SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 193

established its post, P6nicaut states that he found three in the Natchez
villages. On them he lays the blame for a recent attack on the
Chaouachas by a strong party of Chicachas, Yasous, and Natchez."
This band went to the Chaouacha village under pretense of smoking
the peace calumet, treacherously attacked their hosts, killed the great
chief of the Chaouachas and several of his family, and enslaved
eleven persons, including the great chief's wife.a An English trader
named Hughes visited the Natchez at about the same time and sub-
sequently descended the Mississippi, where he was apprehended and
sent as a prisoner to Mobile, but afterward liberated. On his way
back to Carolina, however, he was killed by a Tohome Indian." The
Chickasaw are known to have been in the English interest from the
beginning, and the English had a sufficient hold over part of the Choc-
taw towns to bring on a fierce civil war, while the French themselves
admitted their influence among the Yazoo and Koroa." In fact, the
only tribes that the Louisiana settlers could count upon with any
certainty were the western Choctaw, the Tunica, and the small tribes
gathered near Natchitoches, Mobile, and New Orleans. When we
add to these circumstances the fact that the disturbances hostile to
the French which soon broke out among the Natchez came from
those villages which had had most to do with English traders, it
seems probable that the English were at least indirectly and in some
measure responsible for them. In justice to both Natchez and Eng-
lish, however, it should be stated that M. de Richebourg declares the
hostile acts of the former were due to the refusal of Governor Lamothe
to smoke the calumet with them and the conseqiient belief on their
part that he intended to make war on them.'" Of the first of these
disturbances, resulting in what is called the first Natchez war,"
P6nicaut claims to have had very intimate knowledge, and he de-
scribes it as follows:
 M. de la Loire the elder descended [early in the year 17141c from the
Natchez to Mobile. On the way lie met a canoe in which were four French-
men who were going up to the Illinois to trade with the articles of merchandise
which they had in their canoe. These 4 Frenchmen, having arrived among the
Natchez, hired 4 Natchez savages to aid them in taking their canoe up to the
Illinois, because the current of the Mississippi was at that time very rapid.
They went together as far as the Little Gulf, where, in the evening, the Natchez,
seeing the 4 Frenchmen asleep, murdered them, and after having stripped their
bodies threw them into the river. Then they redescended, during the night, to
the Natchez, where they divided the goods which were in the calloe, and carried
them into their cabins.
 SMargry, Drcotivertes,, 506-507.
 bIbid., 507-509; French, Hist. Coll. La., 43-44, 151 ; La Ilarpe, Jour. Hlst., 118-119.
The French relations call him You, Youx, or Hutchi.
 o French, Hist. Coll. La., 139-140. 1851.
 d Ibid., 241-242.
 e So Penicaut; the true date was 1715, as stated by La Harpe and De Itichebourg.
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