Natchez people
The Natchez (/ˈnætʃɪz/ NATCH-iz,[1][2] Natchez: [naːʃt͡seh][3]) are a Native American people who originally lived in the Natchez Bluffs area in the Lower Mississippi Valley, near the present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the United States. They spoke a language with no known close relatives, although it may be very distantly related to the Muskogean languages of the Creek Confederacy.[4] An early American geographer noted in his 1797 gazetteer that they were also known as the "Sun Set Indians".[5]
The Natchez are noted for being the only Mississippian culture with complex chiefdom characteristics to have survived long into the period of European colonization. Other Mississippian societies in the southeast had generally experienced important transformations shortly after contact with the Spanish Empire or other newcomers from across the ocean. The Natchez are also noted for having had an unusual social system of nobility classes and exogamous marriage practices. It was a strongly matrilineal kinship society, with descent reckoned along female lines. The paramount chief named the Great Sun was always the son of the Female Sun, whose daughter would be the mother of the next Great Sun. This ensured that the chiefdom stayed under the control of the single Sun lineage. Ethnologists have not reached consensus on how the Natchez social system originally functioned, and the topic is somewhat controversial.
In 1731, after several wars with the French, the Natchez were defeated. Most of the captured survivors were shipped to Saint-Domingue and sold by into slavery; others took refuge with other tribes, such as the Muskogean Chickasaw and Creek, and the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee. Today, most Natchez families and communities are found in Oklahoma, where Natchez members are enrolled in the federally recognized Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations in Oklahoma. Two Natchez communities are recognized by the state of South Carolina.
Protohistoric[edit]
The earliest European account of the Natchez may be from the journals of the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto. In 1542 de Soto's expedition encountered a powerful chiefdom located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Native sources called it "Quigualtam," after the paramount chief's name. Various scholars have debated if this chiefdom was the Emerald Phase (1500–1680) of the Natchez chiefdom which was in its ascendancy at the time. The encounter was brief and violent; the natives attacked and chased the Spanish with their canoes. No further European contact with the indigenous people in this area occurred for more than 140 years, but they suffered from epidemics of infectious disease carried indirectly by other Native Americans from European traders. These and other intrusions had severely reduced the native populations. By the historic period local power had shifted to the Grand Village of the Natchez.[9]
Natchez after 1730[edit]
After the war of 1729–1731, Natchez society was in flux and the people scattered. Most survivors eventually settled among the Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw, or with British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies. Most of the latter two Natchez groups ended up integrating with the Cherokee.
The Natchez settled mostly along the Hiwassee River in North Carolina. The main Natchez town, dating to about 1755, was located near present-day Murphy, North Carolina.[34] Around 1740 a small group of Natchez refugees settled along a creek near the confluence of the Tellico River and the Little Tennessee River. The creek became known as Notchy Creek after the Natchez. The settlement was called Natchey Town or Natsi-yi (Cherokee for "Natchez Place"). It was the birthplace of the Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe, whose mother was Natchez and kidnapped as a young girl. In later years Dragging Canoe's Cherokee father, Attacullaculla, lived in Natchey Town.[35] Most of the Natchez living with the Cherokee accompanied them in the 1830's on the forced removal, the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma).
A few remained in North Carolina. Their descendants are part of the federally recognized Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.[36] Some Cherokee-Natchez were permitted to remain in South Carolina as settlers along with the Kusso, Eastern Band Natchez and the PeeDee. (The state of South Carolina recognized the Natchez-Kusso tribe, Eastern Band Natchez and the PeeDee Tribe.) Most of the balance of Natchez citizens are within the Cherokee Nation (est. 185,000), the Mvskoke Nation, Seminole Nation, Chickasaw Nation, with a few in the modern Choctaw Nation on their respective reservations in Oklahoma; nearly half of the state.
There are significant numbers of Natchez citizens within the federally recognized tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation; approximately 12,000. The Natchez were constituent members of the historic Creek Confederacy and signatories on the 1790 Treaty of New York,[37] 1796 Treaty of Colerain,[38] and 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson.[39] During this time, the Natchez enjoyed signatory status and membership within the Creek Confederacy and established their town near the Coosa River in Talladega County, Alabama.
Ethnobotany[edit]
The Natchez give Potentilla canadensis as a drug to those who are believed to be bewitched.[52]
