Natchez Oral History
music: Natchez Social Song
History reminds us who we are and where we came from, but history books may be one-sided or based on a cultural perspective. Oral Histories give another point of view a case in point, the history of Natchez Indians. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. We’re listening to a Nachez song.
Hutke Fields is the Principal Chief of the Natchez (notch-Ay). We spoke in Natchez, Mississippi, which was named for the tribe.
Fields: “Our Natchez people used to have the confederacy that covered the entire southeast of t United States. Today, we’re considered the great-grandfather of all the Southeast tribes.”
“Most of what I know about Natchez things and Natchez Nation came from my grandfather, my grandmother, and my father oral history. And then I read books about Natchez Indians, of course, but most of those books are written from a non-Indian perspective. In other words, the French ran into us and tried to colonize us in the 1700s, and that didn’t work. After half of a generation, we tired of their consistent efforts to make changes that suited them and not us. We had several wars with the French, the last of which occurred here at Natchez, Mississippi.”
“Well, the French documented what they saw from their perspective. When we had a funeral, we did things in a different way than they would have, and they wrote their account of the funeral in their words, which is totally different from our understanding of the way things occur.”
More on the Natchez Indians in future programs. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.