The Fur Animals of Louisiana 



Croa?dils. 



169 



Naturally, the artist who furnished the steel engravings of Le Page du Pratz's 

 historic book on Louisiana s natural resources and wild life did not neglect to depict 

 the alligator, although he made it a more fearsome reptile than it really is. 



and any stream or bayou where the reptile was found in 

 large numbers was termed a ?iuxodapayixya. The Choctaws 

 called the alligator hachunchuba, meaning "without hair," 

 and that is why we have so many "Chinchuba" towns, 

 creeks and bayous in this State and Mississippi. 



The alligator was held in reverence by a number of 

 the different tribes inhabiting the Gulf region and it became 

 the distinctive badge or totum of the Bayougoulas, an 

 Indian tribe that had their main village about where the 

 present town of Donaldsonville is situated and had other 

 villages along the Bayou Lafourche. 



It is also learned from these early primitives of Louis- 

 iana that the skins or hides of the alligator found many 

 usages, and the Natchez Indians, in order to play a certain 

 ball game they were very fond of and in which the ball had 

 to be thrown through a ring, used three musical instru- 

 ments to incite the players to their utmost. The musical 

 instruments were a horn, made of a cane or reed ; a drum, 

 constructed from a deer skin stretched over the top of a 

 large clay pot (sometimes a short hollow log was used), 

 and an alligator skin. 



To prepare the alligator skin for its use in this ab- 

 original jazz band, the skin of the dead reptile was first 

 exposed to the ravages of a colony of ants, so that the softer 



