Dawn, Nov. 28, 1729: Gunfire heralds Natchez Massacre posted Thursday, November 5th, 2009 @ 7:40 am  E-mail Story |  Print Story  (17th in a Series) By Jack Elliott Early morning . . . the world is just awaking and beginning a new work day, seemingly just another that will pass and be forgotten. However, this day would be different. It would see the bloody deaths of many; it would be a day that would shake their society to the core. It would be a day that would require retaliatory strikes in which many more would die. To what do I refer? To the disaster of 9/11 or to the disaster of November 28, 1729? The former we all remember; the latter few know of. Yet for all of its distance in time, the earlier event was very much comparable to the more recent. In fact the ramifications of 11/28 were just as severe if not more so than those of 9/11. Word of the Natchez massacre wasn't carried instantaneously through the air waves. It was carried by the few who managed to escape and wind their way down river to New Orleans, where the news sent shock waves through the French settlements, not only because of the event itself, but because it purported that they too -- all the French settlers throughout North America, New Orleans, Mobile, Natchitoches, the Illinois -- could soon be subject to similar attacks by Indians who were far superior in numbers and thus able to carry out such an attack and even conceivably a complete annihilation of French Louisiana. In relating the story of the massacre we have to keep in mind that the accounts we have were written by people who were not witnesses; almost all of the male French settlers were killed. The chroniclers -- such as Dumont de Montigny, Le Page du Pratz, Fr. Mathurin le Petit -- would probably have never lived to write the tale, if they had been present. Dumont notes that he left Natchez only the day before the massacre began, leaving his wife behind. She was captured by the Indians, later rescued, and served as one of her husband's informants. The primary sources were of course the survivors, primarily women like Dumont's wife, and a handful of men, and even occasionally a Natchez Indian (Le Page du Pratz interviewed the noble woman, the Tattooed Arm, after she had been made a prisoner). Even then given the violence and hysteria of the massacre and the fact that it took place over several square miles between the river and St. Catherine Creek, meant that oral accounts available to the chroniclers must have dealt with only small episodes and were often contradictory. Likewise the written accounts by the chroniclers are fragmentary and often contradictory. After Commandant Chépart returned to Natchez from New Orleans, he determined to found his own plantation, and he determined to do it by confiscating one of the Natchez villages, either White Apple or the Grand Village, and using the Indian fields for his own. This ruthless action set off a chain reaction that would bring French Natchez and the Natchez Indians down to destruction. Violence begets violence as injustices and perceived injustices call for retaliation and become more deadly, in the end sweeping everyone --guilty and innocent alike-- into a maelstrom of chaos and blood. Upon being ordered to vacate the village either the Great Sun or the Sun of White Apple bought time by agreeing to pay the commandant a significant tribute in corn and chickens if they were allowed to stay until the harvest was gathered in the fall. In the time allotted to them, meetings were held to plan what action to take. The rage against the commandant coupled with anxieties over the growing French population was transformed into hysteria without temperance. They decided to perform a surprise attack that would wipe out the European settlement. If anyone attempted to argue for restraint in light of the potential consequences, there voices were drowned out by those crying for blood. As we have previously seen, word of the impending massacre leaked out to the French settlers. However, those who notified the commandant was arrested to prevent their upsetting the populace. Meanwhile, two boats arrived from New Orleans bringing much needed supplies and to pickup the year's harvest. On one of the boats came the Kollys, father and son, owners of the St. Catherine concession, who had traveled far to inspect their investment. Their arrival at the plantation must have certainly been an auspicious occasion for the director Martin Des Longrais and the other officers and workers. They would have certainly "rolled out the red carpet" for the Kollys. THE NIGHT BEFORE On the evening of November 27, Commandant Chépart accompanied by two other French officials -- Picard Bailly, commissary and judge, and François Ricard, storekeeper who acted as interpreter -- paid a social call on the Great Sun at the Grand Village. Ricard would be one of the very few to survive the following day. The purpose of the visit isn't known, although it likely had something to do with the Indians' payment of the tribute and their expected abandonment of their land so Chépart could establish his plantation on their fields. The French were outwardly welcomed, a welcome made easier by virtue of the fact that the Frenchmen brought several bottles of wine and brandy which were soon flowing profusely. After supper they asked that "the chief give them girls to spend the night with. Such were soon selected and granted forthwith. They went to bed together, and then slept, it seems." Chépart's party finally departed the Grand Village at 3 a.m. and returned to the fort. They had had a wild night and were exhausted. The commandant apparently intended to sleep late. DAYBREAK Before sunup on the morning of November 28 the Indians began putting their plan into operation. Groups were designated to approach the large French settlements, namely the fort and the two concessions. Smaller groups dispersed out to the scattered farmsteads of the habitants. As Dumont de Montigny wrote: "There was not a settler, in whose house there was not an Indian under some pretext -- some coming to pay what they owed, others coming to beg their friends to lend them a gun to kill a bear or deer that they had just seen by their hut; some, too, to pretend . . . to buy goods; and where there were three or four Frenchmen there were at least a dozen Indians, who had orders form the chief not to act till he gave the signal." One large group led by the Great Sun headed for the fort and Chépart's house bore with it corn, bear oil, and chickens, and was given ceremonial dignity by the calumet, the peace pipe, which they bore aloft and by banging on the "ceremonial pot." At about 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock (sources vary) the column of Indians passed by the hill on which the fort sat "Singing and whirling the calumet before the soldiers of the garrison, who had run up to see the procession." The fort was extremely dilapidated at the time and had been so for some years. Engineer and former commandant Ignace-François Broutin had struggled to have it renovated or rebuilt, but nothing had been done. According to him on this particular morning there weren't even one hundred posts remaining in the palisade wall (which was perhaps something of an exaggeration) and that "it was possible to enter [the fort] on foot from all sides." Then the Indians passed by the Company of the Indies' storehouse where François Ricard resided. Despite his being out late, he was already up and about, down at the river, overseeing the loading of the galley. They finally reached the commandant's house on the edge of the terrace, below the fort, and just above the landing. Dumont describes what happened next: "Awakened by the noise of the man beating the pot and the cries of the Indians, [Chépart] rose en robe de chambre, and made the cortege enter. They offered him the calumet, and laid at his feet the presents required to save the great chief of the Natchez from being sent in the galley to the capital tied hand and foot. What goods displayed before the eyes of the commandant! what jars of bear oil arranged in his view! He admires these presents with complacency, laughing in his heart at the vain credulity of those who would have excited his suspicions against his Indian friends; he orders them to be set at liberty to witness with their own eyes what is going on, and see how improbable it is that men thus loading him with presents, could have formed a plot for exterminating the French. They danced and sung. . . ." Meanwhile other Indians moved on, some down to the landing while others went to the fort where they "entered in at the gate and breaches, [and] deprived the soldiers, without officers, or even a serjeant at their head, of the means of self defense." Similar movements were simultaneously being made throughout the settlements, the scattered houses and the large headquarters of the concessions on St. Catherine Creek. Then the signal was given, the firing of the first guns. This may have occurred at the landing or near the commandant's house -- regardless several Natchez warriors aimed their guns at startled Frenchmen and fired point-blank. Upon hearing the shots other Indians then fired, and others further out, as the shots spread out in an ever expanding circle like a shock wave from a bomb, moving rapidly and inexorably toward St. Catherine's Creek and the concessions located there. The massacre had begun. (Jack Elliott is historical archaeologist for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. He can be reached at 662-325-7892 or jde3@ra.msstate.edu.)