French Governor Perrier organized a massive reprisal using French regulars and thousands of Choctaw allies who were traditional Natchez enemies. The Natchez held two fortified villages for weeks but were eventually forced to flee. Hundreds were captured and sold into slavery in the Caribbean. The Natchez as an organized people were destroyed; scattered survivors were absorbed by the Chickasaw and Creek. The destruction eliminated the most powerful Native nation in the Lower Mississippi Valley.
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.
Hundreds of Natchez killed or enslaved; French and Choctaw losses moderate
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