The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians will present a slide lecture by Gordon Sayre on Tuesday evening, December 11, 2006, at 6:30 p.m. in the museum auditorium. Sayre’s topic will be his translations of French colonial documents about the Natchez Indians. He is Professor of Early American Literature at the University of Oregon and is currently conducting research in Mississippi and Louisiana. Admission is free and seating is limited.

Sayre has studied the original writings of Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigney, two Frenchmen who lived in the French colony at Natchez during the 1720s. Du Pratz and De Montigney later published books about their experiences in the Natchez area, which provide much detailed information about the Natchez Indians. In recent years, Sayre has made his Du Pratz translation available on the Internet. Sayre’s work is important because previous English language versions of Du Pratz’s book are incomplete, omitting countless details of interest to historians and archaeologists.

Sayre’s latest book, published in 2005, is The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero (available in the Grand Village sales shop). The book includes a chapter about the Natchez Indians’ massacre of the French colony in 1729. His article, “Plotting the Natchez Massacre,” received the Richard Beale Davis prize for the best article published in the journal Early American Literature in 2002. Earlier this year, Sayre began studying the autobiography of Dumont de Montigney at the Newberry Library in Chicago and is planning to produce an English translation. Although bits of Dumont’s writing have been made available in English, his informative autobiography has not been previously available to historians.

In addition to his studies of the Natchez Indians, Sayre’s research interests include the early theories about the origins of the mound-builders and “life writing” in the Americas prior to 1850, including captivity narratives and exploration accounts. He and his colleagues have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the work on the Dumont manuscript.

We urge everyone to come and bring a friend (or two). This will be an informative and entertaining talk. Light refreshments will be served. Call 601-446-6502 for more information.