Tattooed Arm

Tattooed Arm (French: Bras Piqué) was the Female Sun of the Natchez people in the early 18th century. The Natchez were matrilineal, and while the paramount chief was a man, this title was inherited through his mother, the Female Sun. Tattooed Arm was the mother of Saint Cosme, the Great Sun, and the daughter of the previous female sun, "White Woman" (died 1704). She was the sister of war chief Tattooed Serpent (d. 1725) and the Great Sun (d. 1728). Like her brothers, she was friendly to the French, and following the Natchez Massacre she told Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz that she had attempted to warn them of plans by her tribe to attack them by surprise. Along with many other Natchez people, in 1731 she was captured during the French retaliations against the Natchez after the massacre, and she was eventually was deported to Saint-Domingue, where she was sold as a slave.

Her original Natchez name is unknown.

External links

• The story of Bras Piqué, as told by Charles Gayarré in his History of Louisiana.
• MacLeod, W. C. (1924). Natchez Political Evolution. American anthropologist, 26(2), 201-229.
• Mehta, J. M. (2013). Spanish Conquistadores, French Explorers, and Natchez Great Suns in Southwestern Mississippi, 1542-1729. Native South, 6(1), 33-69.
• Sayre, G. M. (2002). Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand. Early American Literature, 37(3), 381-413.