Of the Lower Mississippi tribes the most powerful and populous was
that of the Naktche, settled at the beginning of the eighteenth
century in nine villages on and about St. Catherine creek (Lúkfi-ákula
in Cha'hta: "_clay-digging place_," to daub houses with), in a
beautiful and fertile country. This stream wends its way first south,
then west, in a semi-circular course, around the present city of
Natchez, Mississippi, and runs at an average distance of three to
four miles from it. Other Naktche villages existed in its vicinity.
Náktche is the correct form of the tribal name, though this people
appears to have called itself by some other appellation. Natchez is
the old-fashioned plural adopted from French orthography; we might
just as well write Iroquoiz, Islinoiz or Adayez, instead of the
terminal -s now designating the plural in French. The Cheroki Indians
call a Nache, Natche or Náktche person A′noχtse, A′nnoχtse,
the people or tribe Anínoχtse, shortened into Ani`htse, which proves
that a guttural has been elided from the present form of the name.
Isalakti, from whom Albert Gallatin obtained a vocabulary of the
language, called himself a Nahktse, not a Natche chief.
The name is of Shetimasha origin, I have reasons to assume. Náksh in
that language means _one that is in a hurry, one running_, náksh
así,[26] abbrev. náksh _warrior_; and the earliest French explorers
may have heard that name from the Shetimasha Indians settled on the
Mississippi, where Bayou Lafourche, also called the river of the
Shetimasha, branches off from it. Should the name belong to the
Chicasa trade language, we might think of the Cha'hta adverb: naksika
_aside, away from_, referring to the site of the Naktche villages at
some distance from the great "water-road," the Mississippi river.
[Footnote 26: Literally, "a hurrying man." In the sign language
of the Mississippi plains, the sign for _fighting_ or _battle_
is the same as for _riding a horse_.]
The Naktche tribe owes its celebrity and almost romantic fame to
several causes: their towns were populous, the government more
centralized than that of the surrounding native populations; the
French settled in their vicinity, and hence their authors have left to
posterity more information concerning their confederacy than
concerning other tribes; their stubborn resistance to French
encroachments gave them a high reputation for bravery; their religious
customs, centering in a highly developed sun-worship, made of them an
object of curious interest and far-going ethnologic speculation for
the white colonists, whose views on the Naktche we must receive with
the utmost caution.
L. d'Iberville reports, that at the time of his visit (March 1699) the
villages of the Naktche made up _one town_ only, and formed a complex
of contiguous villages called Théloël or Thécoël[27] (Margry IV, 179).
[Footnote 27: The handwriting of this name is indistinct, but in
the sequel, wherever this name is mentioned, Margry prints it
Théloël. There can scarcely be any doubt of its identity with
Thoucoue, the seventh village in the list.]
The annalist Pénicaut, who visited these parts in 1704, states that
the nine villages were situated in a delightful country, swarming with
buffaloes, drained by rivulets and partly wooded. The village or
residence of the head chief, _the Sun_, lay one league from the
Mississippi river, and three other villages were on a brook, at a
distance of half a league from each other. He alludes to their human
sacrifices, the frequency of infanticide, and gives descriptions of
their temple, perpetual fire, their "_marche des cadavres_" and
articles of dress. The house of the Sun was large enough to contain
four thousand persons; he had female servants called _oulchil tichon_,
and thirty male attendants ("laquais") or _loüés_, the Allouez of
other chroniclers. Mother-right prevailed among them (Margry V,
444-456).
The Taensa guide, who accompanied d'Iberville to the Naktche tribe in
1699, furnished him a list of the nine villages, their names being
given in the Chicasa trade language. I presume that they are given in
the topographical order as they followed each other on St. Catharine
creek, from its mouth upward, since the "Nachés" village or residence
of the Sun was distant one league only from the Mississippi river. We
are not acquainted with the names given to these villages in the
Naktche language. The etymologies of the Cha'hta language were
obtained from Allen Wright; the suffixed word -ougoula is the Cha'hta
ókla _people, tribe_.