272 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [hull. 4.3 



possi'ssions. Tliey arc their natural eiieuiies, and tlic Tchaktas are afraid of 

 them. 



The proposed location must have been occupied for a very short 

 period, if at all, by the Taensa, for Hutchins, who ascended tiie Mis- 

 sissippi in 1784, and speaks particularly of the tribes on Bayou la 

 Fourche, as well as those on the Mississippi, says nothing of them." 

 Moreover, Sibley, writing in 1805, states they had then been on Red 

 river about forty years.^ They w^ere living beside the Apalachee and 

 bi'tween Bayou d'Arro and Bayou Jean de Jean, their village stand- 

 ing at the head of a turn.*^ Subsequently l)oth tribes sold their lands 

 to Colonel Fulton and William ^Miller and moved 25 miles south to 

 Bayou Boeuf/^ Later still they parted with this land also and, wdiile 

 these sales involved considerable litigation at the time, they were 

 finally confirmed. 



From this time on the Taensa disappear from written records, but 

 on a recent visit to Louisiana, in 1907, the writer learned .several par- 

 ticulars concerning their subsequent history. It appears that some 

 time after the sales above mentioned the Taensa remnant moved soutli 

 to a small bayou at the northern end of Grand lake, still known on 

 the local maps as Taensa bayou, and lived near it for a considerable 

 ])eriod. They were then on terms of intimacy with the Chitimacha, 

 Atakapa, and Alibanni, with Avhom they intermarried to some extent, 

 and the father of the oldest woman in the Chitimacha tribe at the 

 present day was a Taensa. Whetlier the Taensa proper died out, 

 scattered, or moved away, is not known, though the Chitimacha chief 

 remembers some rumor of a quarrel which resulted in the separation 

 of the hitherto friendh^ peoples. There are now no Indians on the 

 bayou just mentioned. 



The Avoyel 



Avoyel perhaps means "People of the Rocks."*' Nearly every- 

 thing that is known of the tribe has been given in treating of their 

 relationship. As there stated, they were probably a small branch of 

 the Natchez, separated on account of internal disturbances. Iberville, 

 in 1699, was given Tassenocogoula/ the Mobilian name of this tribe, 

 as a name for Red river, and in 1700 he met about 40 Avoyel war- 

 riors, whom he speaks of as " little Taensas." '•> St. Denis met them 

 in 1714, when on his way to Mexico, and Penicaut, who accompanied 

 him, calls them " Tassenogoula (or Toux Enongogoula)," Avhich he 



" Hutchins, Hist. Narr., -AS-AV,. 



"Ann. Oth Cons., 1087, 1851'. 



•■ Amer. State I'apoi-s. I'nhlio Lands, ii, 796. 



'' Amor. State Tapers, i, 218. 



« See p. 25. 



'Margry, Decouvortos, iv, 178-170, 1880. 



Ibid., 408-409. 



