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Indians 101: A very short overview of the Natchez Indians [1]
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Date: 2022-10-11
Language
Language provides important information about historic relationships with other tribes. The Natchez language is often categorized as belonging to the Muskogean language family which includes many of the Native languages spoken in the Southeast, such as Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Miccosukee, Timucua, Alabama, Koasati, and Hitchiti. However, there are some who disagree with this classification.
In his book The Southeastern Indians, Charles Hudson feels that Natchez is a language isolate which may have remote connections with Muskogean. On the other hand, David Harrison, in his book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge, writes:
“Natchez belonged to the Gulf family of languages—now fully extinct—which had no demonstrated relationship to other Native American languages.”
While the Natchez were destroyed as an autonomous nation in 1730, the language continued to be spoken by Natchez refugees living among the Creek until sometime in the twentieth century.
The way Natchez was spoken by women was different from the way it was spoken by men. The speech of men has been described as “more grave and serious.” The French learned Natchez from women and were, therefore, considered effeminate by Natchez men.
Subsistence
Like other Indian nations in the Southeastern Culture Area, the Natchez were farmers who supplemented their agricultural diet with hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plants. Along the creeks and bottomlands near their villages they planted maize (corn), beans, squash, and tobacco. The area would be first cleared by cutting and burning. The ashes of the burnt wood and cane would then nourish the crops. In addition to the primary crops, the Natchez also raised sunflower, sumpweed, chenopodium, pigweed, knotweed, giant ragweed, canary grass, amaranth, and melons.
To obtain a maximum yield from their fields, Natchez farmers practiced both intercropping and multiple cropping. Intercropping involved planting several different kinds of plants together in the same field. By planting corn and beans together, for example, the bean vines could twine themselves around the corn stocks. Multiple cropping involves the planting of two successive crops in the same field. Thus, early corn was planted first. It ripened early and was picked green. Then the field would be cleared, and a second crop was planted.
Villages
When the French first contacted the Natchez in 1682, the people were still following the mound building patterns of the earlier Mississippian cultures. The main settlement, Grand Village, was the home of the Natchez king, Great Sun. In addition, there were five to nine other villages. In their book This Land Was Theirs: A Study of Native Americans, Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“In the center of Grand Village was an open plaza measuring 250 by 300 paces with a flat-topped mound at each end. On top of one mound was a temple, and on the other was the home of the Great Sun.”
The first European descriptions of Natchez towns comes from the 1682 French exploration led by René-Robert, Cavalier de La Salle. One of the explorers writes:
“We entered a cabin of forty foot frontage. Its walls were of mud, two feet thick and twelve high. The cover is in the form of a dome, of mats of cane, so well made that no rain passes through.”
With regard to the French impressions of the Natchez, John Terrell, in his book American Indian Almanac, reports:
“They were astonished at the size and structure of the buildings, which were square, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, covered with arched roofs of cane, and stood in precise rows about a large rectangular square.”
Antoine le Page du Pratz, a French engineer-architect, visited the Natchez in 1718 and described their settlements. Natchez homes, as described by du Pratz, were square, made with a wall frame of poles, and a domed roof. Cane was lashed to the wall frames and plastered over to create walls about four inches thick.
In their book Native American Architecture, Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton write:
“The average Natchez settlement contained about four hundred people living in thirty to forty rectangular, plastered dwellings. The domestic compounds were clustered around nine ceremonial town centers, generally overlooking the creek just east of the Mississippi and protected by a combination of natural cliffs and log palisades. The tillable floodplains supported individual family gardens of corn, beans, and pumpkins, and a communal garden in which everyone in the community worked.”
Natchez society was socially stratified, and this was reflected in the community architecture. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton write:
“Temples and residences for the elite were built on flat-topped earth mounds that were reached by stairway ramps with log-reinforced steps.”
The Natchez Great War Chief, Tattooed Serpent, lived in a house that was 30 feet long and 20 feet high atop a 10-foot house mound. Woven mats covered the windowless interior walls.
The Natchez temple was about 30 feet long. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely describe it this way:
“This structure was built of thick logs ten feet in height and plastered on the outside with mud. The roof was ridged, and three large wooden figures of birds adorned the peak. Entered through a rectangular doorway, the temple was divided into two rooms. A perpetual fire burned in the larger outer room, and on a nearby platform was a cane coffin containing the bones of the most recently deceased Great Sun [leader].”
Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton report:
“Natchez builders seem to have taken greater pains in building their mounds and positioning them around formal plazas than they did in constructing their domestic quarters.”
Material Culture
Writing about the household goods uncovered by archaeologists at the Natchez town of Grand Village, Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“Within the cane-walled dwellings were household goods not usually reported north of Mexico. The most prominent furnishings were beds made from poles and cane with bearskins over the frame, a bison skin cover, and log pillow. When relaxing during the day, the people either sat on the beds or on short-legged wooden stools.”
Like other Southeastern peoples, the Natchez made and used a variety of pottery vessels, ranging from shallow bowls to large pots holding up to 40 pints.
Clothing and Adornment
Women wore knee-length deerskin skirts. High status women would sometimes wear cloaks made from mulberry inner bark. Men wore breechclouts. Noble men wore black breechclouts and commoners were white breechclouts. Moccasins were worn only when traveling. Young boys (under 12 years of age) and young girls (under 9 years of age) generally went nude. In her book Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume, Josephine Paterek reports:
“When the Natchez girl was about ten years of age, she began wearing a kind of fringed apron made of thread spun from mulberry inner bark. After puberty she replaced it with the woman’s knee-length wraparound skirt, either of mulberry fibers or of deerskin.”
Tattooing was a common way of decorating the body. Young people (both males and females) were tattooed with lines on the face. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“Persons of the nobility and warriors were elaborately tattooed on the body, head, and limbs. The patterns were of serpents, suns, and other undescribed forms.”
Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely also report:
“The tattooing method was to prick the skin until blood flowed freely and then rub charcoal, red pigment, or blue pigment into the openings.”
The Natchez, like the Chickasaw, Catawba, and Choctaw, practiced cranial deformation in which the heads of infants were deliberately flattened. In her book Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, Christina Snyder reports:
“When infants from these groups lay on their cradle boards, families placed wooden boards covered with deerskin on the foreheads, making the cranial vault rounded and long.”
Natchez women wore their hair long with short bangs in front. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“Her ears were pierced, and from each large hole hung an elongated shell ornament. Around her neck she might wear strings of small stones or perforated shell beads.”
Social Stratification
While many American Indian nations tended to be egalitarian—that is, there were no hereditary social classes—Natchez society was stratified into four classes: Suns, Nobles, Honored Men and Women, and Commoners (often called “Stinkards.”) A fifth group were the slaves, usually prisoners of war, who were considered to be outside of Natchez society.
Social stratification among the Natchez was symbolized by behavior of the lower classes regarding the upper classes. This has suggested that their system of social stratification was more like a caste system than a class system. In their book The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast, Theda Perdue and Michael Green report:
“When the people encountered the Great Sun or even came in sight of his temple, they performed a ceremonial greeting.”
Nobles would not eat with commoners nor allow their food to be touched by them.
Highly stratified societies tend to be unstable and the differences between the social classes is a disintegrating social force. The Natchez, however, integrated their social classes in an interesting way: the upper classes were required to marry down. In his book Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Carl Waldman reports:
“All grades of royalty and nobility, even the Great Sun himself, could not marry within their own class. They had to marry Stinkards. Stinkards could marry among themselves and their children would naturally be Stinkards too.”
The Natchez were matrilineal which means that children inherited the social class of the mother. Thus, the children of a female Sun were Suns, the children of female Nobles were Nobles, and so on. The children of upper-class men would not belong to the upper class. In this way, families crosscut the social class strata and helped to tie the society together. Carl Waldman reports:
“In other words, although men had the greater decision-making power in Natchez society, social rank was decided through the female line.”
In his book The American Indian, Colin Taylor reports:
“While rank in general was hereditary, some common men and their wives could achieve Honored rank through special merit.”
Government
Natchez government was a kingdom. The king, known as the Great Sun, served as both religious and civil chief. The Great Sun had a lot of power and unlike the political leaders of other Indian tribes, the Great Sun reigned as a kind of king. John Terrell reports:
“The great chief of the Natchez held absolute power over the property and lives of his subjects.”
In their book Native American Heritage, Merwyn Garbarino and Robert Sasso report:
“He was in charge of the chiefs of the Natchez villages, and his word was law. He was assisted by a council, however, so that other members of the nobility and the town chiefs limited his despotism somewhat.”
In his book Indians, William Brandon writes:
“Every deference was shown him, and his power over his individual subjects, their lives, labor, and property was absolute and despotic; although in political decisions involving the nation as a whole the Great Sun was controlled by a council of respected men.”
The status of the Great Sun was shown by distinctive clothing, by carrying him on a litter so that he didn’t have to touch the ground, and by the behavior of others. When leaving his presence, people would walk backwards rather than turn their backs to him.
In a kingdom, the position of the king is inherited, but unlike the patrilineal European kingdoms, the Natchez Great Sun inherited his position from his mother rather than from his father. In other words, the position of the Great Sun was inherited through the sister of the previous Great Sun. Carl Waldman reports:
“The king’s mother, referred to as White Woman, lived on top of her own mound and served as the king’s adviser. From among his brothers or uncles, called Little Suns, were chosen a war chief and a head priest. His sisters were called Women Suns and also had influence and power among all the other Natchez.”
According to Natchez oral tradition, the first Suns were a man and a woman who came from the Upper World to teach people how to live better and to govern them. It was the first Sun who commanded the people to build a temple and it was the first Sun who brought down pure fire from the sun for the sacred fire. According to anthropologist Peter Nabokov, in his book Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places:
“Wearing his swan-feather crown and borne by slaves on a litter, (his moccasins only allowed to touch woven mats), the Great Sun greeted his elder brother in the sky from the mound’s summit every morning, whose elevation, it was said, enabled them to converse more easily.”
The Natchez gave the Great Sun large presents of food as an expression of their devotion. The Great Sun, in turn, redistributed this food among the people.
Religion
Natchez religion was centered around the worship of the sun. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“The Natchez religious system was a formalized network of beliefs, ceremonies, and dogma maintained by specialists who devoted all their time to supernatural matters. These persons, who were priests in a generic sense, served as guardians of the major temple.”
One of the common elements of the spirituality among the Indians of the Southeast is the sacred fire as a symbol of purity and the earthly representative of the sun. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely write:
“The core of religious life was a sacred temple fire tended by eight elders, two of them cared for the fire continually, and they were killed if they permitted the fire to go out.”
Natchez religion was closely intertwined with government. Natchez society can be described as a theocracy in which Great Sun was considered as king and god. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely write:
“In this theocratic state, all religious, social, and political control was, in theory, in the hands of this individual.”
Because they were an agricultural people, the primary annual religious ceremony was the Great Corn Ceremony. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely write:
“The corn used in the ceremony was from virgin ground and had been sown and tended by warriors.”
The corn was harvested and stored in a cane granary until the ceremony. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely write:
“The maize was cooked and eaten during a feast that was followed by speeches and dancing throughout the night to the accompaniment of a drum and gourd rattles.”
The ceremony continued until all the corn harvested for the ceremony had been consumed.
When the Great Sun died, several of his subjects would also be killed so that he might not appear unattended in the spirit world. In his book Native Americans, James Lagomarsino writes:
“When a chief died, his wives, guards and servants were killed by strangulation as it was believed that they would accompany him in his journey to the afterlife.”
When a female Sun died, her husband, a Commoner, would be strangled by their eldest son. Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely report:
“Then the eldest surviving daughter ordered twelve small children killed and placed around the bodies of the deceased couple. In the plaza fourteen platforms were erected, and on each was a man who was to die during the funeral.”
The burial procedures for the Natchez nobles were different from that of the Great Sun. The bodies of the Nobles were placed on raised platforms to decompose. John Terrell reports:
“After decomposition the bodies were dissected, and the bones were placed in chests of wood or cane in various temples.”
In 1725, Tattooed Serpent, a Natchez Great War Chief and brother of the Great Sun died. Colin Taylor reports:
“His body was laid out on a cane bed in his house, probably on a small mound near the town plaza, dressed in his finest and with his face painted vermilion. His weapons were tied to his bed and around it were arrayed all the calumets (peace pipes) he had received during his career. All his other belongings were taken out of the house and packed to be buried with him.”
As a part of the traditional Natchez death rituals for high class individuals, two of his wives, one of his sisters, and several of his aides were strangled. His two wives were buried with him in a trench in the village temple. The bodies of the others were carried on litters back to their home villages for burial. The temple structure was then burned, and the entire mound was covered with baskets of earth. As a part of the ceremony, a Commoner infant was sacrificed, which elevated the parents to Honored status.
Wendell Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely write:
“The custom of executing persons at the death of the Sun and other upper-class individuals may seem barbaric and senseless, but they believed that it had very real advantages to the individuals involved. In their belief system, one’s spirit under such circumstances would accompany the deceased upper-class person to the world of the dead and serve him or her there in perpetual happiness.”
Natchez commoners were buried in graves near their village.
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