SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 25 



otherwise called Aiioy," " and i)r()l)ably the first of these names is a 

 luisivadiiiii" h.v ]Mai\<rrv. or some copyist, of Tasseuoconoida. The othei- 

 name in just this form does not appear els(>\vhere. l)nt it is evident 

 that it shouhl he Avoy, r having been misread //. That Ix'inu' the case, 

 it would he only a shortened form of Avoyel, or Avoyelles, the name 

 applied by l)u "Pratz (1718-1734)," Morgan (17r)7),'''sibley (ISO:))," 

 and all the late writer^, and that borne l)y a Louisiana parish in the 

 region where these peopl(> formerly lived. From the French aspect of 

 the |)lural form of this word many have assumed that it Avas derived 

 from that language, and (Jatschet has interpreted it as a diminutive 

 of (iroi<\ "small vipers."'' The designation of an Indian tribe by a 

 word taken from the French language is \'ery unusual in Louisiana, 

 however, and this fact, combined with the absolute silence of the 

 very earliest French travelers regarding the significance of the name, 

 renders it ])i-actically certain that it was of purely native origin, 

 probably that which the tribe a])plied to it>elf. If this were the case 

 their language can hardly have been related to Mobilian or no 

 alternative term would have been necessary. Not only does it dilfer 

 from words in the ordinary Miiskhogean dialects, however, but, on the 

 other hand, it presents a striking likeness to some tribal and town 

 names among the Xatchez, particularly to an alternative term applied 

 to the Xatchez themselves, Challaouelles (De Montign}-),^ Chelouels,^ 

 Techloel, Theloel, Thecoel, or Theloelles (Iberville)." The I or ?l 

 near the end in all of these is probably the Natchez auxiliary I or I 

 Avhich is a conspicuous feature of the language. A point of further 

 interest in this connection is the phonetic resemblance between the 

 first two letters of Avoyel and the connnon Xatchez term for " stone." 

 As given by Gatschet this is ii'fa, 4' fa, or ;//,' but Pike has <:>/^' and 

 the writer does not feel sure that a ])ure / sound, even of bilabial 

 character, exists in this tongue.^' This particular word he hears as 

 // or o followed by a palatal aspirate x. At the same time, the nature 

 of the sound itself is such that it could readily be heard and 

 recorded / or /' by a European, as indeed was done by Gatschet. It 

 is a plausible suggestion, therefore, that Avoyel has the same mean- 

 ing in Xatchez as the ^lobilian or Tmiica term, ' People of the Uocks' 

 or ' Flint people,' though in the one case the ordinary word for 



" Marprry. Decouvertes, vi, 249. 



I* 1)11 I'ratz, Hist, di; La Louisianc, ii, 241. 



"Kept, of Sth Int. (Jcofi. Cong., !)r)4, 1!)04. 



<' Ann. 9th Cong., lid sess., 10S8, 1852. 



<■ Bu. Am. Eth.. Kullctin 30, pt. 1, 118. 



fMS., Laval Univ. 



» .Four. Lc Marin, Marjrr.v, Decouvcrtcs, iv, 2G9. 



* Margi-y, Decouvortes, iv, 155, 179, 409. 



« B. A. E., MSS. 



I The existence of an / was assumed by the writer in his paper on the ethnological posi- 

 tion of the Natchez Indians {Amer. Anihrop., ix. 513-528) on the authority of Gatschet 

 before he had heard the language spoken. 



