According to Dumont, the Choctaws and Natchez had conspired to attack the French simultaneously at New Orleans and Natchez, and the attack at Natchez was made in advance of the day agreed upon for the outbreak. At this, he says, the Choctaws were exasperated, and announced that they were willing to move in conjunction with the French upon Natchez. According to their own professions, however, their friendship for the French was uninterrupted, and they denied any previous knowledge of the outbreak at Natchez. Whatever the motive which prompted it, a joint military campaign against the Natchez was now organized with the Choctaws. All the credit in the affair was gained by the Indians. They were first in the field, and they did all the open fighting. When the French tardily arrived on the spot, instead of the surprise, the sudden attack, the rapid flight, and the complete victory or defeat which had hitherto characterized most Indian warfare, they found the Natchez behind rude fortifications, within which they had gathered all their people, together with the women and children captured at the recent attack on the village. The French were compelled to approach these defences with all the formalities of a siege. At the end of what Périer bombastically terms “six days of open trenches and ten days of cannonade,” the Natchez on the 26th of February, 1730, surrendered the captive women, children, and slaves to the Choctaws, withdrew their entire force, and fled to the opposite bank of the Mississippi. The knowledge that the French captives were with the Indians probably hampered the French in their attack. The services of tribes friendly to the French were secured during the summer to harass the miserable Natchez; and on the 1st of August the Governor could proudly report that by this means he had been able since their migration to kill a hundred and fifty. “Lately,” he says in one of his despatches, “I burned four men and two women here, and the others I sent to Santo Domingo.” Smarting under the disgrace cast upon their reputation by the fruitless results of this campaign, the French felt the necessity for subduing the fugitive Natchez, who still preserved their tribal organization and their independence. An alleged negro insurrection the next summer furnished opportunity for hanging “ten or a dozen of the most culpable” of the negroes, and further demonstrated the necessity for some attempt to recover the prestige of the French name.