TUNICA

A number of Tunican-speaking tribes once lived along the lower Mississippi River valley: the Griga, Koroa, Tiou, Tunica, and YAZOO. The name of the Tunica, pronounced TYOO-nuh-cuh and meaning “those who are the people,” has been applied to their shared language, Tunican. The Tunica proper lived in what is now the state of Mississippi near the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Yazoo River. Some Tunica also might have located their villages on the opposite bank of the Mississippi in territory that is now eastern Arkansas and eastern Louisiana.

The Tunica had lifeways in common with other SOUTHEAST INDIANS. Their societies were hierarchical, with autocratic rulers. Villagers farmed the black, moist soil of the Mississippi floodplain, formed by the river overflowing its banks, cultivating corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and melons. They hunted, fished, and gathered wild foods to supplement these staples. They erected thatched houses and temples of worship, carved dugout canoes, shaped pottery, and made a cloth fabric from the mulberry plant. They also mined salt to trade with other tribes.

The Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto encountered Tunican-speaking peoples in 1541. Two centuries later, in the early 1700s, after Rene-Robert Cavelier de La Salle had claimed the region for France, a Jesuit missionary by the name of Father Davion lived among them. From that time on, the Tunica remained faithful allies of the French. In fact, some of their warriors helped the French suppress the Natchez Revolt of 1729. Their kinsmen, the Yazoo, supported the NATCHEZ, however. When the English gained control of Tunica territory in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian wars, the Tunica began attacking their boats on the Mississippi River.

After the American Revolution, the Tunica gradually departed from their homeland. Some resettled in Louisiana. In 1981, the federal government granted recognition to the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe. (The Biloxi, a Siouan-speaking people, once had lived near Biloxi, Mississippi.) The tribe received grants to finance private housing for tribal members. It also opened the Tunica-Biloxi Museum at Marksville. Other Tunica joined the CHOCTAW, with whom they migrated to Oklahoma.