moonky] THE END OF THE NATCHEZ 515
dered to the commander of the French fort built in their old country, seized some stacked muskets with which they fought until they were all killed, men, women, and children, to the number of thirty-seven. Another party of sixteen warriors, including a chief, having been captured and put in irons, broke their chains and were all killed while trying to escape. Finally, the scattered remnants, including probably also the Yazoo and Koroa, united under the Flour Chief, and in October, 1731, to the number of two hundred warriors, besieged the fort at Natchi- toches, Louisiana, from which the French and their Indian allies were compelled to retire, until reenforced by a body of over four hundred Spanish and Indian allies from the west, when the Natchez in turn were obliged to retreat after a hard-fought battle in which they lost all their chiefs and about eighty warriors killed. This was the final blow. " So many losses, and espe- cially the loss of their chiefs, reduced the Natchez to a mere tribal band ; but there were enough left to harass the settlers of Louisiana and to interrupt trade."
From the first outbreak in 1729 to the final repulse at Natchi- toches, two years later, we have a record of about 240 Natchez warriors killed and 40 warriors and about 400 women and children taken and sold into slavery, with no knowledge as to how many died of hunger and disease in the swamps or were picked off from time to time by the French Indians. It is safe to assume that not half the tribe remained alive, and they were homeless refugees. They could not return to their own country, for it was now in the hands of their enemies ; neither could they seek an asylum among the Choctaw, Tonika, Attakapa, Caddo Akansa, or Illinois, for all of those were in the French interest, while the smaller tribes that might have befriended them had been brought as low as themselves. They could go only to the tribes in the English interest, the Chickasaw, Creeks, and Chero- kee, or to the English settlers themselves in Carolina.
As we have seen, a considerable body was already with the
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