The Natchez Massacre of 1729 was the largest Native American attack on a European settlement in the Deep South. The Natchez, outraged by the French commandant Chépart's demand that they vacate their main village to make way for his plantation, rose simultaneously against Fort Rosalie and outlying settlements on November 28, killing 229 French men and enslaving 300 women, children, and Black slaves. The attack shocked New France and led to the complete destruction of the Natchez nation in French reprisals.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
229 French men killed; 300 women and children enslaved
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