10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 68 
details. Gatschet’s Atakapa material, collected in 1885 at Lake 
Charles, La., is even more important, since his principal informant, 
Louison, according to the testimony of the Atakapa still living, was 
the last of the tribe who understood the language as it was spoken 
by the old-time Indians. While the writer has been able to make 
some emendations it is practically impossible to add anything new. 
The few individuals still acquainted with Atakapa are scattered about 
the State of Louisiana, and even beyond its bounds, and do not use 
it at all in their everyday life. Besides Gatschet’s material we have 
a short vocabulary—the one already mentioned—collected by a 
French sea captain named Berenger from Indians of the Galveston 
Bay region, the so-called Akokisa, and a somewhat longer list of 
words obtained, if not collected, by Martin Duralde, Spanish com- 
mandant at the Atakapa post (now Franklin, La.), April 23, 1802. 
It is important mainly from the fact that it shows that the language 
of the eastern Atakapa from whom it was secured differed con- 
siderably from the language spoken about Lake Charles. Akokisa, 
on the other hand, to judge by the Berenger vocabulary, differed but 
slightly from the dialect of Lake Charles, except that it is apparent 
that in Gatschet’s time Atakapa phonetics were considerably broken 
down. Gatschet’s Chitimacha material was collected at Charenton, 
La., in December, 1881, and January, 1882. It was secured mainly 
from an old Negro who had lived so long with the Chitimacha as to 
speak their language fluently. He is admitted by all to have been 
better versed in Chitimacha tribal lore than the Indians themselves, 
but the philological value of the record seems to have suffered some- 
what. Neither phonetically nor from any other point of view is it 
on a par with Gatschet’s Tunica and Atakapa work. However, the 
writer has been able to go over this with considerable care with the 
help of Benjamin Paul, chief of the Chitimacha remnant, make 
many corrections, and add some texts and other material of con- 
siderable importance. This is the only one of the three languages 
under discussion to which the writer can claim to have contributed 
greatly. The only other record of Chitimacha consists of a vocabu- 
- lary obtained by Martin Duralde at the time he secured the Atakapa 
vocabulary already referred to. Gatschet states that this was 
originally recorded by aman named Murray. Like the corresponding 
Atakapa vocabulary, it has been extensively copied, notably in the 
comparative vocabularies in the Transactions of the American 
Antiquarian Society, volume un, pages 307-367, and in the Trans- 
actions of the American Ethnological Society, volume 11, pages 95-97. 
As it was also obtained from the Charenton Chitimacha no dialectic 
difference is exhibited in it and it is of comparatively slight value. 
