Natchez

The Natchez were the last Mississippian paramount chiefdom to survive into the colonial era, holding the Natchez Bluffs of the lower Mississippi. Their Plaquemine ancestors raised Emerald Mound, though by 1700 the seat of power had moved to the Grand Village of the Natchez. Ruled by the Great Sun, they buried a dead Sun with ritual human sacrifice and spoke a language with no known relatives.

The French built Fort Rosalie beside the Grand Village in 1716; on 28 November 1729 the Great Sun's warriors overran the fort and surrounding tobacco settlements, killing more than two hundred colonists. French troops and Choctaw allies crushed the chiefdom by 1731.

The survivors scattered among the Chickasaw, Muscogee and Cherokee, becoming a town of the Creek Confederacy before being carried west on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.