Indian History

The fertile flat lands along the Yazoo River and the rugged hills that overlook them have a history as diverse and fascinating as the geography itself.

Prehistoric Indians were the first inhabitants of Yazoo County. They built mounds (pictured to the left) that dot our land, but left only these and stone arrowheads to attest to their existence.

The descendants of these Indians living in Central Mississippi were first met and described in 1682 by a French explorer, La Salle, coming down from Canada to discover the course of the Mississippi River. Besides the largest and most important tribe, the Choctaws, he found several quite small and completely distinct tribes, all in small villages near the mouth of the Yazoo River. The biggest were the Tunica’s, numbering about 1700. The Chocchumas, Coroas, Ofoconlas, Taperchas, Ibetoupas and Yazoos were fewer. The Yazoos had about 600 souls. Each group had its own language, but all these tribes had similar customs. They worshipped the Great Spirit. They erected poles, hanging scalps, all around the villages. As the wind blew through these it made a whispering sound which they believed to be messages from the “great Spirit” telling them to go fight anyone they met.

Each year the Indians gathered for their ball games. They brought the bones of those who died during the year for burial. Several days were spent feasting and visiting before the games started. They settled boundary dispute disagreements and tribal controversies by playing stick ball. Many were hurt or killed during the game that lasted several days. They were great gamblers, betting all of their possessions even their wives, anything but their bones!

Their courtship and marriage problems were very simple. The mother or sister of a youth would select a suitable girl and carry gifts to her. If she accepted them that signified her willingness to accept him. She simply disappeared from her mother’s tent and joined him.

When the French began to colonize their newly-claimed Louisiana Territory in 1699, founding forts in Biloxi, Mobile, New Orleans and Natchez, they sent Jesuit missionaries up to work among these small tribes. There were priests among the Yazoos when the Natchez Indians in 1728 rose up against Ft. Rosalie in Natchez and massacred every Frenchman there. The Yazoos supported the Natchez and the priests in their area had to flee to New Orleans.

When the French returned two years later to completely annihilate the Natchez, their Yazoo allies suffered too. Furthermore, new European diseases like measles and whooping cough had begun to decimate all the Indians, and by 1831 there were only an estimated 130 Yazoos left. And these few soon disappeared from history.