History: The Natchez Indians, Natchitoches Parish La
Submitted by:(Suzanne Shoemaker)
Source: Natchitoches Times January 8,1999
Many Thanks to the Natchitoches Times for giving permission to use this
article in the Natchitoches Archives



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Oct. 29, 1915

INTERESTING OLD PAPERS--ONE DATED IN 1837
     "The Natchez Indians," Subject of reprint from pen of W. B. Powell in
Port Gibson Southerner.
    
     The editor is indebted to Miss Cecile Prudhomme of Campti for copies of
the old papers published in this parish.  They were subscribed for and left
in the papers of her forefather, Gabriel Prudhomme.

     One of the copies we have is No. 20, Vol. 1 of the Natchitoches Herald,
dated May 10, 1837.

     There are many interesting items in this issue of the Herald.

     One of the interesting items was a reprint from the pen of W. B. Powell
in the Port Gibson Southerner of the Natchez Indians as follows:

THE NATCHEZ INDIANS
By W. B. Powell
     The accounts given of the Natchez Indians by the French writers of this
day are such as to induce us to believe that they were civilized and in all
respects differed from all the tribes at present known in our country.
Consequently I have long desired to know who these people were--whence they
came and what connections or association they held in the country.  With a
view to this knowledge, I inquired of the people of Natchez about the
possibility of finding any of their heads, but in answer, I was uniformly
told that it was impossible to make any such discovery.  Upon my visit to
Natchez in March 1825, I determined in person to search the country.  After
walking three days, spade in hand, I procured two male crania and half of a
third in such a condition that with much care I could preserve them.
     They are so compressed by art, while in infancy, as to measured in the
occipito frontal diameter only four inches, while the lateral diameter is
six inches.
     I regard these as the heads of Natchez Indians and for these reasons:
     First, I found with them French ornaments as beads buttons, rings, etc.
     Second, the only people who have inhabited that section of the country
were Choctaws, French, Spaniards, Negroes and Natchez Indians.  They must
represent the last because their form contraindicates an identity with
other people.
     I have been brought to the conclusion that the Natchez Indians and those
who built the mounds were the same people and these are my reasons:
     On the Yazoo River 14 miles from Vicksburg are eight mounds, size of
them so arranged as to form a circle.  The others are some distance removed
and contain crania of the same form.  At this place, the French built a fort
and church and at this place, as at Natchez, the French were massacred.
With the crania of this place I also found French beads.
     In a mound four miles above Vicksburg, I obtained the same form of
skull, also in several mounds in Virginia.  These people were from Peru.
     I have seen a female skull taken from the temple of the sun near Lima
which must have been deposited there, about 300 years since.  I have a cast
of the same head.
     The skull resembles the female skulls which I have obtained from these
mounds.  For it must be remarked that the female heads of the Natchez and
monumental Indians were not deformed by artificial compression.
     These female crania are unlike female crania of the present tribes.
     The Peruvians built mounds and so did these people.  The Peruvians
worshipped the sun and so did these people, according to French history.
     These people were agriculture.  All their remains were found upon the
most fertile soil.  They were not military.
     No war-like implements are found with them or about their habitations
and if they had been, they would not all have been destroyed.

--Port Gibson Southerner