On December 7, 2022, Turner Hunt presented “The Natchez Diaspora 1730 To Present” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
The Natchez inhabited what is now southwest Mississippi circa AD 700-1730. The Grand Village was their main ceremonial center between 1682 and 1730. During those years the French entered the region, and initial cordial relations between the two groups eventually deteriorated. In 1729 the Natchez attempted to push the French out of their homelands. A year later, the French returned in force and sacked the Grand Village, desecrated the Natchez temple, and forced the Natchez to leave their homeland as refugees.
“People who visit the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians today experience a snapshot in time. What is rarely attempted is to answer where the Nahce people went after the French attempted to exterminate them,” said Hunt, who serves as tribal historic preservation officer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. “For nearly one hundred years after leaving Mississippi, the Nahce continued as a constituent political unit of the Creek Confederacy before being removed to Indian Territory along with the Creeks during President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Campaign.”
Turner Hunt is a Nahce descendant. He spent 14 years in the US Army and Army Reserve prior to becoming involved in cultural preservation. Hunt earned his BA in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. He is a member of the advisory board for the Lucinda Hickory Research Institute, a charity working to highlight the theft of land from Muscogee citizens during the allotment period.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
