When the great La Salle moored his little fleet at the foot of this bluff, ascended to its summit, and looked over this then forest-clad plain, did he contemplate the coming future of this beautiful discovery of his genius and enterprise?  When he looked upon the blue smoke curling above the tall tree-tops along the lake, in the far distance, as it ascended from the wigwams of the Natchez, the wild denizens of this interminable forest, did his prophetic eye perceive these lovely fields, happy homes, and prosperous people, who came after him to make an Eden of this chosen spot of all the earth? and did it stretch on to contemplate the ruin and desolation which overspreads it now?  How blest is man that he sees not beyond to-day!

Here he first met the Natchez, and viewed with wonder the flat heads and soft, gazelle eyes of this strange people.  They welcomed his coming, and tendered him and his people a home.  From them he learned the extent of the great river below, and that it was lost in the great water that was without limit and had no end.  These Indians, according to their traditions, had once inhabited, as a mighty nation, the country extending from near the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, and were subjects of the Aztec empire of Mexico.  They had been persecuted and oppressed, and determined, in grand council, to abandon the country and seek a home beyond the Mizezibbee, or Parent-of-many-waters, which the word signifies.

Their exodus commenced in a body.  They were many days in assembling upon the east bank of the Rio Grande; and thence commenced their long march.  They abandoned their homes and the graves of their ancestors for a new one in the lovely region they found on the hills extending from the mouth of the Yazoo to Baton Rouge.  Their principal town and seat of empire was located eleven miles below Natchez, on the banks of Second Creek, two miles from the Mississippi River.  It is a delightful spot of high table-land, with a small strip of level low-land immediately upon the margin of the dimpling little stream of sweet water.  Upon this flat they erected the great mound for their temple of the Sun, and the depository of the holy fire, so sacred in their worship.  At each point of the compass they erected smaller mounds for the residences of their chief, or child of the Sun, and his ministers of state.  In the great temple upon the principal mound they deposited the fire of holiness, which they had borne unextinguished from the deserted temple in Mexico, and began to build their village.  Parties went forth to establish other villages, and before a great while they were located in happy homes in a land of abundance.  They formed treaties of amity with their powerful but peaceable neighbors, the Choctaws, and ere long with the Chickasaws and other minor tribes, east, and below them, on the river, the Tunicas, Houmas, and others; for the country abounded with little bands, insignificant and powerless.