Native American Heritage Tour

The First Mississippians "MISSISSIPPI" - the name itself is Choctaw. It means "father of waters", and refers to the largest river in North America, which forms Mississippi's western border. The State has always been richly endowed with water, plants, and animals, and before recorded time, it accommodated a great variety of peoples with large populations.

The first white men who entered the interior of the territory now included in Mississippi were probably the Spanish explorers led by Hernando de Soto, who wandered across the present state in search of gold in 1540 and 1541. The Spaniards found that the land was densely populated with Indians, and they suffered a serious attack from at least one Mississippi tribe, the Chickasaws.

Many archaeologists now agree that the first people whose descendants came to be called "Indians" (because Columbus was mistaken in his identification of the lands he had found, thinking that he had arrived in India) may have crossed from Siberia to Alaska and thus into North America long before 15,000 B.C. From these first people the southeastern Indians were ultimately descended, as the rich food resources and favorable climate of the area attracted migration from the north and west. In the woodlands plants and shrubs yielding berries, nuts, roots, and herbs for food and medicines grew in profusion. Deer, bear, and even a breed of forest buffalo were plentiful; the rivers teemed with fish, and the coast with shellfish. Thus it is not surprising that Mississippi, which was richly endowed with all these environments, easily accommodated a greater variety of tribes and a heavier Indianpopulation than any other southeastern state.

Initially non-sedentary hunters and gatherers on the bounty of the natural environment, the Indians probably developed corn agriculture under the influence of traditions from Mexico around the time of Christ. As farming people, they built villages and ceremonial mound centers, and these were the organized societies that defeated de Soto.

Among Mississippi Indians only the Natchez were still building mounds when the second wave of Europeans came in the early 1700s. Tribes resident in Mississippi at this time included the Acolapissa, Biloxi, and Pascagoula on the Gulf Coast, the Bayougoula., Houma, and Natchez on the lower Mississippi, and the Chakchiuma, lbitoupa, Koroa, Ofogoula, Taposa, Tiou, Tunica, and Yazoo on the Yazoo River in the Mississippi Delta. The Choctaw inhabited the east central part of the state, while the Chickasaw dwelled in the north and northeast. The most populous were the Choctaw, with a population of about 20,000, and the Chickasaw and Natchez, each numbering nearly 5,000.

The Mississippi tribes had a rich oral tradition, which included creation legends and the story of a great flood. The various tribes were much alike in their religious beliefs, which centered on a powerful unseen god or great spirit. The Natchez Indians had a particular veneration for the sun, even to the point that their chiefs were known as suns. Because none of the southeastern Indians had developed a written language as we know it (though they did use pictographs to record events), these traditions were passed down from the elders to the younger members of the tribe.

While the Mississippi Indians depended upon agriculture for staple foods like corn, beans, and squash, they also grew pumpkins, watermelons, and tobacco for ceremonial purposes. Some of their food, however, was still secured by hunting and fishing. In addition to deer and bear, they also hunted turkey, squirrel, and quail, and they fostered the increase of these animals by burning underbrush out of the forests at yearly intervals, thus creating the kind of park-like areas favored particularly by deer and turkey. After the coming of the white man, the Indian tribes were destroyed or forcibly removed from their homelands. The Natchez tribe was nearly exterminated by the French in retaliation for the Natchez rebellion at Fort Rosalie in 1729. The Natchez who survived fled - some westward, some north to live with the Chickasaw - but the Natchez no longer existed as a tribe. The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, buried by the sheet erosion that followed white farming practices, has been located and authenticated by extensive archaeological excavations sponsored by the Department of Archives and History. The Grand Village is now an official historical property of the state of Mississippi, with exhibits and a restored mound group. Located within the city limits of Natchez, it is easily reached by the visiting public.

The smaller Yazoo tribe was also nearly annihilated by the French and their Indian allies, the Choctaw, for their part in the 1729 rebellion, but other tribes were less negatively affected by the colonial powers. The Tunica and Ofogoula moved into northern Louisiana and later around the restored Fort Rosalie to help the French, and in general the French indifference to large landholdings over most of the state helped maintain the allegiance of most of the tribes. In 1763, after the French and Indian War, the French withdrew to the west side of the Mississippi and ceded the eastern side to the British; the Biloxis, Pascagoulas, and some of the Choctaws went with them. The Chakchiumas, who lived between the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, probably merged with the Chickasaw as the Natchez had done. But for the Choctaw and the Chickasaw the changes in European colonial powers did not particularly affect their attachment to their homelands. It was only after 1776, when the rule of the British was successfully challenged by the thirteen colonies, that the yeoman farmers' desire for land led to its eventual displacement of these two important tribes.

In 1801 treaties between the United States and the Chickasaw Nation gave the United States a right of way on the Natchez Trace, an ancient Indian trade route. In 1805 the Choctaws ceded part of the south Mississippi lands that had come to them after the departure of the Natchez and the smaller tribes; in 1820, at the Treaty of Doak's Stand, they ceded the rest of the southern lands. Finally, the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed and negotiated fraudulently without the consent of the whole tribe, removed most of the Mississippi Choctaws to Indian Territory in Oklahoma and ceded most of their traditional homeland to white settlement. Two years later the Chickasaw received the same treatment in the Treaty of Pontotoc. Thus Andrew Jackson's Removal policy sent many Mississippi Indians on their own "trail of tears."

The Mississippi Band of Choctaws, descendants of the Choctaws who refused to leave their homeland after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, still live near Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from Nanih Waiya, a celebrated Indian mound thought by many Choctaw Indians to be the "mother mound" of their creation legend. Choctaw is still the first language that they learn in the home, and while maintaining such proud traditions the Mississippi Choctaws stepped into the future with their own tribally-owned industries. Information on contemporary Indian life in Mississippi may be obtained by contacting the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Highway 16 West, Philadelphia, Mississippi 39350. Telephone: (601) 650-3684.

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