Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/572

 mooney] THE END OF THE NATCHEZ 513

arrived and summoned another of the Natchez forts to surrender. The Indians twice rejected the summons with defiance and fol- lowed it up with a sortie, which was repulsed only after a hard fight. The whole body finally managed to escape across the river into Louisiana, the French finding it convenient not to in- tercept them. Says the historian, " The Natchez were not destroyed ; they could in the future be regarded only as irrecon- cilable enemies. ,, ' Their allies, the Yazoo, Koroa, and Tioux, were less fortunate. According to the same contemporary his- torian, the French Indians fell on them and " made a perfect massacre: of the two former nations only fifteen Indians re- mained, who hastened to join the Natchez ; the Tioux were all killed to a man." From later evidence, however, it appears that the destruction was not so complete as was at first thought.

Toward the end of the year it was learned that the Natchez and their allies, who were still a constant thorn in the flesh of the French, were stockaded in three forts in the neighborhood of Black river, Louisiana, and a force of seven hundred French, negroes, and Indians were sent against them. In January, 1731,. the first fort, which Gatschet locates near the present town of Trinity, was invested. The chiefs having been taken by treachery,, a part of their followers surrendered, but the others refused all offers, and when told that if they still held out no quarter would be given to man, woman, or child, they replied that "we might fire when we chose — that they did not fear death." On the night of the 15th, during a terrible rainstorm which obliged the French to keep under cover, they made their escape, to the number of about seventy warriors with their women and children, and when the besiegers entered the stockade they found only one man and a woman with a new-born babe. The French Indians refused to pursue them, and the expedition returned to New Orleans with their prisoners, being the principal chief or Sun, several sub-chiefs, forty warriors, and three hundred and eighty-seven women and

1 Charlevoix, op. cit., p. 101.

AM. ANTH. N. S., I — 33

�� �