On November 28, 1729, warriors of the Natchez nation struck French settlers living close to what is now Natchez, Mississippi, in an episode remembered as the Natchez revolt or the Natchez massacre. For well over ten years before that day, the Natchez and the French had shared the same stretch of the Louisiana colony, generally trading without conflict and sometimes joining families through marriage. Relations soured over time, however, and fighting broke out. The breaking point came when Sieur de Chépart, the French colonial commandant, insisted on seizing land belonging to a Natchez village so he could build his own plantation near Fort Rosalie. In response, Natchez leaders began organizing a strike against the settlers. They spent several days planning the assault while keeping most of the French unaware of what was coming. A handful of colonists caught wind of the scheme and tried to alert Chépart, but their warnings were dismissed as lies, and they suffered punishment for speaking up. When the moment came, the Natchez struck simultaneously at the fort and the surrounding farms, cutting down nearly every French man present while largely sparing the women and the enslaved Africans among them. In total, roughly 230 colonists lost their lives, and both the fort and the homesteads were left in ashes.
News of the killings reached New Orleans, the seat of French colonial government, and stirred fears that a broader Indian rebellion might be brewing, with officials worrying the Natchez had joined forces with other nations. Their initial reaction was to strike out at the Chaouacha people, despite the fact that this group had taken no part whatsoever in the uprising; the French destroyed the entire Chaouacha settlement. Afterward, French forces joined with their Choctaw allies to launch strikes against Natchez communities, taking hundreds of prisoners who were subsequently sold into bondage. Even so, a considerable number of Natchez fled northward and found shelter among the Chickasaw. For years afterward the Natchez carried on a limited campaign of resistance against the French, yet French expeditions launched in 1730 and 1731 against Natchez refugees sheltering with the Chickasaw eventually drove them onward, forcing them to settle as refugees among the Creek and Cherokee peoples. By 1741 the Natchez had founded a settlement in the northern reaches of the Upper Creek Nation, where the Abihka granted them permission to rebuild their community. They later put their names to both the 1790 Treaty of New York and the 1796 Treaty of Colerain, and today they endure as one of the constituent tribes within the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
The assault on Fort Rosalie wiped out some of the colony's most valuable agricultural land and put the movement of food and trade goods along the Mississippi River at serious risk. In the aftermath, the French crown took direct control of Louisiana away from the Company of the Indies in 1731, since the company had struggled to govern the territory effectively. Étienne Perier, the governor of Louisiana at the time, bore the blame for both the massacre itself and the troubles that followed, and he was summoned back to France in 1732.
Background
When Robert de La Salle made his way down the Mississippi River in 1682, he became the first Frenchman to make contact with the Natchez, whom he proclaimed an ally. This tribe lived a settled existence spread across nine villages that operated with a degree of independence from one another, and the French regarded them as the region's most civilized people. Disease brought by contact with Europeans had already cut Natchez numbers to roughly 3,500 by 1700, and further outbreaks by 1720 reduced that figure by half again. Natchez society followed a rigid two-tier structure: a noble class the French called les Soleils, or "the Suns" (rendered in Natchez as ʔuwahʃiːɫ), and a commoner class known as les Puants, "the Stinkards" (miʃmiʃkipih in Natchez).
During the years 1699 to 1702, the explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville was welcomed peacefully by the tribe, who also permitted a French missionary to take up residence among them. The Natchez found themselves at war with the Chickasaw during this period, a people armed with British guns supplied by their allies, and the Natchez hoped for comparable advantages from their own ties to the French. Even so, British activity in the area caused a rift within the Natchez, splitting them into camps favoring the British and those favoring the French. Leadership of the central settlement, known as Natchez or the Grand Village, fell to the paramount chief Great Sun (ʔuwahʃiːɫ liːkip) alongside the war chief Tattooed Serpent (called Serpent Piqué in French records, Obalalkabiche in Natchez). Both men favored strengthening ties with the French.
Commandant Chépart
New Orleans became the site of a Superior Council trial in 1728, when Chépart, who commanded Fort Rosalie, faced charges of abusing his authority. Horatio Bardwell Cushman noted that Chépart escaped punishment thanks to "the interference of influential friends," and Governor Perier ultimately granted him a pardon, sending him back to his post. Once reinstated at Fort Rosalie, Chépart resumed his pattern of mistreating and oppressing the Indians there.
Driven by ambitions he shared with Perier for personal profit, Chépart informed the Natchez during the spring of 1729 that he intended to claim ground at the heart of White Apple for a plantation, a location housing a temple where the Natchez honored their dead. He drove a missionary cross into the earth there as a sign that Perier himself had authorized the seizure. Most of the colony's residents had turned against Chépart's conduct by this time, among them Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, whose writings as a French historian identified this demand as unprecedented: never before had a French colonial official simply appropriated Natchez territory outright, bypassing any negotiation.
Protests erupted among the Natchez once they realized their land would be taken for the plantation, and Chépart answered their objections with a threat to set fire to the temple sheltering their ancestors' remains. Faced with this danger, the Natchez appeared willing to surrender the territory, according to Dumont de Montigny's account, provided they could wait until the harvest concluded before moving their temple and its graves elsewhere. Chépart consented to this delay, demanding in return payment of pelts, oil, poultry, and grain, goods the Natchez pledged to deliver at a later time.
Attack
Once Chépart made clear to the tribe that removal from their ancestral ground was imminent, the Natchez set plans in motion to strike the French garrison at Fort Rosalie. They asked to borrow guns from various colonists, claiming they intended to hunt and would share the meat with the lenders. Several French men and women caught wind of the scheme through overheard conversation. Le Page du Pratz recorded that Tattooed Arm, a female chief among the Natchez, tried to warn the French that an assault was coming, led by rival factions from White Apple. Colonists brought this warning to Chépart, who brushed it aside; the night before the killing began, while drunk, he even had some of them chained.
On November 28, 1729, Natchez representatives arrived at Chépart's post bearing corn, poultry, and deerskins, along with a calumet, the recognized emblem of peace. Chépart, still feeling the effects of the previous night's drinking, felt confident violence was not on their minds, and he dared those who had cautioned him to show proof behind their claims.
As Chépart received the offerings, gunfire erupted from the Natchez, marking the start of a coordinated assault against both Fort Rosalie and the scattered farms and land grants in what is today the city of Natchez. Chépart rushed off to summon his men, only to find they had already been slain. Much of what unfolded that day remains obscure; Le Page du Pratz, who gathered accounts from survivors, called the events too dreadful to put into words.
Beforehand, the Natchez had taken control of a Company of the Indies vessel moored on the river, cutting off any chance of French escape by boat, and had placed fighters on the far bank to catch anyone fleeing that way. Monsieur du Codère, commandant of the Yazoo post at Fort St. Pierre, happened to be at Fort Rosalie with a Jesuit priest when the shooting started. The pair tried to double back toward their ship, but Natchez warriors overtook and killed them, taking their scalps.
Nearly all of the roughly 150 Frenchmen stationed at Fort Rosalie perished, with only about twenty managing to break free, some making their way toward New Orleans. The bulk of those killed had no weapons on them. Women, children, and enslaved Africans were largely left unharmed, many confined together in a house on the bluff under armed guard, forced to witness the carnage unfold below. Dumont de Montigny's version of events notes that any woman who fought to protect her husband or sought retribution afterward was either captured or killed outright. One account holds that a pregnant woman had her unborn child ripped from her body before she was killed. Counted a year later, the death toll stood at 138 men, 35 women, and 56 children, roughly 230 people total. Some historians suggest the Africans were spared because of a felt kinship between them and the Natchez; a number of the enslaved even joined the tribe afterward, while others used the disorder to slip away to freedom. Meanwhile, a party of Yazoo travelers accompanying du Codère stayed out of the fighting itself but were stirred by what the Natchez had done. Upon their return to Fort St. Pierre, they leveled the post, killing the priest along with seventeen French soldiers there.
Natchez losses were far lighter, numbering only about a dozen warriors. Eight of them fell while attempting to overrun the La Loire des Ursins homestead, where the family's men had managed to mount a successful defense.
Chépart was captured alive. His captors debated his fate before deciding a stinkard, a man from the tribe's lowest social rank, would be the one to execute him. Two other Frenchmen were kept alive for their skills: Mayeux, a carter, was made to haul the plundered French goods to the Great Village, while Le Beau, a tailor, was put to work altering the clothes taken from colonists for their new Natchez owners. The fort itself, along with the storehouse and every homestead, was burned to ashes. Echoing what Governor Bienville had done to executed Indians in 1717 and 1723, the Natchez cut the heads from the French dead and carried them before the Great Sun for his inspection.
Written by Aubrey Research from Natchez revolt on Wikipedia, cited as a reference and not reproduced.
Where these engagements were fought
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By decade
The tempo of the war, by decade.
Notable engagements
| Engagement | State | Year | Forces or losses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natchez revolt (Fort Rosalie massacre) | MS | 1729 | ~150 French killed; ~12 Natchez killed |
| Destruction of Fort St. Pierre (Yazoo) | MS | 1729 | Jesuit and 17 soldiers killed |
Plus 8 further documented engagements in the Natchez War record.
By state
Engagements and locations are compiled from published sources: Wikipedia (text rewritten and cited as a reference, CC BY-SA 4.0).