The Natchez were the last Mississippian culture in North America still practicing mound ceremonialism when the French arrived. Their society was rigidly stratified: the Great Sun at the top, then Nobles, Honored People, and Stinkards at the bottom. The Temple Mound at the Grand Village housed a sacred perpetual fire tended day and night. French explorers documented ceremonies, political structures, and daily life in astonishing detail — the only real-time European account of a functioning Mississippian chiefdom. In 1729 the Natchez attacked Fort Rosalie in a coordinated uprising. The French retaliation was so total that the Natchez nation was scattered — survivors absorbed by the Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee, or sold into slavery in the Caribbean. The city that carries their name was built on their erasure. The Grand Village survives. So does a small community of Natchez descendants in Oklahoma.
