On November 28, 1729, Natchez warriors walked into Fort Rosalie, Louisiana, and opened fire on French colonists. Within an hour, nearly 250 French were dead, and as many women and children were taken hostage. After several punitive expeditions against the Natchez, the French finally decided to enact a permanent solution. In 1731, French forces attacked Natchez villages on the Black River. Their leader, Great Sun, as well as fifty chiefs and warriors and over two hundred women and children were captured and sold into slavery. Those who managed to escape fled east, taking refuge with the Cherokee and Chickasaw. Astonishingly, within thirty years of the arrival of the first French settlers, the place that had been home to the Natchez for a thousand years had ceased to exist. This book tells the tragic story of the French colonization of Louisiana and the destruction of the Natchez nation.

Beginning with the arrival of the first French settlers, the narrative traces their desultory attempts to establish a colony to their encroachment on Natchez lands and ultimate economic dominance over them. Drawing from first-hand accounts in the form of government documents and diaries of missionaries and colonists, this book is the first narrative history of one of the largest massacres ever of natives and whites in North America.