Natchez, Mississippi
Journal Entry
December 26, 2008
When you think of archaeology, the image in your mind is likely that of great antiquity, of a strange and alien people from a very long time ago. In this cliché, the only evidence we have of their lives is the hardware they made and then either lost or discarded. But Grand Village of the Natchez doesn’t conform to that stereotype. The town isn’t the equivalent of, for example, an ancient, pre-Neolithic community in the Middle East, where the material record is all we have to contribute to our understanding of the past. The place we today call the Grand Village of the Natchez was a bustling, thriving community as late as the eighteenth century, and it is a place where we have a historically recorded first encounter between a living, breathing mound building society—a tribe called the Natchez—and European explorers and traders. We know about this society, certainly as a result of the archaeology that has been conducted there but also because interlopers with writing saw it and recorded their descriptions and reactions. Unfortunately these descriptions and reactions were recorded in French. For too many years English-speaking thinkers and writers ignored those records, blithely speculating about the existence of a mysterious, non-Indian mound builder society while, all along, the mystery’s solution lay in the recorded descriptions of French (and elsewhere, Spanish) trappers, explorers, missionaries, and settlers.
What You Will See
The Grand Village of the Natchez was occupied between about AD 700 and AD 1730. When you visit the site, you’ll see three impressive temple mounds, today labeled A, B, and C but historically called Abandoned Mound, Temple Mound, and Sun Mound (Figure 36). There is also a nicely replicated conical dwelling you can enter that gives you a nice idea of what a Natchez dwelling looked like in the early eighteenth century (I.6). There also is a terrific on-site museum where you can see some of the more impressive artifacts recovered at the site during archaeological excavations in 1930, 1962, and 1972. About 20 miles away is Emerald Mound, another Natchez Indian platform mound site. It’s worth seeing if you’re in the area.
Why Is Grand Village of the Natchez Important?
When Europeans began expanding into the American Midwest, explorers and settlers encountered the remains of what clearly had been a sophisticated culture, a culture that included what were, at the time of European contact, abandoned towns marked by massive earthworks including enormous flat-topped pyramids, artfully flaked stone tools, beautiful ceramics, and impressive burials filled with well-made objects. As mentioned early in this book, many Euro-Americans wrongly believed that Indians and their ancestors would have been incapable of producing the monumental mounds and splendid works of art found by archaeologists and believed instead that a mysterious culture from Europe, Africa, or Asia had populated the Americas in past millennia. Maybe it had been ancient Egyptian or Chinese migrants; perhaps it was the Welsh led by Prince Madoc. Or maybe it had been members of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel—anyone but the ancestors of the native peoples of the Midwest or Southeast. No, it couldn’t have been Indians.
The Grand Village of the Natchez is particularly significant because it shows clearly that there were no mysterious, foreign mound builders but that American Indians had been responsible after all. Leading an expeditionary force of 800 men, the French explorer Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz traveled from France to Louisiana in 1718. He lived in a town near Natchez, Mississippi, from 1718 to 1728. During that time, du Pratz learned the local Indian language and as a result was able to describe native culture not simply though his own eyes but also from the perspective of the Indians themselves. More than just a journalist, du Pratz was in a real sense an anthropologist. He was an eyewitness to Indians living in the Grand Village of the Natchez, which he described as a large, densely occupied, urban-like community with a great ruler they called the Great Sun who lived in a temple located atop a large pyramidal mound of earth, the one archaeologists have labeled Mound B. Du Pratz said the big mound was about 100 feet around at its base—and it is. According to du Pratz, Mound A, or the Sun Mound, was the platform for a ceremonial temple inside of which burned an eternal flame. This temple also served as a charnel house, where the bodies of members of the elite were prepared for burial upon their deaths. Eyewitness accounts describe the human sacrifice of retainers and relatives upon the death of the Great Sun in 1728.
The site is also important as an object lesson of what happened when the native peoples of the New World became involved in the politics of competing settler groups. Hoping to maintain trade with both French and English settlers, the Natchez ended up getting drawn into wars with both European groups. The French were particularly nasty and sold more than 300 of the Natchez into slavery in the West Indies.
The Grand Village of the Natchez is especially important in that it presents an object lesson in how history helped solve an archaeological mystery.
Site Type: Village, Platform Mound
Wow Factor: ** The mounds are small compared to some other sites, but it’s pretty cool that this site was visited by European explorers and settlers when it was actively the capital of the Natchez Indians.
Museum: **
Ease of Road Access: *****
Ease of Hike: ****
Natural Beauty of Surroundings: ****
Kid Friendly: ****
Food: Bring your own.
How to Get There: Grand Village of the Natchez is located at 400 Jefferson Davis Blvd. in Natchez, Mississippi.
Hours of Operation: Open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1:30 to 5 p.m.
Cost: Free
Best Season to Visit: It’s in Mississippi. Prepare to sweat like crazy in summer. Spring, fall, or winter might be a better time to visit.
Website: www.nps.gov/nr/travel/mounds/gra.htm
Designation: State park; National Historic Landmark