DORSBT-swANTON] THE BILOXI AND OFO LANGUAGES 9 



these is uncertain, though the writer when iu Texas in 1908 met two 

 Indians near Hortense, Polk count}^, whose father was a Biloxi. 

 Dorsey was informed that at the close of the Civil War a party of one 

 or two hundred Pascagoula Indians and mixed-blood Biloxi removed 

 from central Louisiana into Texas, "to a place which my informant 

 called ' Com'-mish-y.' " " Dorsey conjectures that Com'-mish-y is Com- 

 merce, Hunt county, Texas, but, as Mooney states, it is evidently 

 Kiamichi or Kiamishi river in the Choctaw nation, Oklahoma.'' No 

 doubt there was some truth in this statement, but the number must 

 have been exaggerated very greatly, since Morse in 1817 makes only 

 100 Biloxi and Pascagoula together on lower Red river.*^ In 1829 

 Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Caddo are said to have been living near each 

 other on Red river near the eastern border of Texas. '^ These may 

 have belonged to the Angelina County band already referred to, but it 

 is still more likely that they were connected with the 60 Pascagoula 

 giyen by Morse as living 320 leagues above the mouth of Red river/ 



In Bulletin 48 of the Bureau of American Ethnology the writer has 

 given the following estimate of Biloxi population at various periods: 

 420 in 1698, 175 in 1720, 105 in 1805, 65 in 1829, 6 to 8 in 1908. A 

 Biloxi woman named Selarney Fixico is living with the Creeks in 

 Oklahoma, and a few other Biloxi are said to be near Atoka and at the 

 mouth of the Kiamichi river, besides which there are a few in Rapides 

 parish, Louisiana. 



The last chapter in the history of the Biloxi tribe was its rediscover}'' 

 by Dr. A. S. Gatschet in the fall of 1886 and his somewhat startling 

 determination of its Siouau relationship. Doctor Gatschet was at 

 that time in Louisiana engaged in visiting the smaller tribes of that 

 State and collecting linguistic data for the Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology. After considerable search he located a small band of Biloxi 

 on Indian creek, 5 or 6 miles west of Lecompte, Rapides parish, with 

 the important result already mentioned. His conclusion was con- 

 firmed by Mr. Dorsey, and between January 14 and February 21, 

 1892, Dorsey visited the tribe himself, reviewed and corrected all of 

 the material that Doctor Gatschet had gathered, and added a great 

 amount to it, besides recording several texts in the original. A large 

 part of the year 1892-93 was spent by him in arranging and copying 

 his material, and in pursuance of that work he again visited the Biloxi 

 in February, 1893, when he added considerably to it. In the spring of 

 1893 he laid this investigation aside and never resumed it, but made 

 the material he had collected the basis of his vice-presidential address 

 before Section H of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science at the Madison, Wisconsin, meeting, August, 1893. His 



a Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, xxx, 268, 1893. 

 b Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull. 22, B. A. E., p. 16. 

 c Morse, Report on Indian Affairs, 1822, p. 373. 

 d Porter in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, iii, p. 696. 



