of the Natchez Indians as revealed through accounts of Spanish, English, and French explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonists, and in the archaeological record. Because of their strategic location on the Mississippi River, the Natchez Indians played a crucial part in the European struggle for control of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The book begins with the brief confrontation between the Hernando de Soto expedition and the powerful Quigualtam chiefdom, presumed ancestors of the Natchez. In the late seventeenth century, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's expedition met the Natchez and initiated sustained European encroachment, exposing the tribe to sickness and the dangers of the Indian slave trade. The Natchez Indians portrays the way that the Natchez coped with a rapidly changing world, became entangled with the political ambitions of two European superpowers, France and England, and eventually disappeared as a people. The author examines the shifting relationships among the tribe's settlement districts and the settlement districts' relationships with neighboring tribes and with the Europeans. The establishment of a French fort and burgeoning agricultural colony in their midst signaled the beginning of the end for the Natchez people. Barnett has written the most complete and detailed history of the Natchez to date.

History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians by Horatio Bardwell Cushman, first published in 1899, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

"This manuscript focuses on the interactions between Native Americans and European colonists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly the relationships that developed between the French and the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw peoples. Milne's history of the Lower Mississippi Valley and its peoples provides the most comprehensive and detailed account of the Natchez in particular, from La Salle's first encounter with what would become Louisiana to the ultimate disappearance of the Natchez by the end of the 1730s. In crafting this narrative, George Milne also analyzes the ways in which French attitudes about race and slavery influenced native North American Indians in the vicinity of French colonial settlements on the Gulf coast, and how in turn Native Americans adopted and/or resisted colonial ideology"--

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. In Mississippi's American Indians, author James F. Barnett Jr. explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state's native peoples. The book begins with a chapter on Mississippi's approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw-French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi's pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi's remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal. Despite the intense pressures of European invasion, the Mississippi tribes survived by adapting and contributing to their rapidly evolving world.

Since prehistory, the bluffs of Natchez have called to the bold, the cruel and the quietly determined. The diverse opportunists who heeded that call have left behind more than three hundred years of colorful and tragic stories. The Natchez Indians, who inhabited the bluffs at the time of European contact, made a calculated but ultimately catastrophic decision to massacre the French who had settled nearby. William Johnson, a Black man who occupied a tenuous position between two worlds, found wealth and status in antebellum Natchez. In the wake of Union occupation, thousands of the formerly enslaved became the city's protective garrison. Join authors Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman and rediscover the people who toiled and bled to make Natchez one of the most unique and interesting cities in America.

In this collection of essays that marked the tricentennial of La Salle's expedition, thirteen scholars assess his legacy and the significance of French colonialism in the Southeast

Natchez derives its name from the sun-worshiping Indian tribe, the Natchez, who were the original owners of the area on which the city is located. It is situated in Adams county, in the southwestern part of the state of Mississippi, on bluffs 200 feet high overlooking the Mississippi River, and is midway between Memphis and New Orleans. It is accessible by railway, steamboat, motor highway and airway. It is particularly proud of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a modern concrete road over an old Indian trace or trail from Nashville to Natchez. This highway is a link in one of the most important commercial and historic highways in the United States reaching from Washington, D. C., to Mexico. Today Natchez is a recognized center of interest because in the city and its vicinity there are a greater number of original ante-bellum mansions than in any other community in America—some 75 or more. Natchez is the second oldest town in the United States, being next in age to St. Augustine, Florida. It has lived under five different flags, each of which contributed romantic flavor to the section. From 1714 to 1763 it was under the flag of France; from 1764 to 1780 under the flag of England; and from 1780 to 1798 under the flag of Spain. In 1798 the first United States flag in the Lower Mississippi Valley was raised in Natchez. Years after the raising of the “stars and stripes”, another flag which some call “the conquered banner”, the beloved flag of the Confederate States of America, floated over Natchez, 1861-’65. Natchez “Under the Hill” applies to that part of the town along the water front and under the bluffs. It flourished during the heyday of steamboating on the Mississippi. The inroads of the river have washed away the streets, and only a few buildings remain. One very interesting home, “Magnolia Vale”, has been preserved and is presented in this book. The majority of these old homes contain original pieces of furniture, china, coin silver service, draperies, carpets, wall decorations of exquisite workmanship, huge mirrors in massive goldleaf frames, paintings bearing authentic signatures of great masters, and hand-carved marble mantels. Laces, silks, and rich costumes are displayed today by third, fourth and fifth generations. It seems hardly possible that the world could move on and leave one small community undisturbed in its ancient grandeur. The hand of destiny seems indeed to uphold and enshrine this hallowed region. The estates have descended from generation to generation, many of them today being owned and occupied by descendants of the original owners.