On May 20 and 21, reenactors from Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and other states will gather at the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians to participate in the &uot;Iberville Natchez Tricentennial Reenactment&uot; which is a celebration of the tricentennial of the beginning of the establishment of a colony at Natchez.

On Saturday, May 20 at 2 p.m. and on Sunday, May 21 at 1 p.m. the group will reenact a calumet of peace ceremony at Grand Village near the Great Sun’s mound where the original ceremony between the Frenchmen and the Natchez Indians was held in 1700. These reenactors will be camping on the museum grounds on Saturday and Sunday.

On March 11, 1700 explorers Pierre LeMoyne Sicur d’Iberville, his brother, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur de Bienville, and approximately 50 French military men arrived at the Natchez landing.

They were greeted by the Natchez Indian War Chief, Tattooed Serpent, and 20 of his men who brought the calumet of peace and invited them to visit the Grand Village and the home of the ranking chief, the Great Sun.

Jesuit priests, Father Paul Du Ru and Francois Jolliett de Montigny who were also in the Natchez country with the French at that time described the landing area and mound site and stated that there were about 400 huts of the Natchez Nation. &uot;Close by flows a little creek, from whence they get their water. From the river landing, one climbs a hill about 150 fathoms high. Once on top of the hill one discovers a country of plains, prairies full of little hills, with many oak trees and many roads leading from one hamlet to another.&uot;

Jean Penicaut, a ship’s carpenter who also accompanied the group described the Natchez country in his journal as follows: &uot;The Natchez inhabit one of the most beautiful countries in Louisiana. It is embellished with magnificent natural scenery traversed with hills, covered with a splendid growth of odoriferous trees and plants, and watered with cool and lipid streams.&uot;

The Iberville Natchez Tricentennial will be the first reenactment of this type ever held at Grand Village. Well-known Biloxi reenactor Edmond Boudreaux will reenact the part of Iberville.

Boudreaux, an archaeologist, presently serves as president of the Mississippi Gulf Coast chapter of the Mississippi Archaeological Association. He is past-president and presently serves as vice president of the Mississippi Coast Historical and Genealogical Society. Leading the Natchez Indian reenactors will be well known Native American award winning program presenter, GrayHawk, Houma/Choctaw of Lacombe, La. He will be speaking in the Mobilian Trade Language. The Mobilian Trade Language was the lingua franca of Native American tribes in the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Visitors to Grand Village will have a rare opportunity to watch living history demonstrations from the French Colonial period and the day-to-day workings of both French and Indian encampments similar to the ones seen during Iberville’s first encounter with the Natchez Natives.

Some of these demonstrations will include leatherworking, cooking, tomahawk throwing, musket demonstrations, and other colonial and Native American activities and crafts of the 1700s.

The event is sponsored by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. For further information please call Jean Simonton at the Grand Village at 446-6502.