Description

The Natchez are a Native American people who originally lived in the Natchez Bluffs area in the Lower Mississippi Valley, near the present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi, in the United States. The DeSoto chronicle failed to record their presence when they came down the river in 1543. They speak a language with no known relatives, although it may be distantly related to the Muskogean languages of the Creek Confederacy. The somewhat unreliable archivist, Pierre Margry, recorded the identity the Natchez applied to themselves as "the Theloel". An early American geographer noted in his 1797 gazetteer that they were also known as the "Sun Set Indians".