Natchez, Mississippi: The Town France Meant to Call Rosalie

Natchez, Mississippi, nearly became Rosalie, after a French duchess, but the name of the Natchez people outlasted every name Europeans gave the place. Even the French maps that labeled it Rosalie put it “at the Natchez.”

Iberville’s Rosalie

The Rosalie plan comes from Father Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, a Jesuit who traveled down the Mississippi on a trip that began in 1720. Dunbar Rowland’s 1907 Mississippi reference work quotes his description of the French post at Natchez. Iberville, the French commander who made the first settlement on the coast in 1699, had looked over the site and wanted the colony’s main town there. “He traced out the plan of it, and intended to call it Rosalie, which was the name of Madam, le Duchesse de Ponchartrain.”

Charlevoix didn’t think much of the chances. “This project is not likely to be soon executed,” he wrote, “though our geographers have always roundly set down in their maps, the town of Rosalie at the Natchez.” So for a while there was a Rosalie on paper, and what stood on the hill was, in his words, “a kind of redoubt, inclosed with a single palisade.”

One fort, two names

The duchess’s name did make it onto the fort. Rowland says Governor Bienville built Fort Rosalie in 1716. Franklin L. Riley’s School History of Mississippi says Bienville got a grant of land for it while punishing the Natchez for killing French settlers, and that “Fort Rosalie was erected, and this was the beginning of the city of Natchez.”

Then the British took over. Riley says the first governor of British West Florida, George Johnstone, who reached the colony early in 1764, renamed Fort Rosalie as Fort Panmure, “in honor of a minister of George III.” Rowland quotes the historian Wailes the same way: Fort Rosalie “was thenceforth known as Fort Panmure.” Neither European name stuck to the town. Rowland describes the Natchez as living “in the vicinity of the old town which has preserved their name.”

A people named for a village

Here’s the thing: the Natchez name itself may have started small. John R. Swanton, of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology, studied the tribes of the lower Mississippi and published his findings in 1911. He says Iberville was given the names of nine Natchez villages, the first of them “Naches,” and that Iberville also recorded another name for the whole people, Theloel. The name “Natchez” for the entire people, Swanton writes, “is also taken from that of a town.”

What does it mean? You’ll find a confident answer in the federal record. The U.S. Geological Survey’s place-name database says the name means “hurrying man,” or “one running to war.” Henry Gannett’s 1902 place-name book for the Survey says the same, with “hurrying men.” Gannett’s second edition, in 1905, left Natchez out altogether.

Swanton, who had a Natchez speaker of his own to consult, didn’t sign on. He tied the name to the tribe’s Great Village, “the Naches of Iberville, the original significance of which can not now be determined,” and said a proposed derivation from another language “has no solid basis.” So you’ve got a translation in the federal record and a linguist saying nobody can know, and the town still answers to the name, not to Rosalie or Panmure.

Sources & further reading

• Dunbar Rowland, ed., Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, vol. 1 (1907). The entry “Biloxi” (p. 240): Iberville’s first settlement in 1699. The entry “Charlevoix’s Voyage, 1721” (pp. 395–396): the trip that began in 1720, Iberville “intended to call it Rosalie,” the duchess of Pontchartrain, “the town of Rosalie at the Natchez,” and the redoubt. The entries “Fort Panmure” (p. 736: Wailes, “thenceforth known as Fort Panmure”) and “Fort Rosalie” (p. 737: built by Bienville in 1716). The entry “Indians” (p. 921): the Natchez “in the vicinity of the old town which has preserved their name.”
• Dunbar Rowland, ed., same work, vol. 2 (1907), p. 290. The entry “Natchez”: Fort Rosalie built in 1716 by Bienville to hold the Natchez in check.
• Franklin L. Riley, School History of Mississippi (copyright 1900). Bienville’s 1716 expedition, the grant for the fort, and “the beginning of the city of Natchez” (p. 39); Johnstone renaming Fort Rosalie as Panmure, “in honor of a minister of George III” (p. 53).
• John R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Bureau of American Ethnology, 1911), pp. 45–48. Iberville’s “Theloel” (p. 45); the nine villages, the first called “Naches”; “Natchez, is also taken from that of a town” (p. 47); “the original significance of which can not now be determined,” and “has no solid basis” (p. 48).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 1st ed. (U.S. Geological Survey, 1902), p. 188. “Named for the Indian tribe, the word meaning ‘hurrying men,’ or ‘one running to war.’” The 1905 second edition has no Natchez entry.
• GNIS feature 691586 (U.S. Geological Survey). “Named for the Natchez Indian tribe, the name meaning ‘hurrying man,’ or ‘one running to war.’” Also notes “Fort Rosalie established 1716.”