The Tunica people are a group of linguistically and culturally related Native American tribes in the Mississippi River Valley, which include the Tunica (also spelled Tonica, Tonnica, and Thonnica); the Yazoo; the Koroa (Akoroa, Courouais); and possibly the Tioux. They first encountered Europeans in 1541 – members of the Hernando de Soto expedition. The Tunica language is an isolate.
Over the next centuries, under pressure from hostile neighbors, the Tunica migrated south from the Central Mississippi Valley to the Lower Mississippi Valley. Eventually they moved westward and settled around present-day Marksville, Louisiana.
Since the early 19th century, they have intermarried with the Biloxi tribe, an unrelated Siouan-speaking people from the vicinity of Biloxi, Mississippi and shared land. Remnant peoples from other small tribes also merged with them. In 1981 they were federally recognized and now call themselves the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe; they have a reservation in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana.
Prehistory
By the Middle Mississippian period, local Late Woodland peoples in the Central Mississippi Valley had developed or adopted a full Mississippian lifestyle, with intensive maize agriculture, hierarchical political structures, mussel shell-tempered pottery and participation in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). At this time the settlement patterns were a mix of dispersed settlements, farmsteads and villages. Over the next centuries, settlement patterns changed to a pattern of more centralized towns, with defensive palisades and ditches, indicating a state of endemic warfare had developed between local competing polities. Material culture, such as pottery styles and mortuary practices, began to diverge at this point.
The archaeological evidence suggests that the Mississippi valley was home to several competing paramount chiefdoms, with supporting vassal states, all belonging to the same overall culture. The groups in the area are defined by archaeologists as archaeological phases, based on differentiation in these material cultures. They include the Menard, Tipton, Belle Meade-Walls, Parkin and Nodena phases. In the immediate vicinity of the future city of Memphis, Tennessee, two phases seem to have been paramount chiefdoms: Parkin and Nodena. The other phases were possible vassal states or allies in their competition for local supremacy.
The Parkin phase is centered on the Parkin site, a palisaded village at the confluence of the St. Francis and Tyronza rivers. The large village was likely located at the confluence of the two rivers because the site enabled residents to control transportation and trade on the waterways.
The Nodena phase is believed to have been centered on the Bradley Site (3 Ct 7) and its nearby cluster of towns and villages. It is named for the Nodena site, located east of Wilson, Arkansas in Mississippi County on a meander bend of the Mississippi River. Scholars believe that because of pottery and mortuary similarities, the Belle Mead and Walls phase peoples were allies or vassals of the Nodena polity. The Parkin polity, defined by different mortuary practices and pottery, was competing.
Protohistoric period
Spanish contact
In the spring of 1541 Hernando de Soto and his army approached the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, coming upon the Province of Quizquiz (pronounced "keys-keys"). These people spoke a dialect of the Tunican language. At that time, these related groups covered a large region extending along both sides of the Mississippi River in present-day Mississippi and Arkansas.
Upon crossing the river, the expedition came upon the Province of Aquixo, and from there on to the Province of Casqui. The province had a long-standing feud with the Province of Pacaha, described by its participants as having lasted for generations. The Spaniards were impressed with the peoples of this region, its many towns, abundant agriculture and fine quality of the people. The settlements of this area are described thus by the admiring Spaniards:
The expedition later visited the Province of Quigate, the Province of Coligua and Palisema. The chief of Palisema sent the expedition on to the land of the Cayas, where they found the town of Tanico. Linguistic analysis in the 1930s by John Swanton and in the 1980s by Robert L. Rankin point to the Koroa tribe as likely to have been the Coligua.
Archaeologists believe the location for the Province of Coligua may be the Greenbriar phase on the White River at the edge of the Ozark Highlands. Europeans also called the settlement Tanico, which is another name later applied to the Tunica, also making its identification as a Tunican group secure. The Tanico were salt-makers and salt-traders, procuring the salt from the sands of a stream that fed into the River of the Cayas (later identified as the Arkansas River). The people would scoop the sand in baskets, and run water through it, making a brine. The brine was strained and left to dry in shallow bowls, where the dried salt was later scraped off.
Scholars have evaluated the three surviving Soto narratives for topography, linguistics and cultural traits, combined with the results of archaeological excavations and analysis. Most archaeologists and ethnohistorians believe the following can be identified as equivalent sites: they are paired by archaeological phase and Soto references: Menard phase = Anilco, Walls phase = Quizquiz, Belle Meade phase = Aquixo, Parkin phase = Casqui, and Nodena phase = Pacaha.
The description of the ongoing war between the Casqui and Pacaha matches interpretations of the archaeological record, as do distances and topography mentioned in the narratives. Words recorded by the narratives at Pacaha, such as mochila, macanoche, and caloosa, match Tunica linguistic characteristics evaluated by Mary Haas in the 1940s. It is now theorized that the peoples of the Central Mississippi Valley, from Pacaha in the north to the Provinces of Anilco and Utiangüe in the south on the Arkansas River, were all Tunican.
French contact It was another 150 years before another European group recorded the Tunica. In 1699 when encountered by the LaSource expedition (coming downriver from Canada), the Tunica were a modest-sized tribe numbering only a few hundred warriors, with about 900 people in total. While the Spanish had been in their territory only for a short time, their encounter had devastating effects. The accidental introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases, such as smallpox, ravaged the native populations, who had no acquired immunity. In addition, the expedition had played off local political rivalries, causing more conflict.
By the time the French arrived, the Central Mississippi Valley was sparsely occupied by the Quapaw, a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people hostile to the Tunica. In the intervening century and a half since the de Soto Expedition, the Tunica and Koroa had relocated further south to the mouth of the Yazoo River in west central Mississippi.
Historic period
Mouth of the Yazoo 1682–1706
The French established a mission among the Tunica around the year 1700, on the Yazoo River near the Mississippi River in the present-day state of Mississippi. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Tunica had recently migrated to the region from eastern Arkansas, in the late 17th century. Father Antoine Davion was assigned as the missionary for the Tunica, as well as for the smaller tribes of the Koroa, the Yazoo, and Couspe (or Houspe) tribes. Unlike the northern tribes with which the French were familiar, the Tunica (and the nearby Taensa and Natchez) had a complex religion. They had built temples, created cult images, and had a priest class. The Tunica, Taensa, and Natchez retained chiefdom characteristics, such as a complex religion and, in the case of the Natchez, use and maintenance of platform mounds, after they had disappeared elsewhere. Paul du Poisson reported that regional tribes such as the Taensa and Natchez kept an eternal flame in their villages, and that when it went out, they would visit the Tunica to replenish it.
Several characteristics linked the Tunica to groups encountered by de Soto: their emphasis on agriculture; cultivation by men rather than women (as de Soto noted when describing Quizquiz); trade; and manufacture and distribution of salt, a valuable item to both native and Europeans. The trade in salt was an ancient profession among the Tunica, as evidenced by de Soto's noting salt production when visiting the village of Tanico. Salt was extremely important in the trade between the French and the various Caddoan groups in northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas. Scholars believe the Tunica were middlemen in the movement of salt from the Caddoan areas to the French.
Angola 1706–1731
By the early 18th century, Chickasaw raided the Indian tribes along the lower Mississippi River to capture people for the Indian slave trade in South Carolina. They took an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 captives from the Tunica, Taensa, and Quapaw tribes during this period.
By 1706 the Tunica decided to move again. With their enemies the Natchez to their immediate south, they decided to move further, across the Mississippi and south to its confluence with the Red River, the next major river junction. This location enabled them to keep control of their salt trade, as the Red River also connected to their salt source in the Caddoan areas. They established a loose collection of hamlets and villages at their new home in present-day Angola, Louisiana.
In the early 20th century, Angola was developed as the site of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. In 1967, a corrections officer at the Louisiana State Penitentiary discovered the remains of a small hamlet at this site. The archeological site is now known as the Bloodhound Site.
During the 1710s and 1720s, war broke out four times between the French and the Natchez. The French called these the First Natchez War (1716), the Second Natchez War (1722), the Third Natchez War (1723), and the Natchez Rebellion of 1729. The last was the most widespread war; the Natchez attacked and killed many of the French in Natchez territory; in retaliation, the French gained the Choctaw as allies, eventually defeating the Natchez people. Of those who survived, thousands were sold into slavery and sent to the Caribbean, where the French had plantations on Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe.
In November 1729 the French commander Sieur de Chépart ordered the Natchez to vacate one of their villages so that he could use its land for a new tobacco plantation. The chiefs of the village sent emissaries to potential allies, including the Yazoo, Koroa, Illinois, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. They also sent messages to the African slaves of nearby French plantations, inviting them to join the Natchez in rising up against the French. In November 1729, the Natchez attacked. Before the day was over, they destroyed the entire French colony at Natchez, including Fort Rosalie. Over 200 colonists, mostly French men, were killed and more than 300 women, children, and slaves were taken captive. War continued until January 1731, when the French captured a Natchez fort on the west side of the Mississippi River. Between 75 and 250 Natchez warriors escaped and found refuge among the Chickasaw. The young Great Sun and about 100 of his followers were captured, subsequently enslaved, and shipped to work French plantations in the Caribbean. The Natchez Rebellion expanded into a larger regional conflict with many repercussions. The Yazoo and Koroa Indians had allied with the Natchez and suffered their fate. The Tunica were initially reluctant to fight on either side. In June 1730 the Head Chief of the Tunica, Cahura-Joligo, agreed to let a small party of Natchez refugees settle near his village, with the provision that they should do so unarmed. He received thirty Natchez warriors into his village, after disarming them.