38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bit.l. 43 



Marquette, who places them on the west bank of the Mississippi some 

 distance below the mouth of the Ohio, They, or part of them, united 

 Avith the Taensa ° shortly before 1682 and are scarcely referred to 

 afterward. 



It is worth noticing that in spite of all that has been said to the 

 contrary the name which a tribe bears is a fair index of the language 

 spoken by it wherever it may be shown that the traveler Avho reports 

 the name has had direct communication with it. Thus the Chak- 

 chiuma, Houma, Quinipissa, Mugulasha, Tangipahoa, Bayogoula, 

 Acolapissa, Ibitoupa, and Okelousa bear names readily seen to be 

 Muskhogean, and every other fragment of evidence we have regard- 

 ing them points to their having belonged to that stock; while Tunica. 

 Koroa, Yazoo, Tioux, Grigra, Natchez, Taensa, Biloxi, Avoyel, and 

 all the other names found on or near Eed river, can not be interioreted 

 by means of the ordinary Muskhogean dialects, though unsuccessful 

 attempts have been made to do so. It is true that the names of some 

 other Muskhogean tribes, as the Mobile, Tohome, Chatot, Tawasa, 

 and Taposa, can not be readily resolved, while a few non-Muskho- 

 gean tribes, like the Chitimacha, Opelou.sa, and Atakapa, have Mus- 

 khogean names. That we could readily interpret all (he tribal names 

 of any stock is not to be expected, however, while the Muskhogean 

 names applied to non-Muskhogean tribes may be explained by an 

 examination of the facts. It is then seen that at the time when 

 the names Chitimacha, Opelousa, and Atakapa Avere adopted by the 

 French the latter had not visited the tribes in question, and scarcely 

 saw any representatives of them for several years afterward. Such 

 being the case, they acquired the habit of applying that term in com- 

 mon use in the Mobilian trade language and by the time they came 

 to settle among the tribes in question the tribes had themselves be- 

 come accustomed to it. It is at any rate a fact that nowhere on the 

 Mississippi, Yazoo, or Red rivers, or on the Gulf coast east of the 

 Mississippi do we know of a tribe Avhose historical name was received 

 from foreign sources. The Avoyel are, indeed, sometimes called 

 by their Mobilian name, Tassenocogoula, and the Siouan Ofogoula 

 appear to have names derived from CMioctaw or Tunica. In the 

 former case, however, the proper term for the tribe is the one more 

 often used and that which has survived to later ,times, while the 

 proper designation of the Ofogoula has not been replaced but merely 

 obscured by the addition of a Mobilian ending, oMa. The chance 

 resemblance of Ofo to of(\ which means 'dog' in Choctaw and Mo- 

 bilian, apparently led their Muskhogean and Siouan neighbors to 

 speak of them as the " Dog people," but this is an accident not likely 

 to occur often. The Tunica name U'shpJ, on the other hand, is 



» See pp. 262-263. 



