SWANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 189 



parted with this land also and drifted farther south to a small bayou 

 at the head of Grand Lake, still known on local maps as Taensa 

 Bayou. They were known to the Chitimacha as Chosha, and in- 

 termarried with this tribe and the Alabama, becoming gradually 

 lost as a distinct people. 



Taensa population. — In 1682 Tonti estimates that they had more 

 than 700 warriors, but in 1699 De Montigny gave this as their total 

 population, which corresponds rather well with Iberville's figures of 

 120 cabins and 300 warriors. A year later St. Cosme reduces the 

 former figure to 40 and La Harpe gives us 250 warriors in 1700. 

 In 1702 Iberville revised his estimate to 150 families. Du Pratz, 

 speaking of the tribe after it had removed to Mobile, estimates that 

 they had 100 cabins. In 1764 D'Abbadie, the Louisiana Governor, 

 states that the Taensa, Apalachee, and Pakana Creeks together to- 

 talled 200, and finally Sibley gives 25 as the number of Taensa 

 warriors in 1805. Mooney estimated that the Taensa and some 

 minor bodies of Indians had a combined population of 800 in 1650; 

 my own figure for the Taensa alone is 800-900. 



TAMATHLI (TAMALI) 



It is probable that this is the Toa, Otoa, or Toalli found by De Soto 

 near Flint River in 1540, and they may also have been connected with 

 the Altamaha division of the Yamasee, who were then living be- 

 tween the Ocmulgee and Oconee and whose name appears in the 

 form Tama in some later documents. Tomatly is given also as one 

 of the towns of the Upper Yamasee. Possibly they were a division 

 of the same people and if so would probably be represented in the 

 occupants of a mission in the neighborhood of the Apalachee, which 

 makes its appearance in a list dated 1680 under the name Nuestra 

 Sefiora de la Candelaria de la Tama and is called a "new conversion." 

 On the De Crenay map of 1733, this town is placed on the west side 

 of Chattahoochee River below all of the other Lower Creek towns, 

 and the same position is given it in a Spanish census of 1738, though 

 the town here is called Old Tamathli, and "Tamaxle nuevo" is the 

 northernmost of the Lower Creek towns. As I have indicated else- 

 where (p. 180), this last may have belonged in reality to the Sawokli. 

 The enumeration of 1750 seems to indicate a point higher up the river, 

 but it is evident that they soon gravitated again toward Florida, 

 and Hawkins tells us that they were one of those tribes which con- 

 stituted the Seminole nation in his time (1799). There are refer- 

 ences to the town or tribe as late as 1822, when it apears to have 

 been on Apalachicola River, but it was probably swallowed up soon 

 afterward in the Mikasuki band of Seminole. 



It should be added that there are two occurrences of the name in 

 the Cherokee country, one preserved in the name Tomatola, in 



