Natchez

“ By the persevering curiosity of Gallatin, it is established that the Natchez were distinguished from the tribes around them less by their customs and the degree of their civilization than by their language, which, as far as comparisons have been instituted, has no etymological affinity with any other whatever. Here again the imagination too readily invents theories; and the tradition has been widely received that the dominion of the Natchez once extended even to the Wabash. ”

“ Where Natchez’ Main street ends, the great wide gates of Arlington open. Live oaks with pendant gray moss line the driveway, which winds through beds of vari-colored irises to one of the most distinctively attractive ante-bellum homes in the South.
Of Southern Colonial type, constructed of red brick with stately white Tuscan columns supporting the upper story gallery, Arlington today, more than a century old, presents a magnificent appearance. ”

“ The young wives from France were panic-stricken at this frightful menace of armed savages. Husbands who for themselves would not have minded a few Indians on the war-path were now excited by the uncontrollable terror of the women. They demanded of Bienville the extinction of the Natchez. A mob spirit grew.
"Do you see the gray moss hanging from the live-oaks?" these citizens cried. "The Spanish and the Indians call its clusters 'French wigs.' If we do not kill these Natchez, then shall our hair dangle in like festoons from every branch." ”

“ Father Charlevoix, who visited Natchez in 1721, saw no evidences of civilization. Their villages consisted of a few cabins, or rather ovens, without windows and roofed with matting. The house of the Sun was larger, plastered with mud, and a narrow bench for a seat and bed. No other furniture in the mansion of this grand dignitary, who has been described by imaginative writers as the peer of Montezuma!"
J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, volume 1, chapter 4.
In 1729, the Natchez, maddened by insolent oppressions, planned and executed a general massacre of the French within their territory. ”

“ NATCHEZ, năch′ĕz (from their native name, Na'chi) . An interesting tribe, constituting a distinct linguistic stock, originally residing in nine villages in the vicinity of the present city of Natchez, Miss., with a total population of perhaps 2500. Although comparatively a small tribe, they exercised a commanding influence from the Gulf to the Ohio. Their greatest religious rites were connected with the worship of the sun. They were sedentary and agricultural, expert basket-weavers and skillful potters, while their men bore a deserved reputation as proud and determined warriors. ”

“ When the first chief of the Beard first trimmed the sacred fire in the temple, a voice was heard which said: 'As long as there lives a chief of the race of the Suns with a beard on his chin, no evil can happen to the Natchez nation; but if the white race should ever resume the blood which it gave in a bloody day, woe, three times woe, to the Natchez! ”

“ Pierre Surget of La Rochelle, France, built this Spanish style house, on a Spanish land grant, for his wife, Katherine d’Hubert, and from this couple have come some of Natchez’ most prominent families.
Mr. Surget was a seaman for many years before coming to the Natchez country, and Cherry Grove was built with the sturdiness of a seaworthy vessel.
The home has never passed out of the Surget family. Its present owner, Mrs. Carlotta Surget McKittrick, now possesses the original Spanish land grant made to Pierre Surget in the 1700’s. ”

“ I shall however be more full in speaking of the Natchez, a populous nation, among whom I lived the space of eight years, and whose sovereign, the chief of war, and the chief of the keepers of the temple, were among my most intimate friends. Besides, their manners were more civilized, their manner of thinking more just and fuller of sentiment, their customs more reasonable, and their ceremonies more natural and serious; on all which accounts they were eminently distinguished above the other nations.
All the natives of America in general are extremely well made ”

“ It was one of the laws established in the beginning of the reign of the Great Sun, that his posterity should not marry inter se, but only with the common people of the nation. This custom was expelling the pure blood of royalty more and more every generation, and long after the arrival of the Natchez upon the Mississippi, the great and little suns were apparently of the pure blood of the red man. Their traditions, however, preserved the history of every cross, and when Lasalle found these at Natchez and the White Apple village, nearly every one could boast of relationship to the Great Sun. ”

“ The little city of Natchez is built upon a bluff some three hundred feet in elevation above the Mississippi River, and immediately upon its brink. It receives its name from a tribe of Indians once resident in the country; and who were much further advanced in civilization than their more warlike neighbors, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. The country around is hilly and beautiful, fertile and salubrious. The population was intelligent and refined, and was remarkable for having more wealth than any community outside of a large city, in the United States, of the same amount of population. ”

“ A proportionable number of subjects were likewise killed upon the death of any of the inferior Suns; and the people on the other hand had imbibed a belief that all those who followed their princes into the other world, to serve them there, would be eternally happy. It is easy to conceive how ruinous such an inhuman custom would be among a nation who had so many princes as the Natchez. ”

“ At noon we overtook a party of boatmen from the Ohio,—tall men they were, with beards, and dark and dirty as Indians,—and we kept company with them through the country of the Chickasaws and the Choctaws until we came to a high bluff, and saw the Mississippi before us, brown and full and marked with drifting trees, and up the river the white houses of Natchez. There we camped until we made out the flat-boat,—General Wilkinson's boat, all laden with tobacco and flour and bacon, and just a few Kentucks with muskets,—that the Spaniards at Natchez had been fools enough to let pass! ”

“ The society of Natchez, now, is not surpassed by any in America. Originally, and therein differing from most western cities, composed of intelligent and well-educated young men, assembled from every Atlantic state, but principally from New-England and Virginia, it has advanced in a degree proportionate to its native powers. ”

“ No complete file of any of the newspapers published in Natchez from 1800 to 1805 has been found. The few stray copies, located in various large libraries, contain nothing about Mason’s career. All are too late or too early to embrace any current news pertaining to him. Thus it was without success that an effort was made to verify, by “the Natchez paper” which “confirms the above account,” the statement regarding May’s appearance in Greenville in July, 1803, or to draw on any Natchez paper for any contemporary reports relative to Mason. ”

“ There is our temple, there the bones of our forefathers have slept since we came to the banks of the Father of Waters,’ pleaded Big Serpent.
“‘Within the next moon comes the galley from the big village of the French. If White Apple is not then delivered to my soldiers, and your people gone, the great chief of the Natchez will be sent down the river, bound hand and foot, to rot in prison. Go. I have spoken,’ and Monsieur le Commandant waved Big Serpent out of his presence.”
“And do the Natchez submit? Will Big Serpent give up their beautiful village? Mon Dieu! It’s a shame! ”

“ At that time most of the planters in the region of Natchez employed private teachers in their families, who resided with the family as one of the household. A lady near Natchez, the widow of Judge Shields, was desirous of employing a teacher, and tendered the situation to the young Yankee. Mrs. Shields had grown-up sons, young men of fine attainments, and who subsequently distinguished themselves as men of sterling worth. They were soon delighted with the young stranger, who was busily employed in his new vocation with their younger brothers. ”

“ If in the Natchez there are things which I would hazard only in trembling to-day, there are also things which I would no longer write, especially René's letter in the second volume. It is in my first manner, and reproduces all René. I do not know that the Renés who followed in my steps can have said anything more nearly approaching folly.
The Natchez.
The Natchez opens with an invocation to the desert and to the star of the night, the supreme divinities of my youth:
"In the shade of the American forests I will sing airs of solitude such as mortal ears have not yet heard ”

“ At this, he says, the Choctaws were exasperated, and announced that they were willing to move in conjunction with the French upon Natchez. According to their own professions, however, their friendship [48] for the French was uninterrupted, and they denied any previous knowledge of the outbreak at Natchez. Whatever the motive which prompted it, a joint military campaign against the Natchez was now organized with the Choctaws. All the credit in the affair was gained by the Indians. They were first in the field, and they did all the open fighting. ”

“ It is notorious that in the South they think nothing of taking away a man's life, if he be even suspected of sympathy with the slave; and a country so thinly inhabited affords abundant opportunities of doing it as "quietly" as can be desired. America is indeed a land of "liberty!"
At night we came to Natchez, a town beautifully situated on the top of a hill, about 300 feet above the level of the river, and for this reason called "Natchez-on-the-Hill." Its population is about 5,000; and it is the largest town in the State of Mississippi. Its distance from New Orleans is 300 miles. ”

“ During Périer’s term of office signs of uneasiness among the natives and of impending trouble began to show themselves. Warnings were given to several of the inhabitants of Natchez that danger was to be apprehended from the neighboring tribe. The commander of the post wilfully neglected these warnings, which were repeatedly brought to his knowledge. On the 29th of November, 1729, the Natchez Indians rose, and slaughtered nearly all the male inhabitants of the little French village. ”

“ I found that Natchez was full of the most gloomy rumours. Another Yankee raid seemed to have been made into the interior of Mississippi, more railroad is reported to be destroyed, and great doubts were expressed whether I should be able to get into Vicksburg at all.
However, as I found some other people as determined to proceed as myself, we hired a carriage for $100 to drive to Brookhaven, which is the nearest point on the railroad, and is distant from Natchez 66 miles. ”

“ As to those whom the Natchez, long after their first establishment, found inhabiting the western coasts of America, and whom we name Mexicans, the arts which they possessed and cultivated with success, obliged me to give them a different origin. Their temples, their sacrifices, their buildings, their form of government, and their manner of making war, all denote a people who have transmigrated in a body, and brought with them the arts, the sciences, and the customs of their country. ”

“ The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was home with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV. ”

“ La Salle spent the night in their village; and while he slept a swift runner hurried through the darkness to the village of the Coroas to ask the chief to come and visit their guest. The chief of the Coroas set out at once and traveled all night to reach the Natchez village and pay his respects to La Salle. For several days the white leader visited with the Natchez, and when he rejoined Tonty on the shore of the river the Coroa chief came with him. He accompanied the white men down the river to his own village, six leagues below, where his tribe gave the strangers a friendly reception. ”

“ Daring their sojourn in Natchitoches the life of Louis Dupré and Jessie Armstrong is almost a continuous chapter of amorous converse and dalliance; left hands mutually clasped, right ones around waists, or playing with curls and tresses; lips at intervals meeting in a touch that intoxicates the soul—the delicious drunkenness of love, from which no one need ever wish to get sober.
Chapter Thirty. News from Natchez.
While thus pleasantly pass the days with Colonel Armstrong’s younger daughter, to the elder they are drear and dark. No love lights up the path of her life, no sun shines upon it ”

“ In all his writings his feelings centre in himself: he is a pure egoist through his sensibility; but around his own figure his imagination, marvellous in its expansive power, can deploy boundless perspectives.
Both Atala and René, though brought into connection with the Génie du Christianisme, are in fact more closely related to the prose epic Les Natchez, written early, but held in reserve until the publication of his collected works in 1826-31. Les Natchez, inspired by Chateaubriand's American travels, idealises the life of the Red Indian tribes. ”