YAZOO

The Yazoo lived along the lower Yazoo River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Their main villages were located on the south side of the river near present-day Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Yazoo River parallels the Mississippi for about 175 miles before it joins the larger river, separated from it by natural levees, or dikes. Related to this phenomenon, their tribal name, pronounced YAH-zoo and probably meaning “waters of the dead,” is applied to any river that belatedly joins another. The Yazoo also have a county and city in Mississippi named after them.

A Tunican-speaking people, the Yazoo were villagers and farmers with lifeways in common with the TUNICA living near them. Yet it is known they were a group distinct from the Tunica because, unlike them, they used an r sound when speaking. Both tribes are classified as SOUTHEAST INDIANS.

It is possible that the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto that traveled throughout much of the Southeast had contact with the Yazoo in the 1540s.

However, most of what we know about the tribe comes from French records of the late 1600s and early 1700s. Rene-Robert Cavalier de La Salle, who claimed the Mississippi Valley for France in 1682, mentioned them. In 1718, the French established a military and trading post on the Yazoo River within the tribe’s territory. And in 1729, a Jesuit missionary, Father Seul, settled among them.

That very year, however, the Yazoo joined the NATCHEZ, who lived to their south on the Mississippi, in the Natchez Revolt. The Yazoo killed Father Seul and routed the French soldiers, after which a Yazoo warrior, dressed in the clothes of the missionary, traveled to the Natchez to offer them his people’s support in driving the French from the area.

With the defeat and dispersal of the Natchez, the Yazoo also departed from their ancestral homelands and joined other tribes in the area—probably the CHICKA SAW and CHOCTAW—among whom they eventually lost their tribal identity.