Natchez Massacre The Natchez Massacre , or the Natchez revolt , was an attack by Natchez people on French colonists near present - day Natchez , Mississippi , on November 29 , 1729 . The Natchez and French had lived alongside each other for more than a decade prior to the incident , mostly conducting peaceful business and occasionally intermarrying . After a period of deteriorating relations , Natchez leaders were provoked when the French colonial commandant , Sieur de Chépart ( or Etcheparre ) , demanded land from a Natchez village for his own plantation near Fort Rosalie . They plotted their attack over several days and managed to conceal their plans from most of the French ; those who overheard and warned Chépart of an attack were considered untruthful and were punished . In a coordinated attack on the fort and the homesteads , the Natchez killed almost all of the Frenchmen , only sparing most of the women and African slaves . The fort and homes were burned to the ground . When the French heard the news of the massacre they feared a general Indian uprising and were concerned that the Natchez might have conspired with other tribes . They first responded by ordering a massacre on the Chaouacha people , who had no relation to the Natchez revolt , wiping out their entire village . They then retaliated against the Natchez villages capturing Natchez leaders and selling them into slavery , although most of the Indians managed to escape to the north and take refuge among the Chickasaw people . The Natchez waged low - intensity warfare against the French over the next years , but retaliatory expeditions on Natchez refugees among the Chickasaw in 1730 and 1731 forced them to move on and live as refugees among the Creek and Cherokee tribes . By 1736 the Natchez had ceased to exist as an independent people . The attack on Fort Rosalie destroyed some of the Louisiana colony ' s most productive farms and endangered shipments of food and trade goods on the Mississippi River . As a result , the French state returned control of Louisiana from the French West India Company to the crown in 1731 , essentially marking the end of French ambitions to colonize the lower Mississippi Valley . Louisiana governor Étienne Périer was held responsible for the massacre and its aftermath , and he was recalled to France in 1732 . Background . The French first encountered the Natchez in 1682 and declared them an ally . The Natchez were sedentary and lived in nine semi - autonomous villages , and the French considered them to be the most civilized tribe of the region . By 1700 their numbers had been decimated to about 3 , 500 by disease , and by 1720 further epidemics had halved that number . Their society was strictly divided into a noble class called " the Suns " and a commoner class called in French " the Stinkards " . Between 1699 and 1702 , the Natchez received Pierre Le Moyne d ' Iberville in peace and allowed a French missionary to settle among them . The Natchez were at war with the Chickasaw people , who were allied with the British and had received guns from them , and the Natchez expected to benefit similarly from their relation with the French . Nonetheless , the British presence in the territory lead the Natchez to split into pro - British and pro - French factions . The central village , called Natchez or the Grand Village , was led by the paramount chief Great Sun and the war chief Tattooed Serpent ( " Serpent Piqué " in the French sources ) , both of whom were interested in pursuing an alliance with the French . First , Second and Third Natchez Wars . The first conflict between the French and the Natchez took place in 1716 , when the Governor of Louisiana , Antoine Laumet de La Mothe , sieur de Cadillac , passed through Natchez territory and neglected to renew the alliance with the Natchez by smoking the peace calumet . The Natchez reacted to this slight by killing four French traders . Cadillac sent his lieutenant Jean - Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville to punish the Natchez . He deceived the Natchez leaders to attend a parley , where he ambushed and captured them , and forced the Natchez to exchange their leaders for the culprits who had attacked the French . A number of random Natchez from the pro - British villages were executed . This caused French - Natchez relations to further deteriorate . As part of the terms of the peace accord following this First Natchez War , the Natchez promised to supply labor and materials for the construction of a fort for the French . The fort was named Fort Rosalie , and it was aimed at protecting the French trade monopoly in the region from English incursions . By 1717 , French colonists had established a fort and trading post at Natchez , Mississippi . They built numerous large plantations and concessions , as well as smaller farms , on land acquired from the Natchez . Relations between Natchez and colonists were generally friendly , but there were tensions and there are reports of colonists abusing Natchez , forcing them to provide them with labor or goods , and as more colonists arrived their concessions gradually encroached on Natchez lands . Some French men even married and had children with Natchez women . From 1722 to 1724 , brief armed conflicts between the Natchez and French were settled through negotiations between then - Louisiana governor Bienville and Natchez war chief Tattooed Serpent . In 1723 Bienville had been informed that some Natchez had harassed villagers , and he razed the Natchez village of White Apple and enslaved a number of the villagers , only to discover that the alleged harassment was in fact false , and had been faked by the colonists to frame the Natchez . One of the later skirmishes in 1724 consisted of the murder of a Natchez chief ' s son by a colonist , to which the Natchez responded by killing another Frenchman named M . Guenot . Bienville then sent French soldiers from New Orleans to attack the Natchez at their fields and settlements , and the Natchez surrendered . Their plea for peace was met following the execution of one of their chiefs by the French . Chronicler Le Page du Pratz , who lived among the Natchez and was a close friend of Tattooed Serpent , records that he once asked his friend why the Natchez were resentful towards the French . Tattooed Serpent answered that the French seemed to have two hearts , a good one today and an evil tomorrow , and proceeded to tell how Natchez life had been better before the French arrived . He finished by saying : " In fine , before the arrival of the French we lived like men who can be satisfied with what they have , whereas today we live like slaves that cannot be suffered to do as they please " . The most faithful ally of the French , Tattooed Serpent died in 1725 , another blow to the relations between the Natchez and the colonists . According to archaeologist Karl Lorenz , who excavated several Natchez settlements , another factor that complicated the relation between the Natchez and the colonists was the fact that the French did not well understand the Natchez political structure . The French assumed that the Great Sun , the chief of the village of Natchez , also held sway over all the other Natchez villages . In fact each village was autonomous and the Great Sun ' s power only extended to the villages of Flour and Tioux with which the village of Natchez was allied , but not to the three pro - British villages of White Apple , Jenzenaque and Grigra . When the Great Sun died in 1728 and was succeeded as Great Sun by the inexperienced son of his sister Tattooed Arm , the pro - English villages became more powerful than the pro - French villages centered at Natchez . Commandant Chépart . In 1728 , Sieur de Chépart ( also known as D ' Etcheparre and Chopart ) , whom Governor Étienne Périer had recently appointed as commandant of Fort Rosalie , was brought to New Orleans and put on trial before the governor for abuse of power , specifically treatment and behavior toward the Natchez that was unpopular among the French . He was saved from punishment , however , by " the interference of influential friends " , and upon returning to the fort , continued to administer it as he had before , telling the Natchez that November that he wished to seize land containing a temple of their people ' s graves in the center of the village of White Apple . Governor Périer sided with Chépart ' s demand and planted a cross on the land he sought . By this point , most of the colonists disapproved of Chépart ' s actions , including Jean - François - Benjamin Dumont de Montigny , a French historian who wrote that this was the first time that a French colonial leader had simply claimed Natchez land as his own , without prior negotiations . When the Natchez began to protest the seizure of their land for the plantation , Chépart said he would burn down the temple with their ancestors ' graves . In response to this threat , the Natchez seemed to promise to cede the land , wrote Dumont de Montigny , but only if they were given two months to relocate their temple and graves . Chépart agreed to give them the time in exchange for pelts , oil , poultry , and grain — a request the Natchez promised to fulfill later . Attack . The Natchez then began to prepare for a strike on the French at Fort Rosalie , borrowing firearms from some French colonists with promises to go hunting and to share the game with the guns ' owners . Some French men and women overheard the Natchez planning such an attack . According to Le Page du Pratz , it was the Natchez female chief Tattooed Arm who deliberately attempted to alert the French , against the attack led by her rivals at the White Apple village . When they told Chépart , he disregarded them and placed some of the men who voiced the warnings in irons , including on the night before the massacre , when he was drunk . On the morning of November 29 , 1729 , the Natchez came to Chépart with corn , poultry , and deerskins , also carrying with them a calumet — well - known to be a symbol of peace . The commandant , experiencing a hangover from drinking the night before , was certain that the Natchez had no violent intentions , and he challenged those who had warned of an attack to prove that their rumors were accurate . While Chépart was still viewing the goods , the Natchez started firing , giving the signal to a coordinated simultaneous attack on Fort Rosalie and on the outlying farms and concessions in the area now covered by the city of Natchez . Chépart ran to call his soldiers to garrison , but they had already been killed . The details of the attack are mostly unknown as chroniclers such as Le Page du Pratz , who talked with several eye - witnesses , stated that the events were " simply too horrific " to recount . The Natchez had prepared by seizing the galley of the Company anchored on the river , so that no Frenchmen could board it and attempt to flee . And they had stationed warriors on the other side of the river to intercept those who might flee in that direction . The commandant at the Yazoo tribe ' s trading post Fort St . Pierre , M . du Codére , was visiting Fort Rosalie with a Jesuit priest when they heard gunshots . They turned around to return to their ship , but warriors caught up with them , killing and scalping them . The Natchez killed almost all of the 150 Frenchmen at Fort Rosalie and only about 20 managed to escape . Most of the dead were unarmed . Women , children , and African slaves were mostly spared ; they were locked inside a house on the bluff guarded by several warriors , from where they could see the events . Women seen defending their husbands from the violence , or trying to avenge them , were taken captive or killed . One woman ' s unborn baby was torn from her before she herself was killed . A year after the event , the dead were tallied to 138 men , 35 women and 56 children . Some scholars argue that the fact that the Natchez spared the African slaves was due to a general sense of affinity between the Natchez and the Africans ; some slaves even joined the Natchez against their masters , while others took the chance to escape to freedom . A group of Yazoo people who were accompanying Commandant du Codére remained neutral during the conflict , but were inspired by the Natchez revolt . When they returned to Fort St . Pierre , they destroyed the fort , killing the Jesuit priest and 17 French soldiers . The Natchez lost only about 12 warriors during the attack . Eight warriors died attacking the homestead of the La Loire des Ursins family , where the men had been able to prepare a defense against the intruding Natchez . Chépart himself was taken captive by the Natchez , who were at first unsure what to do with him , but finally decided that he should be killed by a stinkard — a member of the lowest caste in the tribe ' s hierarchy . The Natchez kept two Frenchmen alive , a carter named Mayeux who was made to carry all the goods of the French to the Great Village and a tailor named Le Beau who was employed by the Natchez to refit the clothing of the French to their new owners . They set fire to the fort , the store and all the homesteads , burning them to the ground . Just as Jean - Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville had done with the executed Indians in 1717 and 1723 , the Natchez beheaded the dead Frenchmen and brought the severed heads for the Great Sun to view . French response . News of the Fort Rosalie attack reached New Orleans in early December , and the colonists there began to panic . The city depended upon grain and other supplies from the Illinois settlement , and shipments up and down the Mississippi River would be threatened by the loss of Fort Rosalie . Governor Périer reacted to the massacre by forbidding the entry of a delegation of Choctaw people into the city , for fear that they were using the pretext of a friendly visit to launch an attack . He then ordered slaves and French troops to march downstream and massacre a small village of Chaouacha people who had played no part in the uprising in Natchez . His superiors in Paris reprimanded the leader for this act , which may have been intended to prevent any alliance between slaves and Native Americans against the French colonists . With many Louisiana colonists , Dumont de Montigny in particular , blaming Chépart ( who was killed by the Natchez ) and Périer for the massacre on the French , Louis XV , the French king at the time , ordered the latter back to France in 1732 . Périer ' s replacement was his predecessor , Bienville , whom the French state thought to be more experienced at dealing with the Native Americans of the region . A year earlier , the French West India Company gave up control of the colony to Louis XV . A more serious retaliation against the Natchez began late in December and in January 1730 , with expeditions led by Jean - Paul Le Sueur and Henri de Louboëy . The two commanders besieged the Natchez in forts built near the site of the Grand Village of the Natchez , a mile or so east of Fort Rosalie , which had been rebuilt . They killed about 80 men and captured 18 women , and released a number of French women who had been captured during the massacre of Fort Rosalie . The French relied on allied support from Tunica and Choctaw warriors . The Choctaw attacked the Natchez without the French , killing 100 and capturing a number of women and children . This ruined the element of surprise for the French and the Natchez had already scattered . At first , the Natchez were well prepared for French retaliatory strikes , having stocked up several cannons and the firearms used in the massacre two months earlier . The Natchez captured by the Choctaw and Tunica allies of the French where given over to the governor and sold into slavery , and some were tortured to death at the frame in New Orleans . One day in late February 1730 , with Louboëy seeking to catch the Natchez by surprise , the Natchez negotiated a peace treaty and freed French captives , but the French planned an attack on the Natchez fort the following day . The Natchez then brought gifts to Louboëy , but left their fort that night and escaped across the Mississippi River , taking African slaves with them . The next day , Louboëy and his men burned down the abandoned Grand Village fort as the Natchez hid in the bayou s along the Black River . A subsequent expedition led by Périer in 1731 to dislodge the Natchez captured many of them and their leaders , including Saint Cosme , the Great Sun and the Female Sun Tattooed Arm . The 387 captives captives , most of whom had belonged to the pro - French faction of the Natchez , were sold into slavery in Saint - Domingue . Many other Natchez escaped again , now taking refuge with the Chickasaw . Over the next decade the few hundred remaining Natchez lived a life on the run , waging a low - intensity guerrilla campaign against the French . French historian Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote in his history , " We were not slow in perceiving that the Natchez could still render themselves formidable , and that the step of sending the Sun and all who had been taken with him to be sold as slaves in Saint - Domingue , had rather exasperated than intimidated the remnant of that nation , in whom hatred and despair had transformed their natural pride and ferocity into a valor of which they were never deemed capable . " The French continued to press for the destruction of the Natchez who now lived among the Chickasaw , traditional allies of the British — this sparked the Chickasaw Wars . In 1734 Governor Bienville attacked the Chickasaw and demanded that they turn against the Natchez . The Chickasaw agreed to drive out the Natchez from among them , but they did not keep good on the promise . In the Chickasaw Campaign of 1736 , the French , under Governor Bienville , made one attack on the village of Ackia , and then retreated suffering significant casualties , but inflicting none . In the Chickasaw Campaign of 1739 , Bienville summoned more than 1 , 000 troops to be sent over from France . Bienville ' s army ascended the Mississippi River to the site of present - day Memphis , Tennessee , and attempted to build a military road westward toward Chickasaw villages . After waiting for months in the winter of 1739 to 1740 , the French never mounted an attack and retreated back to New Orleans . But after having suffered the attacks against the Chickasaw the remaining Natchez moved on to live among the Cherokee and Creek . At that time the Natchez , reduced to scattered refugee , had ceased to exist as a political entity . Historical interpretations . There has been historical controversy about whether the Natchez plotted with other major tribes of the region to plan a simultaneous attack on the French . Étienne Périer wrote that many of the Indian nations in the lower Mississippi Valley had plotted with the Natchez to attack the French on the same day . Périer claimed that even the Choctaw , who had been a close ally of the French , were part of the plot , and that a conference with the Choctaw planned in New Orleans for the first two days of December was to be the occasion for an attack . Jean - Baptiste Delaye , a militia commander in the French retaliations following the massacre , wrote in an unpublished narrative that Périer ' s claims were groundless , and that the Tioux , Yazoo , and other nations were not complicit and had no foreknowledge of the attack . Dumont de Montigny and Antoine - Simon Le Page du Pratz , the leading 18th - century historians of the Natchez , drew on information collected from French women taken captive during the massacre to write their descriptions of the fighting and the preparations for it . They explained that the Natchez had conspired with other nations but had attacked a few days earlier than the agreed date and that they had used a system of bundles of sticks to count the number of days remaining until the strike . The undetected destruction of a couple of the sticks derailed the count , although the reason for the lost sticks differed in each historian ' s account . The other nations called off their participation in the plot because of the Natchez ' premature attack , and the existence of the conspiracy remained conjectural . In his reports to superiors in France , Périer may have exaggerated the scale of the attack — suggesting that many more tribes were involved in the conspiracy — to defend his leadership as governor . He said that the results of the massacre could have been worse if not for his prompt action . François - René de Chateaubriand depicted the massacre in his 1827 epic " Les Natchez " , incorporating his earlier best - selling novellas " Atala " and " René " into a longer narrative that greatly embellished the history of the French and the Natchez in Louisiana . In Chateaubriand ' s work , the grand conspiracy behind the massacre implausibly included native tribes from all across North America . Chateaubriand saw the Natchez Massacre as the defining moment in the history of the Louisiana colony , a position consistent with the views of other 18th - century historians , such as Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny .