SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 299 



25 leagues from the banks of the Mississippi." If we accept this 

 statement and suppose that he counted the distance up Bayou La 

 Fourche we wouhl have to suppose that they had moved farther south 

 after the time of Bienville's visit. 



From this time on the few notices which are found place them in 

 the same general situation, which they certainly maintained until 

 after the middle of the eighteenth century. 



In 1739 the officer under M. de Nouaille (quoted on pp. 278-279) 

 has the following information regarding this tribe and the Chawasha : 

 "Before falling in with these [the Acolapissa, Bayogoula, and 

 Ilouma] we had encountered two other nations near the post ' les AUe- 

 mands,' on the left bank of the river, being the Ouachas and Chaoua- 

 chas, numbering together 30 warriors or thereabout. These and 

 several others are called the ' small or petty nations,' owing to their 

 very small number and the character of their settlements, which they 

 are ever transferring from one spot to another distant 60 to 75 miles, 

 according to their caprice or the wars whicli they are forced to 

 carry on." ^ 



It is to be suspected that the following account, given by Baudry 

 de Lozieres, really applies to an earlier date than his own explora- 

 tions of 1794-1798 : 



The Ouachas. — They are allied with the former [i. e., the Chawasha], estab- 

 lished 2 leagues above New Orleans. They have the same character. They 

 could easily [formerly] put 200 men under arms, but in 1715 counted barely 50.'' 



Strikingly different is the account of Sibley, written in 1805 : 



Washas. — When the French first came into the Mississippi this nation lived 

 on an island to the southwest of New Orleans, called Barritaria, and were the 

 first tribe of Indians they became acquaintted with, and were always friends. 

 They afterwards lived on Bayau La Fosh, and from being a .considerable nation 

 are now reduced to tive persons only, two men and three women, who are 

 scattered in French families; have been many years extinct as a nation, and 

 their native language is lost.** 



As we have ah-eady seen, Sibley is probably in error in assigning 

 their original habitat to Barritaria, but they at least camped in that 

 neighborhood sufficiently to give tlieir name to a body of water, also 

 called '' Lake Salvador." Nor is it certain that tlie five persons he 

 mentions were all that were left of the tribe, for it is very likely that 

 some of them united with the Houma Indians and shared their for- 

 tunes. The name Washa is applied on most maps to a lake near the 

 coast of Terre Bonne parish in the country which the Houma remnant 

 now occupies, though the people in that vicinity can not explain it 

 and indeed call the body of water by a different name. ■ 



« Margry, Decouvertes, v, 557. 

 "Claiborne, Hist. Miss., 64-85. 



" Baudry de Lozigres, Voy. & La Louisiane, 246, 1802. 



■* Message from tlie President of the United States, 84, 1806 ; Ann. 9th Cong., 15th sess., 

 1087, 1852. 



