Миссисипи өзені алабының Натчез халқының тарихы

Native American people originally from the Lower Mississippi Valley

The Natchez ('/n//æ//tʃ//ɪ//z/ NATCHiz, ) are a Native American people who originally lived in the Natchez Bluffs area in the Lower Mississippi Valley, near the present day city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the United States. They spoke a language with no known close relatives, although it may be very distantly related to the Muskogean languages of the Creek Confederacy. An early American geographer noted in his 1797 gazetteer that they were also known as the "Sun Set Indians". The Natchez are noted for being the only Mississippian culture with complex chiefdom characteristics to have survived long into the period of European colonization. Other Mississippian societies in the southeast had generally experienced important transformations shortly after contact with the Spanish Empire or other newcomers from across the ocean. The Natchez are also noted for having had an unusual social system of nobility classes and exogamous marriage practices. It was a strongly matrilineal kinship society, with descent reckoned along female lines. The paramount chief named the Great Sun was always the son of the Female Sun, whose daughter would be the mother of the next Great Sun. This ensured that the chiefdom stayed under the control of the single Sun lineage. Ethnologists have not reached consensus on how the Natchez social system originally functioned, and the topic is somewhat controversial. In 1731, after several wars with the French, the Natchez were defeated. Most of the captured survivors were shipped to Saint Domingue and sold by into slavery; others took refuge with other tribes, such as the Muskogean Chickasaw and Creek, and the Iroquoian speaking Cherokee. Today, most Natchez families and communities are found in Oklahoma, where Natchez members are enrolled in the federally recognized Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations in Oklahoma. Two Natchez communities are recognized by the state of South Carolina.

The historic Natchez were preceded in this area by what archaeologists call the indigenous Plaquemine culture, part of the larger, prehistoric Mississippian culture, which extended throughout the lower Mississippi Valley and its tributaries. Its largest center was at Cahokia in present day Illinois near the confluence of the Illinois, Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Its peoples are noted for their hierarchical communities, building complex earthworks and platform mound architecture, and intensively cultivating maize. Archaeological evidence indicates that people of the Plaquemine culture, an elaboration of the Coles Creek culture, had lived in the Natchez Bluffs region since at least as long ago as 700 CE. The Natchez Bluffs are located along the east side of the Mississippi River in present day Mississippi. During the late prehistoric era, around 1500, Plaquemine culture people occupied territory from the Big Black River in the north to about the Homochitto River in the south. The Plaquemine people built many platform mounds, including Emerald Mound, the second largest pre Columbian structure in North America north of Mexico. Emerald Mound was an important ceremonial center. The Natchez used Emerald Mound in their time, but they abandoned the site before 1700. Their center of power shifted to the Grand Village of the Natchez. The Grand Village had between three and five platform mounds. By 1700, the Natchez occupied a territory that covered only an area roughly between Fairchilds Creek and South Fork Coles Creek in the north to St. Catherine's Creek in the south. This area is approximately that of the northern half of present day Adams County, Mississippi.

The earliest European account of the Natchez may be from the journals of the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto. In 1542 de Soto's expedition encountered a powerful chiefdom located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Native sources called it "Quigualtam," after the paramount chief's name. Various scholars have debated if this chiefdom was the Emerald Phase (1500–1680) of the Natchez chiefdom which was in its ascendancy at the time. The encounter was brief and violent; the natives attacked and chased the Spanish with their canoes. No further European contact with the indigenous people in this area occurred for more than 140 years, but they suffered from epidemics of infectious disease carried indirectly by other Native Americans from European traders. These and other intrusions had severely reduced the native populations. By the historic period local power had shifted to the Grand Village of the Natchez.

Today the primary settlements of the Natchez Nation (Nvce or Nahchee), a treaty tribe, are within the southern halves of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations in Oklahoma. The nation developed a constitution in 2003, which confirms its long held traditions of self government. Approximately 197,000 Natchez are members of the nation. Membership is based on matrilineal descent from people listed on the Dawes Rolls or the updated records of 1973. The nation allows citizens to have more than one tribal affiliation, asking only for volunteer work or donations to support the nation and its programs. Natchez families are also found as members among the balance of the Five Civilized Tribes. They are represented as corporations within the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma and Sac & Fox Nation. Small Natchez communities and settlements may be found in and throughout the Southeast and as far north as North Carolina. There are three state recognized Natchez communities in South Carolina, each of which have independent governments: the Eastern Band Natchez, formerly Natchez PeeDee; the Edisto Natchez Kusso (Four Holes Indian Organization); and the PeeDee Indian Tribe of South Carolina. The current leadership of the Natchez Nation consists of a Peace Chief (called the "Great Sun"), a War Chief, and four primary Clan Mothers. Other Natchez Sun leaders have included K. T. "Hutke" Fields (Principal Peace Chief/Great Sun, 1996–), Eliza Jane Sumpka (Primary Clan Mother), William Harjo LoneFight, Robert M. Riviera (Principal War Chief, 1997), Watt Sam, Archie Sam, White Tobacco Sam, Creek Sam and others.

The Natchez language is generally considered a language isolate. As originally proposed by John Swanton in the early 20th century, some scholars believe that it may be related to the Muskogean languages. Its two last fluent speakers, Watt Sam and Nancy Raven, died in 1944 and 1957 respectively. In the 21st century, the Natchez nation is working to revive it as a spoken language among its people.

The Natchez are noted for having an unusual social system of noble classes and exogamous marriage. Members of the highest ranking class, called Suns, are thought to have been required to marry only members of the lowest commoner class, called Stinkards or commoners. The Natchez descent system has received a great deal of academic study. Scholars debate how the system functioned before the 1730 diaspora and the topic has generated controversy. Primary source documentation on the pre 1730 Natchez kinship and descent system is based on a relatively small number of French colonists who recorded information about Natchez social life between about 1700 and 1730. Fragmentary and ambiguous, the French accounts are the only historic accounts of Natchez society before 1730. Natchez oral traditions have also been studied. The first modern ethnographic study was done by John R. Swanton in 1911. Swanton's interpretations and conclusions are still generally accepted and widely cited. Later researchers have addressed various problems with Swanton's interpretation. Some researchers have proposed modifications of Swanton's model, while others have rejected most of it. In Swanton's interpretation, social status among the Natchez was divided into two major categories, commoners and nobility. The nobility was further divided into three classes (or castes) called Suns, Nobles, and Honored People. Noble exogamy was practiced, meaning that members of the noble classes could marry only commoners. A person's social status and class were determined matrilineally. That is, the children of female Suns, Nobles, or Honoreds were born into the status of their mothers. However, the children of male Suns and Nobles did not take on commoner status from their mothers, as noble exogamy and matrilineal descent would appear to dictate, but rather were ranked one class below their fathers. In other words, children of male Suns became Nobles, while children of male Nobles became Honored, according to Swanton. Many later researchers have focused on the so called "Natchez Paradox" that Swanton's model is said to engender. The paradox is that if the rules described were followed strictly, over time the commoner class would become depleted, while the lower nobility classes would grow larger. Three general changes to Swanton's interpretation have been proposed to address the Natchez Paradox. First, a type of asymmetrical descent may have been practiced in which only male children of male nobility inherited the social class one step below their fathers, while female children of male nobles inherited their mothers' commoner status in matrilineal descent. Related to this is the idea that the Honored category was not a social class but rather an honorific title given to commoner men and was not hereditary. Second, the assimilation of foreign people, such as groups of Timucua, could have at least delayed the Natchez Paradox's effects. Researchers who argue for this idea often couple it with the proposal that the Natchez system of noble exogamy in the early 18th century was a relatively recent development in their society. According to this argument, during the relatively chaotic 16th and 17th centuries, the Natchez maintained their traditional social system by adapting it to new conditions. They assimilated foreigners as commoners and made a new requirement of noble exogamy. Third, the social classes described by Swanton were not classes or castes, as the terms are generally used in English, but exogamous ranked clans or moieties, with patterns of descent common to most Native peoples of the American southeast. Tribes such as the Chickasaw, Creek, Timucua, Caddo, and Apalachee were organized into ranked clans, with the requirement that one cannot marry within one's clan. Related to this theory is the idea that Honored status was not a class or a clan, but a title. Sun status, likewise, may not have been a class but rather a term for the royal family. If true, Natchez society would have been a moiety of just two groups, commoners and nobles. The requirement of exogamy may have applied to Suns only, rather than the entire nobility. Some researchers argue that the prohibition against Suns' marrying Suns was largely a matter of incest taboo. In the early 18th century, all the Suns of a given generation appear to have been related within three degrees of consanguinity (siblings, first cousins, and second cousins). The custom of Suns' marrying commoners rather than Nobles may have been a preference rather than a requirement. Finally, while Swanton's interpretation claims that Nobles were also required to marry commoners, later researchers have questioned this idea. They have noted in particular a mistranslation of the primary sources and a misreading by Swanton. In other words, it could be that exogamous marriage was required only of Suns, and this requirement may have been mainly a result of the taboo against incest. Lorenz proposes that the entire kinship system was not based on classes, castes, or clans, but rather degrees of genealogical separation from the ruling Sun matriline. Lorenz's interpretation does not include asymmetrical descent or noble exogamy. Rather, a person was a Sun if he or she was within three degrees of matrilateral separation from the ruling matriline's eldest female Sun (called the "White Woman"). Nobles were those people who were four, five, or six degrees removed from the White Woman, while people seven degrees or more removed were commoners. In this system, the male children of male ruling Suns would naturally descend one "class" per generation, and would be required to marry outside the "class" to avoid incest. The only exception was the case of a male child of a male Noble, who acquired the Honored title by birth. Many researchers agree that the Honored group was not a noble class but rather a title of prestige given to commoner men for acts of valor in war, or to commoner women who ritually sacrificed their babies upon the death of a Sun as part of funeral and mourning practices. In addition, people of Honored status could be promoted to Nobles for meritorious deeds.