Koroa

The Koroa were one of the groups of Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands who lived in the Mississippi Valley before French colonization. The Koroa lived in the Yazoo River basin in present-day northwest Mississippi.

The Koroa are believed to have spoken a dialect of Tunica. However, French missionaries described the Koroa (which they spelled Courouais) as speaking the same language as the Yazoo but a different tongue from the Tunica. They may have described a distinct dialect or a related Tunican language.^[2]

Jacques Marquette referred to this tribe by the name Akoroa.^[3]

The Koroa may be the tribe identified by Hernando de Soto's expedition as the Coligua or Cologoa. They may have met the Spanish expedition in 1541 near present-day Little Rock, Arkansas.^[4]

The Koroa lived on both sides of the Mississippi River when the French encountered them in the late 17th century. At least one of their villages was on the river's east bank.^[5] In 1682, La Salle visited a Koroa village on the Western side of the Mississippi twice, both on the descent and the return journey. His party was feasted there, and saw Quinipissas, whom they described as the Koroa's allies, living in the village.^[6]

A 1698 French missionary expedition also found them living in the same area as the Tunica, Yazoo, and Houspé, and Father Antoine Davion was assigned to missionize them.^[2]

In 1702, a French Catholic missionary named Nicolas Foucault was killed while serving among the Koroa. The tribe's leaders had the murderers executed.^[5] Many members of the Koroa tribe joined with the Tunica, Chickasaw, or Natchez tribes after European diseases had severely depleted their population.^[1]

• List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition

• Gibson, Arrell M. "The Indians of Mississippi," in McLemore, Richard Aubrey, ed. A History of Mississippi (Hattiesburg: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973) vol. 1