Yazoo: The Yazoos 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. So the name Yazoo (pronounce YAH-zoo) is applied to any river that belatedly joins another. The Yazoo Indians have a county and city in Mississippi named after them. Their name probably means “waters of the dead.”
The Yazoos spoke a dialect of the Tunican language family. They were villagers and farmers with lifeways in common with the Tunicas living near them. Yet it is known that they were a group distinct from the Tunicas because, unlike them, the used an r sound when speaking. Both tribes are part of the Southeast Culture Area.
It is possible that the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto that traveled through much of the Southeast had contact with the Yazoos in the 1540s. Yet most of what we know about the Yazoos has come from French records of the late 1600s and early 1700s.
Rene Cavalier de la Salle, who claimed the Mississippi Valley for France in 1682, mentioned the Yazoos. Then in 1718, the French established a military and trading post on the Yazoo River within the tribe’s territory. And in 1729, Jesuit missionary, Father Seul, settled among them.
That very year, however, the Yazoos joined the Natchez, who lived to their south on the Mississippi, in the Natchez’s revolt. The Yazoos killed Father Seul and routed the French soldiers. Then a Yazoo warrior, dressed in the clothes of the missionary, traveled from the Natchez to offer them the Yazoos’ support driving the French from the area.
Yet, with the defeat and dispersal of the Natchez, the Yazoos also departed from their ancestral homelands and joined the other tribes in the area—probably the Chickasaws and Choctaws—among whom they eventually lost their tribal identity.”
Excerpted from: Waldman, Carl and Molly Braun. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts on File, 1988.
