Natchez

Natchez, North American Indian tribe of the Macro-Algonquian linguistic phylum that inhabited the east side of the lower Mississippi River. When French colonizers first interacted with the Natchez in the early 18th century, the tribal population comprised about 6,000 individuals living in nine villages between the Yazoo and Pearl rivers near the site of the present-day city of Natchez, Miss.

The traditional Natchez economy relied primarily on corn (maize) agriculture. They made clothes by weaving a fabric from the inner bark of the mulberry and excelled in pottery production. Like several other groups of Southeast Indians, the Natchez built substantial earthen mounds as foundations for large wattle-and-daub temple structures. Their dwellings—built in precise rows around a plaza or common ground—were also constructed of wattle and daub and had arched cane roofs.

Traditional Natchez religion venerated the Sun, which was represented by a perpetual fire kept burning in a temple. All fires in a village, including the sacred fire, were allowed to die once a year on the eve of the midsummer Green Corn ceremony, or Busk. The sacred fire was remade at dawn of the festival day, and all the village hearths were then lit anew from the sacred flames.

Natchez social organization was notable for its caste system; the system drew from and supported Natchez religious beliefs and classified individuals as suns, nobles, honoured people, and commoners. Persons of the sun caste were required to marry commoners; the offspring of female suns and commoners were suns, while the children of male suns and commoners belonged to the caste of honoured people. The heads of villages also claimed descent from the Sun, and the monarch was referred to as the Great Sun. He was entitled to marry several wives and to maintain servants; upon his death his wives and some servants, along with any others who wished to join him in the afterlife, were ritually sacrificed.

Relations between the French and the Natchez were friendly at first, but three French-Natchez wars—in 1716, 1723, and 1729—resulted in the French, with the aid of the Choctaw, driving the Natchez from their villages. In 1731 some 400 Natchez were captured and sold into the West Indian slave trade; the remainder took refuge with the Chickasaw and later with the Upper Creeks and Cherokee. When the latter tribes were forced to move west into Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the Natchez went with them.

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 500 individuals of Natchez descent.