Natchez North American Indian tribe of the Macro-Algonquian linguistic phylum that inhabited the east side of the lower Mississippi River. In the early 18th century at the time of the first French settlement, the tribe numbered about 6,000, living in nine villages between the Yazoo and Pearl rivers near the site of the present-day city of Natchez, Miss. Relations between the French settlers and the Natchez were friendly at first; but three French-Natchez wars--in 1716, 1723, and 1729--resulted in the French, with the aid of the Choctaw, driving the Natchez from their villages. Some 400 Natchez were captured and sold into the West Indian slave trade; the remainder took refuge with the Chickasaw and later with the Upper Creeks and Cherokee. When the latter tribes were forced to move west into Indian Territory (present Oklahoma), the Natchez went with them. A few Natchez retained their language into the early 20th century, and there were still a few tribe members living in northeastern Oklahoma in the late 20th century. (See France, history of.) The Natchez, allied in general culture to other Muskogean tribes, were a primarily agricultural people. They made clothes by weaving a fabric from the inner bark of the mulberry, excelled in potterymaking, and built large temples--similar to those of the Creeks--of wattles and mud set upon eight-foot mounds. Their dwellings--built in precise rows around a plaza or common ground--were four-sided and constructed of sun-baked mud and straw with arched cane roofs. They were sun worshippers, ruled by a monarch called the Great Sun, who had the power of life and death over them. He maintained several wives and a household of volunteers to work and hunt for him; all were killed at his death, along with any others who wished to join him in the afterlife. Integral to their religion was a perpetual fire kept burning in the temple. It was allowed to die once a year on the eve of their midsummer festival, the Busk, or Green Corn, ceremony (similar to that of the Creeks). The fire was remade at dawn of the festival day, and all the village fires were then made anew from the sacred fire. The Natchez were notable for the peculiar caste system, in which the people were classified as suns, nobles, honoured people, and commoners. The chief, or Great Sun, and the heads of the villages claimed descent from the sun. Persons of the sun caste were not allowed to intermarry. Rather, they were required to marry commoners. The offspring of female suns and commoners were suns, while the children of male suns and commoners belonged to the caste of honoured people. source info Encyc. Britta. 2000 Bright Star