Chapter I: The Northern Taensa

On account of the recent discovery of their consonantic language, which proves to be disconnected from any other aboriginal tongue spoken in North America, a peculiar interest attaches itself to the tribe of the Taensa Indians, whose cabins stood in Tensas county, Louisiana, bordering east on Mississippi river. The Tensas river, in French _Bayou Tensa_, which joins the Washita river at Trinity City, after forming a prodigious number of bends, and flowing past a multitude of artificial mounds, still keeps up the memory of this extinct tribe.

In March 1700, the French commander L. d'Iberville calculated the distance from the landing of the Natchez to that of the Taensas, following the river, at about 15-1/2 leagues, and in the air-line, 11-1/4 leagues. That Taensa landing, at the foot of a bluff nine hundred feet high (150 _toises_), was about 32°5´ Lat., while d'Iberville, trusting his inaccurate methods of measuring, located it at 32°47´ Lat. (Margry IV, 413).

The tribe occupied seven villages at the time of d'Iberville's visit, which were distant four leagues from the Mississippi river, and grouped around a semi-circular lake, probably _Lake St. Joseph_. One hundred and twenty of these cabins were extending for two leagues on the lake shore, and a "temple" was among them. The missionary Montigny, who visited the locality about the same epoch, estimated the population of that part of the Taensa settlement which he saw at 400 persons. "They were scattered over an area of eight leagues, and their cabins lay along a river."

The seven villages visited by d'Iberville constitute _one town_ only, as he was told. This means to say that they formed a confederacy. A Taensa Indian, who accompanied him, gave their names in the Chicasa trade language, or, as the French called it, the Mobilian jargon (Margry IV, 179).

1. Taënsas; from Cha'hta taⁿdshi _maize_.

2. Ohytoucoulas; perhaps from úti _chestnut_; cf. utápa
_chestnut eater_. For -ougoula, cf. p. 36.

3. Nyhougoulas;

4. Couthaougoulas; from Cha'hta uk'hátaχ _lake_.

5. Conchayon; cf. Cha'hta kónshak _reed, species of cane_.

6. Talaspa; probably from ta`lapi _five_, or ta`lepa _hundred_.

7. Chaoucoula; from Cha'hta issi _deer_, or hátche _river,
water-course_.

In the Taensa Grammar and Vocabulary of Haumonté, Parisot and Adam (Paris, 1882), the name by which the people called itself is Hâstriryini "_warriors, men, tribe_;" cf. p. 91: hâstri _to fight_, _make war_; hâstrir _warrior, man_; hâstriryi _people, tribe_; but Tensagini also occurs in the texts, which would point to an extensive maize culture.

The Taensa were sun worshipers, and had a temple with idols and a perpetual fire. When d'Iberville sojourned among them, lightning struck their temple and destroyed it, upon which the mothers sacrificed their infants, to appease the wrath of the incensed deity, by throwing them into the burning edifice (Margry IV, 414, etc.; V, 398). The people then rubbed their faces and bodies with _earth_. Nothing definite is known about their gentes, phratries and totems. Several French authors represent them as speaking the Naktche language (which is untrue) and as being of the same nation.[22] D'Iberville states that their language differed from that of the Huma tribe.

[Footnote 22: Grammaire et Voc. Taensa, _Introd._, pp. xii. xiv.
Compare also Margry, _Déc. et Etabl._, I, 556-557, 566-568,
600-602, 609-610, 616; IV, 414. Their temple, described by le
Sieur de Tonty (traveling with la Salle in 1682) in French,
Hist. Coll. of La., I, pp. 61. 64.]

The remnants of a tribe called Mosopellea, probably of Illinois-Algonkin origin and previously residing west of the "Isle of Tamaroa," on western shore of Mississippi river, joined the Taensa, and were met there in 1682 by Tonti. They had been almost annihilated by the Iroquois.[23]

[Footnote 23: Margry I, 610. Mosopolea, _ibid._ II, 237;
Monsopela, on the map in D. Coxe, Carolana.]

The Taensa had, at one time, formed an alliance with the Koroa, then on Yazoo river, and another with the Arkansas Indians.

The Taensa grammar speaks of a northern and of a southern, more polished dialect, but does not locate them topographically. The only word of Taensa which I have found to agree with any other language, is ista _eye_; it also occurs in Southern Dakotan dialects.