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Patricia Galloway Mississippi Department of Archives and History
“This nation... is very brave and has always served the French well.” —Tunicas under the French regime. 1676-1763
All the histories are unanimous in painting a picture of harmonious relations between the Tunicas and the French during the French exploration and occupation of the Louisiana colony. Tlie French themselves were unstinting in their praise of the Tunicas as allies; all they regretted was that European disease and rum had so reduced their allies in number. But there is much more to the story of Tunica-French relations than "loyal Indian allies of noble Europeans”. During their long journey down the corridor of prehistory into the smoky light reflected from Spanish swords, Tunica people had more than once chosen to change location in search of more favorable conditions, and in the course of the tragicomic relations with the French colonists they finally seem to have both found a home and created for themselves a viable role in the new world that the Europeans made of their land.
Before I can begin to tell the story of those relations I will need to set the scene by describing that land. Most of the history of the Tunica people was acted out in what is now referred to as the Lower Mississippi Valley:	that	complex
interweaving of rivers leading down the heart of the country from Memphis, Tennessee south to the Gulf of Mexico. The windings of the mighty river itself were home to the Tunica, as well as its important tributaries the Yazoo and the Red. Through a broad valley these rivers had twisted for millennia, dumping every year inch upon inch of rich soil taken from the prairies and the fertile midwest. The valley of the Mississippi is today the richest farming region in the world, but in a past before land clearance, erosion, single-cropping, and flood control it was even richer, and throughout their history it provided the Tunica with the farm land they needed for their crops.
But to Jolliet and the Jesuit Father Marquette this was unknown land; before they started their exploration in 1673 they suspected that the Mississippi might possibly lead them to the Pacific Ocean. In the event, they travelled no further south than die Arkansas River before returning to
Canada, but the Indians they met at its mouth told them of a group called "Tanika" living westward on the Arkansas River, and so they appear on Marquette’s map. Nine years later in 1682 La Salle’s exploration party learned, again from the Arkansas (Quapaw) Indians, that the Tonika lived south and east across the Yazoo Basin, and were their enemies. Five years afterwards Henri Joutel’s party, making toward the north and east from La Salle’s ill-fated colony on the Texas coast, were told of a Tonika settlement on the Ouachita River.
The notion of a Tunica settlement on the lower Yazoo River at the end of the seventeenth century is a familiar one, and we will discuss it in a minute, but these Tunicas west of the Mississippi are important to the history of the Tunica too. Archaeologists have traced the artifacts of Tunican peoples from northwest Mississippi or northeastern Arkansas down to the Yazoo and again further southward in unbroken stylistic development. On the basis of that evidence archaeologists have suggested that before the time of the first Spanish explorers in 1541, the Tunica had lived farther north and west, but were by that time being pushed southeastwards by the Quapaw peoples—a process that continued until they were settled on the Yazoo (and perhaps later, as we shall see). Additional archaelogical evidence suggests that Tunican peoples also maintained setdement in southeastern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana on the tributaries of the Red River, and that the Koroa, who appear on maps near the Natchez, on the Red River, and on the Yazoo, were culturally related to the Tunica. The Ouachita River locations are in precisely the area that was the location of the salt resources for whose exploitation the Tunica were later so well known — near Hot Springs, Arkansas. Thus, although little is actually known of these western Tunicans in the historical literature, we need to note their presence and existence before we go on to look at the history of the better - known eastern Tunicans, and we should remember that the two groups were probably in communication for much of the historic period.
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