90 



Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



Chat Saav 



The illustrator of the historic volumes of Le Page du Pratz made the raccoon 

 appear more like a horse than any other animal. The name Chat Sauvage, which was 

 French for wild cat, was applied to Brer 'Coon by the settlers of Louisiana in 1730, 

 and because there were so many of these fur animals found on an island off Bay St. 

 Louis in the Mississippi Sound, Iberville named it Isle de Chat or, as it now appears 

 on our maps — "Cat Island." 



This is what M. Le Page du Pratz, whom we have 

 already quoted, wrote about the raccoon he found in Louis- 

 iana in 1718 : 



"The Chat Sauvage was improperly named by the 

 first Frenchmen to come to Louisiana, for the only 

 likeness they have to the cat is their suppleness. They 

 mostly resemble the Marmotte. He is not more than 

 eight or ten inches high and about fifteen inches long, 

 his head is somewhat like the fox's. His paws have 

 long toes with small claws not so well suited for seizing 

 game, and too he lives only on fruit, bread and other 

 like things. His hair is of a lighter color than that of 

 the fox ; however, a distinction must be made of the 

 one that is tame and the wild one (because this animal 

 familiarizes himself, becomes very playful and per- 

 forms a number cf tricks). The hair of the tame one 

 is grey, and of the wild one russet, but the skin of 

 either is not as beautiful as the fox's. He becomes 

 very big. His meat is good to eat. I'll not speak of 

 the ordinary cat, although wild, for it is entirely simi- 

 lar to ours." 



The name raccoon, now in such common usage, is a 

 corruption of a North American Indian name "arrathkune" 

 or "arathcone," but the Choctaw Indians of the Gulf Coast 



