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58	MISSISSIPPI;	THE	GENERAL	BACKGROUND
of water was exhausted, the Indians were rarely in a position to haggle over terms. Yet if he failed—and he sometimes did—he did not attribute his failure to witchcraft as did the doctor, but said that he himself was to blame. He was na-koo-a (angry), he explained, and the credulous Indians then desperate, would beg to know what could be done to restore his good humor. But he, still posing as too angry to talk, would seclude himself and wait until the signs of a change in weather appeared. When the signs appeared he suddenly would come out into the village square and tell the Indians that if they doubled his fee the rain would come. They, glad to propitiate his anger, brought even more than he demanded, and soon the rain came as he had promised.
The Choctaw separated the flesh from the bones of their deceased and preserved them, at first in a mortuary, then in a mound constructed for this purpose. The Chickasaw buried their dead in the earth, often under the flooring of the lodge itself. The body of a Biloxi or Pascagoula was placed in a coffin made of reeds and Jeft until nothing but dried bones remained; these then were transferred to a wicker coffer and put away in small temples. When a Natchez chieftain died hundreds of people were sacrificed to pay him honor, these being considered meat and victuals for the deceased.
Pitched battles between tribes were seldom fought. Warfare with them consisted mostly in ambuscades and surprises. But even so prudent a type of battle failed to ward off devastating defeats. A well-aimed blow cunningly delivered often all but annihilated a nation, at which time the nation applied through ambassadors to a neutral nation for protection. If the protection were granted, they abandoned their own territory and merged with the nation that had become a sort of foster parent to them. And this was the fate of all the Mississippi tribes but two, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw.
The most progressive of the tribes was the first to go. The French coveted Natchez lands and demanded from them the site of their principal village, White Apple. For this reason the tribe agreed upon a general massacre of the French. The butchery began in November 1729, and 250 victims fell the first day. French forces under Le Seur soon retaliated, however, and in January 1730, surprised the Natchez village, liberated the captives, losing but two of their own men. This was followed by another victory in February that scattered the Natchez tribe. Some fled westward and some were sold as slaves, the Great Sun among them, and the Natchez tribe no longer existed.
The Tunicas were defeated in 1763, and in 1817 the entire tribe emi-
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS	59
grated to Louisiana where they intermarried with both the French and the Negro. The Yazoo, like the Natchez, were practically annihilated by the French, following an Indian massacre in 1729. The Biloxi, Pascagoula, C1 and some of the Six Town Choctaw, who had a strong attachment for the > French, followed them into Louisiana about 1764. The Chakchiuma were practically exterminated by the combined forces of Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes, who had grown weary of the former tribe's continued thieving. The few Chakchiuma who remained merged with the Chickasaw Nation in 1836.
From 1776, when English rule was challenged by the North American Colonies, the history of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes is one of steadily giving way before advancing white settlement and steadily increasing friction. The end was the removal of the Indians to the West between 1832 and 1834.
In 1801 treaties between the United States and the Chickasaw Nation gave the Government the right-of-way on the Natchez Trace, and in 1805 the Choctaw surrendered their south Mississippi lands. This act was the beginning ot the end. A little more than a quarter of a century later neither the Chickasaw nor the Choctaw held any possessions east of the Mississippi River. The year 1820 saw the Treaty of Doak’s Stand; the i Treaty of Washington came in 1826; and in 1830 the Choctaw chieftains signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. This treaty removed all but a small portion of this nation to what is now Oklahoma. On October 20, 1832, the Treaty of Pontotoc was signed between the Chickasaw Nation and the United States. By this treaty the Chickasaw ceded all their possessions in Mississippi and east of the Mississippi River and allowed themselves to be moved to Oklahoma. It is to be noted, however, that in Oklahoma the Chickasaw and the Choctaw formed well-defined and stable governments. The descendants of the 3,000 Choctaw of pure blood who refused to leave Mississippi still till the soil of their ancestors (see Tour 12).