Natchez revolt

The Natchez revolt, or the Natchez massacre, is an attack by the Natchez Native American people on French colonists near present-day Natchez, Mississippi, on November 29, 1729.

The Natchez and French had lived alongside each other in the Louisiana colony for more than a decade prior to the incident, mostly conducting peaceful trade and occasionally intermarrying.

After a period of deteriorating relations and warring, Natchez leaders are provoked to revolt when the French colonial commandant, Sieur de Chépart, demands land from a Natchez village for his own plantation near Fort Rosalie.

The Natchez plot their attack over several days and manage  to conceal their plans from most of the French; colonists who had overheard and warned Chépart of an attack had been considered untruthful and had been punished.

In a coordinated attack on the fort and the homesteads, the Natchez kill almost all of the Frenchmen, while sparing most of the women and enslaved Africans

Approximately hundred and thirty colonists are killed overall, and the fort and homes are burned to the ground.

When the French in New Orleans, the colonial capital, hear  the news of the massacre, they fear a general Native uprising and are concerned that the Natchez might have conspired with other tribes.

They first respond by ordering a massacre of the Chaouacha people – who have played no role in the revolt – and wipe out their entire village.

The French and their Choctaw allies next retaliate against the Natchez villages, capturing hundreds of Natchez and selling them into slavery, although many manage to escape to the north and take refuge among the Chickasaw people.

The Natchez wage low-intensity warfare against the French over the following years, but retaliatory expeditions against Natchez refugees among the Chickasaw in 1730 and 1731 force them to move on and live as refugees among the Creek and Cherokee tribes.

By 1741, the Natchez have established a town in the northern parts of the Upper Creek Nation.

There, with permission from the Abihka, they reconstitute their town and are signatories in the 1790 Treaty of New York and the 1796 Treaty of Colerain.

They remain a constituent tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

The attack on Fort Rosalie had 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 returns control of Louisiana from the Company of the Indies to the crown in 1731, as the company had been having trouble running the colony.

Louisiana governor Étienne Perier is held responsible for the massacre and its aftermath, and he is recalled to France in 1732.

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