Yazoo

The Yazoo were a small tribe of the lower Yazoo River in the Mississippi Delta, kinsmen and neighbours of the Tunica, Koroa and Tiou. Their lost language is thought to have belonged with Tunica, a language isolate.

French missionaries reached them at the end of the seventeenth century, but they leaned toward English traders, and in 1702 helped the Koroa kill the priest Nicholas Foucault and his companions. A French fort and a Jesuit mission under Jean Rouel followed in 1718 and 1722.

In 1729 the Yazoo and Koroa joined the Natchez revolt, killing Rouel and overwhelming the French garrison after the Natchez destroyed Fort Rosalie. The French and their Choctaw allies crushed the rising: survivors were sold into slavery on Caribbean plantations or captured and traded away by the Chickasaw, and the tribe disappeared as a separate people, its remnants merging with the Chickasaw and others.