The Natches were a very considerable nation; they formed several villages, that were under some peculiar chief, and these obeyed one superior of the whole nation. All these chiefs bore the name of suns; they adored that luminary, and carried his image on their breasts, rudely carved. The manner in which the Natches rendered divine service to the sun has something solemn in it. The high-priest got up at break of day, and marched at the head of the people with a grave pace, the calumet of peace in his hand. He smoked in honour of the sun, and blew the first mouthful of smoke towards him; when he rose above the horizon, they howled by turns after the high-priests, and contemplated it with their arms extended to heaven. They had a temple in which they kept up an eternal fire. So proud were these chiefs, who pretended to trace their origin to the sun, that they had a law, by which every Natchez, who had married a girl of the blood of the suns, must follow her in death, as soon as she had breathed her last. There was an Indian, whose name was Etteacteal; he dearly loved a daughter of one of these suns, and married her; but the consequence of this honour had nearly proved very fatal to him. His wife fell sick: he watched over her day and night, and with many tears he besought her not to die, and they prayed together to Wachil, or the sun, that he would spare her life; at last he saw her at the point of death, and then he fled: for the moment she ceased to breathe, he was to be slain. He embarked in a piragua on the Mississippi, and came to New Orleans. He put himself under the protection of M. de Bienville, the then governor, who interested himself for him with the Natches; they declared that he had nothing more to fear. Etteacteal, being thus assured, resolved to return to his nation; and, without settling among them, made several voyages thither; he happened to be there, when the chief called the Stung Serpent, brother to the head of the nation, died; he was a relation of the late wife of Etteacteal, and the people resolved to make the latter pay his debt, and arrested him. When he found himself in the hut of the grand chief of war, he gave vent to the excess of his grief.