page_title: Tunica people
section_title: Prehistory
hierarchical_section_title: Tunica people / Prehistory
caption_attribution_description: English: Artists conception of the Parkin Mounds site, a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the confluence of the St. Francis and Tyronza Rivers in Parkin, Cross County, Arkansas. Many archeologists believe it to be part of the province of Casqui, documented as visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542. Archaeological artifacts from the village of the Parkin people are dated to 1400–1650 CE. All rights held by the artist, Herb Roe © 2016.
context_page_description: The Tunica people were a group of linguistically and culturally related Native American tribes in the Mississippi River Valley, which include the Tunica; the Yazoo; the Koroa; and possibly the Tioux. They first encountered Europeans in 1541 - members of the Hernando de Soto expedition.
  The Tunica language is an isolate.
  Over the next centuries, under pressure from hostile neighbors, the Tunica migrated south from the Central Mississippi Valley to the Lower Mississippi Valley. Eventually they moved westward and settled around present-day Marksville, Louisiana.
  Since the early 19th century, they have intermarried with the Biloxi tribe, an unrelated Siouan-speaking people from the vicinity of Biloxi, Mississippi and shared land. Remnant peoples from other small tribes also merged with them. In 1981 they were federally recognized and now call themselves the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe; they have a reservation in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana.
context_section_description: By the Middle Mississippian period, local Late Woodland peoples in the Central Mississippi Valley had developed or adopted a full Mississippian lifestyle, with intensive maize agriculture, hierarchical political structures, mussel shell-tempered pottery and participation in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). At this time the settlement patterns were a mix of dispersed settlements, farmsteads and villages. Over the next centuries, settlement patterns changed to a pattern of more centralized towns, with defensive palisades and ditches, indicating a state of endemic warfare had developed between local competing polities. Material culture, such as pottery styles and mortuary practices, began to diverge at this point.
  The archaeological evidence suggests that the Mississippi valley was home to several competing paramount chiefdoms, with supporting vassal states, all belonging to the same overall culture. The groups in the area are defined by archaeologists as archaeological phases, based on differentiation in these material cultures. They include the Menard, Tipton, Belle Meade-Walls, Parkin and Nodena phases. In the immediate vicinity of the future city of Memphis, Tennessee, two phases seem to have been paramount chiefdoms: Parkin and Nodena. The other phases were possible vassal states or allies in their competition for local supremacy.
  The Parkin phase is centered on the Parkin site, a 17 acres (7 ha) palisaded village at the confluence of the St. Francis and Tyronza rivers. The large village was likely located at the confluence of the two rivers because the site enabled residents to control transportation and trade on the waterways.
  The Nodena phase is believed to have been centered on the Bradley Site (3 Ct 7) and its nearby cluster of towns and villages. It is named for the Nodena Site, located east of Wilson, Arkansas in Mississippi County on a meander bend of the Mississippi River. Scholars believe that because of pottery and mortuary similarities, the Belle Mead and Walls phase peoples were allies or vassals of the Nodena polity. The Parkin polity, defined by different mortuary practices and pottery, was competing.
caption: Parkin Site, circa 1539. Illustration by Herb Roe
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