Traditions of the Natchez.
By T. B. THORPE.
Of all our Indian tribes, none were more interesting or more rudely destroyed than the Natchez. What is remembered of them is calculated to make a deep impression upon the imagination, and to cause regret that some historian had not preserved a truthful history of this singular people. In the early traditions of the Mexicans, preserved to us in their hieroglyphical paintings, there is presented the wonderful spectacle of families and nations, from innate impulses, moving from "the North," and, ever restless, wandering over an unoccupied continent in search of homes. It is evident that the same wisdom that confounded the primitive language at Babel, and scattered the swarming millions of Asia, impelled the early occupants of our continent to move onward like advancing waves of the sea.
In these strange migrations, some chief must have separated from the parent multitude, and turned his face with his followers toward the South-west; and finally reaching the delectable lands of all the valley of the lower Mississippi, there established what was afterwards known as the tribe of the Natchez. The country selected is of surpassing loveliness; for, from the precipitous bluff that so unexpectedly frowns down upon the Mississippi, inland, to where the nation erected its great mound, is one continuous undulation of picturesque scenery, originally enriched with groves of live oaks and magnolias. It was really a fairy land, and enough of the primitive forest still remains to give the sanction of truth to the most florid description of it preserved in legendary lore.
There can not be a doubt. that at the time these nomadics took
