The Natchez chiefdom was destroyed in the 1730s by the French; Natchez speakers took refuge among their neighbors and accompanied them when they were eventually driven to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. That meant that Natchez speakers were frequently multilingual in Creek, Cherokee, Natchez, and English, and the language gradually became endangered, and it is now generally considered extinct in spite of recent revitalization efforts. What is known of the language comes mostly from its last fluent speakers, Watt Sam and Nancy Raven, who worked with linguist Mary R. Haas in the 1930s.