The Spanish expedition of 1540 had only…

1696 CE to 1707 CE

The Spanish expedition of 1540 had only been in the Central Mississippi Valley for a short time but the Spanish presence had had devastating effects.

A favorite tactic of the expedition had been to play off local political rivalries, causing more conflict.

More significantly, the introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases would have ravaged the native population, who had no acquired immunity.

The Central Mississippi Valley by the time the French arrive in 1699 is sparsely occupied by the Quapaw, a Dhegiha Siouan people hostile to the Tunica.

The Tunica and Koroa have relocated further south to the mouth of the Yazoo River in west central Mississippi in the intervening century-and-a-half since the de Soto Expeditio.

The French establish a mission among the Tunica around the year 1700, on the Yazoo River near the Mississippi River in the present-day state of Mississippi.

Archaeological evidence suggests that they had recently migrated to the region from eastern Arkansas, in the late seventeenth century.

Father Antoine Davion is assigned as the missionary for the Tunica as well as the smaller tribes of the Koroa, the Yazoo, and Couspe (or Houspe) tribes.

Unlike the northern tribes with which the French are familiar, the Tunica (and the nearby Taensa and Natchez) have a complex religion.

They have built temples, created cult images, and have a priestly class.

The Tunica, Taensa, and Natchez retain chiefdom characteristics, such as a complex religion and, in the case of the Natchez, the use and maintenance of platform mounds, after they had disappeared elsewhere.

Several characteristics link the Tunica to groups encountered by de Soto: their emphasis on agriculture; cultivation by men rather than women (as de Soto noted when describing Quizquiz); trade; and manufacture and distribution of salt, a valuable item to both native and Europeans.

The trade in salt is an ancient profession among the Tunica, as evidenced by de Soto's noting salt production when visiting the village of Tanico.

Salt is extremely important in the trade between the French and the various Caddoan groups in northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas.

Scholars believe the Tunica were middlemen in the movement of salt from the Caddoan areas to the French.

By the early eighteenth century, the Chickasaw raid the tribes along the lower Mississippi River to capture people for the English slave trade in South Carolina.

They take an estimated on thousand to two thousand captives from the Tunica, Taensa, and Quapaw tribes during this period.