S WANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 161 



cabins. In 1702 Iberville gives 1,500 families. In 1716 the officer De 

 Kichebourg states that they had more than 800 warriors, and Charle- 

 voix makes estimates of 4,000 in 1715 and 2,000 in 1721, while Du Pratz 

 a little later has 1,200. In 1730, according to Le Petit, there were left 

 only 500, and the figures supplied by Diron d'Artaguette and Perrier 

 in 1731 are of 200 and 300 respectively. Charlevoix, who seems to give 

 us our maximum figure before the war, supplies us with a minimum 

 after it by representing the tribe as reduced to 100 fighting men in 

 1732. However, the figure 200-300 contained in a letter dated 1735 

 is probably much nearer, since a French captive reported the same 

 year that there were 180 among the Chickasaw alone. In 1764 Bouquet 

 reported 150 among the Creeks, but in 1799 Hawkins cuts this to 50, 

 and finally, in his paper published in 1836, Albert Gallatin repre- 

 sents the entire Natchez population as amounting to 300. On the 

 basis of these figures, Mooney estimated that in 1650 there was a total 

 Natchez population of 4,500 ; my estimate is 500 less. 



NATCHITOCHES 



When first discovered by the French under Tonti in 1690, the main 

 tribe bearing this name, pronounced by the Indians themselves Nashi- 

 tosh, was living near the city which is called after them. In 1700 

 Bienville crossed from the Taensa villages to renew the alliance with 

 them. After the French had constructed their first fort on the Mis- 

 sissippi, representatives of the tribe came to the commander, St. Denis, 

 reporting that their crops had been ruined, and asked that they be 

 settled in some place where they could obtain provisions, whereupon 

 St. Denis located them on the north side of I^ake Pontchartrain near 

 the Acolapissa. This was in 1702, and they remained there until 1714, 

 when St. Denis took them back to their old country and established 

 a French post close to their village. As long as he remained con- 

 mandant of this post, his influence over the Indians of this tribe and 

 other cognate tribes which came to live nearby was unbounded. It 

 was signally exhibited in a crushing defeat which the Indians under 

 his leadership inflicted upon a part of the Natchez in 1731. Even after 

 his retirement, relations between the settlers and Indians continued 

 harmonious and the latter remained in their old villages until the first 

 part of the nineteenth century, when they joined the rest of the Caddo 

 tribes and accompanied them successively to Texas and Oklahoma. In 

 1912 one of the oldest Indians of the united tribes, known as Caddo 

 Jake, who belonged to this band, was still able to speak the Natchi- 

 toches dialect. 



There was a second Natchitoches, the "upper" town, allied with the 

 Kadohadacho. It is heard of only in earliest times and probably 

 united with the Caddo tribe just mentioned. 



464735—46 12 



