"RedBone"Louisiana Ancestry; various Indigenous Tribal Mixtures

The Historic Indian Tribes Of Louisiana "The most prominent indian tribes in the Louisiana Territory" 1.The Atakapa 2. Choctaw 3 Natchez 4. The Tunica 5. Chitimacha 6. Okelousa 7. Washa 8. Chawasha 9. Adai CADDO 10. Doustione 11. Natchitoches 12. Ouanchita 13. Yatasi 14. Acolapissa 15. Mugulasha 16. Okelousa 17. Quinapisa 18. Tangipahoa

Louisiana has the third largest Native American population in the eastern United States. Only North Carolina and Florida have more than the 16,040 Louisiana Indians counted in the census of 1980. The Louisiana Indian in the real world today can be found driving a bulldozer, directing an oil-field crew, playing a fiddle in a New Orleans restaurant, or cutting pulpwood.

Today many Indian groups are culturally and racially mixed; entire languages will never be heard again. Panfilo de Narvaez, sailing westward along the Gulf coast in 1526, reached the mouth of the Mississippi River and then continued westward at some distance from shore.

From one of the castaways, Cabeza de Vaca, has some the earliest description of Texas coastal Indians related to the Atakapa of southwest Louisiana. Under their own impetus in the latter half of the seventeenth century, Europeans in numbers began to reach what was to be Louisiana. They were French men instead of Spaniards, with the notable exception of Alonzo de Leon, whose expedition of 1690 crossed overland from Mexico and reached the Caddoan Adai east of the Sabine River.

The chief avenue of approach for the Frenchmen was the Mississippi River. Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette descended the river as far as the Quapaw towns near the mouth of the Arkansas in 1673, and five years later Rene Robert Cavelier de La Salle completed his epic trip down the Mississippi River to its mouth.

Energized by La Salle's journey, a host of missionary priests descended on Louisiana, and from them have come invaluable observations on the Indians to whom they ministered. Literature on Louisiana's tribes varies extensively in coverage. The greater tribes generally were accorded closer attention than, for example, the Atakapa, whose chief distinction lay in the very meagerness of their material culture.

Like many Indians, the Atakapa called themselves I shak, "the people." The name Atakapa is of Choctaw, or Mobilian, origin and means "eater of human flesh." Atakapa lands included all of what is today southwestern Louisiana, extending from upper Bayou Teche to the Sabine River and from the Gulf of Mexico northward almost to present-day Alexandria.

The Atakapa comprised four sovereign bands, each of which had one or more villages. To early explorers, the Louisiana Atakapa was an almost invisible people, seen rarely in their boats along the coast in summer.

They sometimes betrayed their presence by distant smokes and marsh fires. According to tradition, the Louisiana Atakapa came from the West, where their cultural kinsmen survived well into historic times. The Caddo Tribes in Louisiana in 1700 included the Adai, Doustione, Natchitoches, Ouanchita, and Yatasi.

The shifting stream channels. The Louisiana Caddo were fundamentally a southeastern people their languages were unlike those to the east but may have been distantly related to other non-Muskogean languages in the Southeast. The Caddo lived well in a fertile country. Their economy was bolstered by active trade, hunting, and fishing, in addition to agriculture. Even the bison was at hand and was hunted a long the northwest Louisiana buffalo trails as late as 1700.

The Tunica were an active people, outstripping even the Natchitoches and Koroa as traders in salt and busy with farming, hunting, and fishing. Some have characterized Tunican culture as comparatively plain, but it is possible that this characterization stems from a lack of more detailed knowledge of the people.

The Natchez speakers, in 1700, were of three tribes: the Taensa and Avoyel in Louisiana, and the Natchez of the Mississippi River's left bank. Occupying the margins of the Florida parishes-that portion of the "toe" of the Louisiana "boot' north of the Isle of Orleans-and intermittently, the Mississippi River's banks from the Red River southward, were seven sovereign tribes, none of which was large.

Culturally, the seven tribes, known as the Muskogeans, conformed to the regional pattern. They spoke Choctaw dialects but were not members of the Choctaw confederacy. The primary Houma village in 1700 stood on blufflands flanking the portage between the big meanders of the Mississippi River where a westward loop received Red River, now the site of Angola. Iberville spoke of 140 cabins, arranged in a circle, and estimated the population to include some 350 potential warriors and many children.

The Houma may have been an offshoot of the Chakchiuma, a Yazoo River tribe with whom the Houma shared their tribal symbol, the red crayfish. Houma is Choctaw or Mobilian Jargon for "red," possibly derived from the last two syllables of the parent tribe's name, Chakchiuma. Bayougoula is Choctaw or Mobilian Jargon for "bayou people. What may have been the tribe's name for itself, Pischenoa, Choctaw or Mobilian Jargon for "ours," appears once in an early account.

The tribe's totem animal was the alligator. The four to five hundred Bayuogoula in 1700 were clustered about a single village on the site of modern Bayou Goula. Iberville found the settlement a quarter of a mile from the right bank of the Mississippi River, on a little stream that provide the domestic water supply.

Comparatively little is known about the other Muskogean-speaking tribes of Louisiana-the Acolapissa, Mugulasha, Okelousa, Quinapisa, and Tangipahoa. Even their identities remain uncertain. Those in more remote places were not exposed to the influx of French observers. All were on the move in historic times.

Tangipahoa is Choctaw for "corn gatherers" or "corncob people." The people with this name were said to have been a seventh town of the Acolapissa on Pearl River. Yet, before 1682, at least some of them had moved to the Mississippi River to establish a village on the left bank two leagues below the Quinapisa town.

By 1682 the town had been destroyed by the combined Houma and Okelousa, the survivors fleering back to the Acolapissa on Pearl River.Okelousa is Choctaw for "black water", a name said to have been given to this small tribe because it occupied lands around two small lakes in which the water was darkened by its high organic content.

The lakes are presumed to have been to the west of and above Pointe Coupee. The group is further characterized as "wandering people west of the Mississippi" and elsewhere, with the Washa and Chawasha, as "wandering people o f the seacoasts." The name Chitimacha may be the people's own term for "those living on Grand River," or it may be Choctaw for "those who have pots.

" The latter allusion is difficult to understand, since all tribes of the lower Mississippi made and used pottery. More recently, the Chitimacha have called themselves, in their own language, "men altogether red."Another name, Yaknechito, meaning "big country," The Chitimacha were a numerous people.

An estimated population of four thousand in 1650 has been proposed for the three tribes, a figure none too high in view of the number of villages recorded. Up to the twentieth century, thirteen to fifteen names of villages could be recalled and the sites identified, and earlier there were many more.

The term Washa is possibly Choctaw for "hunting place," an appropriate name in view of the abundance of game in the lowlands the Washa occupied. Lake Washa, more commonly called Lake Salvador, in St. Charles Parish, and another, smaller Lake Washa, in lower Terrebonne Parish, still bear the name. The extent to which Washa material and social culture traits paralleled those of their presumed linguistic kin, the Chitimacha, is unknown