Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/361

 the Spaniards, who certainly, as wanton invaders, did not act in a way to conciliate the esteem of the natives. The Natchez asserted that they could once number no less than 500 Suns (or chiefs who pretended to derive their origin from that luminary which they adored), and that their possessions extended in a continual line from Natchez to the mouth of the Ohio. Whether they had been dispossessed and reduced to the feeble state in which they were discovered by the French, through the enmity of the Chicasaws, Iroquois, or the Illinois, we cannot now determine, though, from the contiguity of the latter, and their former strength, we should rather conclude them, or the northern confederates, to have been the destroyers of the Natchez, than the Chicasaws, as we find them and the Choctaws to have been the abettors of the Natchez, in their unfortunate contest with the French, yet of a character extremely versatile and revengeful, insomuch that the Choctaws, who had at one time proffered their assistance, withdrew it in favour of their enemies, in consequence of the unforeseen circumstance which to the Natchez prematurely hastened the secret attack they had concerted against their enemies, and which was to have been regulated by the consummation of a period of time, designated by a bundle of rods deposited in the temple, each of which counted for a day. The completion of this fatal period was, however, secretly hastened, to destroy the concert with the Choctaws, by the revengeful sister of the Great Sun, who, resenting the secrecy her brother had observed towards her, withdrew a number of {286} the tallies, and though by this means the main object was not defeated, yet it excited the fatal jealousy and enmity of the Choctaws, who were consequently disconcerted in completing the intended measure of vengeance.

From the high tone in which the chief of Quigalta