Tunica

The Tunica were a people of the lower Mississippi valley, where their villages stood among rivers, forests and fertile floodplains. Their ancestors lived farther north near the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi before moving south to the Yazoo basin. There the French encountered them near the end of the seventeenth century, living close to other communities of the lower Yazoo.

Around 1700 a French mission was established among the Tunica on the Yazoo. Raids associated with the trade in enslaved Indigenous people helped drive the community to move again, and in 1706 the Tunica settled farther down the Mississippi opposite the mouth of the Red River. They maintained a close relationship with the French while navigating a region transformed by war, trade and the arrival of European colonies.