12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 47 



within a short time."" In 1758 governor De Kerlerec reports that 

 ''for some j^ears some Indian families of the offogoula nation, the 

 remaiQS of a fairly numerous nation which the CTiilcachas have not 

 ceased to persecute, have estabhshed themselves [at Natchez]; they 

 are housed under the cannon of the fort, and in war expeditions they 

 join our troops in order to pursue our enemies."'' He gives the 

 number of their warriors as fifteen. In 1784 Hutchins states that 

 they had a small village of about a dozen warriors on the western 

 bank of the Mississippi, eight miles above Point Coupee,*^ and it is 

 evident that Baudry de Lozieres is only recalling earlier conditions 

 when at about the same period he puts them back in their old situa- 

 tion along with the Koroa and Yazoo.*^ On March 22, 1764, it is 

 recorded that ''The Ossogoulas, Chaktas, Avoyelles, and Tonicas," 

 to the number of thirty men, attacked an English convoy of pirogues, 

 and in two somewhat in advance of the rest killed six men and 

 wounded seven, thereby causing the expedition to be abandoned.* 

 The reason assigned for this attack was their refusal to give up a 

 slave who had fled to them. 



After 1784 no mention of this tribe appears in histories or books of 

 travel, and it was naturally supposed that it had long been extinct, 

 when in November, 1908, the writer had the good fortune to find 

 an Indian woman belongiug to this tribe, of which she is the last 

 representative, who remembered a surprising number of words of 

 her language, when it is considered that the rest of her people had 

 died when she was a girl. She appears to have learned most of these 

 from her old grandmother, who was also responsible for the positive 

 statement that the name of their tribe was Ofo. This woman, Rosa 

 Pierrette, is living with the Tunica remnant near MarksvUle, La., 

 and her husband belongs to the Tunica tribe. Already in May, 1907, 

 the writer had heard from the Tunica chief of the comparatively 

 late existence of representatives of the Ofo, but from the fact that 

 the one word this man could remember contained an initial/, it was 

 assumed that it belonged to the Muskhogean linguistic family. It 

 was therefore a surprising and most interesting discovery that the 

 Ofogoula of French writers must be added to the Biloxi as a second 

 representative of the Siouan family in the region of the lower Mis- 

 sissippi. In the use of an / it is peculiar, but its aflSnities appear to 

 be first with the Biloxi and the eastern Siouan tribes rather than 

 with the nearer Quapaw and the other Siouan dialects of the West. 



o Claiborne, History of Mississippi, i, p. 68. 



6 Report of the 15th Session of the International Congress of Americanists, i, p. 74. 



c Hutchins, Historical Narrative of Loiiisiana, p. 45, 1784. 



d Baudry de Loziferes, Voyage a la Louisiane, p. 251, 1802. 



e Villiers du Terrage, Les Demises AnniSes de la Louisiane Frangaise, pp. 182-183. 



