<Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td> Sometimes the deceased king of this province is buried with great solemnity, and his great cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it . </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="3">--Jacques Le Moyne, 1560s </Td> </Tr> <P> Maturin Le Petit, a Jesuit priest met the Natchez people as did Le Page du Pratz (1758), a French explorer . Both observed them in the area that later became Mississippi . The Natchez were devout worshippers of the sun . Having a population of some 4,000, they occupied at least nine villages and were presided over by a paramount chief, known as the Great Sun, who wielded absolute power . Both observers noted the high temple mounds which the Natchez had built so that the Great Sun could commune with God, the sun . His large residence was built atop the highest mound, from "which, every morning, he greeted the rising sun, invoking thanks and blowing tobacco smoke to the four cardinal directions ." </P> <P> Later explorers to the same regions, only a few decades after mound - building settlements had been reported, found the regions largely depopulated, the residents vanished, and the mounds untended . Since there had been little violent conflict with Europeans in that area during that period, the most plausible explanation is that infectious diseases from the Old World, such as smallpox and influenza, had decimated most of the Native Americans who had comprised the last mound - builder civilization . </P>

List the three groups of mound builders from earliest to latest