"This book provides a fresh examination of the formidable and resilient Native nations who helped shape the early Gulf South. This history focuses on the Lower Mississippi Valley during the eighteenth century. It examines how diverse Indigenous peoples influenced and limited the growth of European empires and have managed to survive hundreds of years of colonization"--

Introduction
1. A World of Towns
2. Establishing Relationships with the French
3. Enslaved by Their Allies: Tensas and Chitimachas in French Louisiana
4. Colonial Propaganda and Indigenous Defiance
5. French Transgressions and Natchez Resistance
6. Imperial Blunders and the Revival of Interdependency at Midcentury
7. Tunica Power After the Seven Years' War
8. The Beginnings of Marginalization
9. Remembering, Forgetting, and Mythologizing the Petites Nations
Afterword
Notes
Index