Yoron

The Yoron, better known as the Tunica, were a farming and trading people of the middle Mississippi valley whose language, Luhchi Yoroni, was a language isolate. In 1541 Hernando de Soto found their province of Quizquiz, a land of palisaded towns and maize fields.

Epidemics and Quapaw pressure later drove them to the Yazoo mouth, where a French mission was founded around 1700 and they prospered in trade. Chickasaw slave raiders seized perhaps two thousand of their people, and in 1706 the Tunica moved to the Red River mouth. They sheltered Natchez refugees, who attacked them in 1731; the Tunica then moved to Trudeau Landing, whose graves yielded European trade goods.

They moved to Pointe Coupee in 1764 and joined the Spanish capture of Baton Rouge in 1779. In the 1790s they settled around Marksville, absorbing the Ofo, Avoyel and Biloxi peoples.