Chapter III: The Tangipahoa

A third tribe, which may have stood in some connection with the two tribes above, are the _Tangipahoa Indians_ settled in various places east of New Orleans, especially on Tangipahoa river, in southeastern Louisiana. A French author states that they formed one of the seven villages of the Acolapissa. The name is written in different ways, and is interpreted by Gov. Allen Wright as "those who gather maize stalks," from táⁿdshe _maize_; ápi _stalk, cob_; áyua _they gather_. Pénicaut defines the name differently, for he states (Margry V, 387) "we found (northwest of Lake Pontchartrain) a river, Tandgepao, which in the Indian signifies '_bled blanc_.'" The Taensapaoa tribe, on the river of the same name, is referred to in Bartram, Travels, p. 422; cf. p. 423. We have no notice concerning the language spoken by this tribe, which was, perhaps, incorporated into the Cha'hta living now around New Orleans; thus we are unable to decide whether they spoke Cha'hta, like the other Acolapissa, or another tongue. The Tangibao tribe was "destroyed by the Oumas," as stated in a passage of Margry (IV, 168); by which is meant, that they were scattered and their tribal connection disrupted.

NAKTCHE.

Of the Lower Mississippi tribes the most powerful and populous was that of the Naktche, settled at the beginning of the eighteenth century in nine villages on and about St. Catherine creek (Lúkfi-ákula in Cha'hta: "_clay-digging place_," to daub houses with), in a beautiful and fertile country. This stream wends its way first south, then west, in a semi-circular course, around the present city of Natchez, Mississippi, and runs at an average distance of three to four miles from it. Other Naktche villages existed in its vicinity.

Náktche is the correct form of the tribal name, though this people appears to have called itself by some other appellation. Natchez is the old-fashioned plural adopted from French orthography; we might just as well write Iroquoiz, Islinoiz or Adayez, instead of the terminal -s now designating the plural in French. The Cheroki Indians call a Nache, Natche or Náktche person A′noχtse, A′nnoχtse, the people or tribe Anínoχtse, shortened into Ani`htse, which proves that a guttural has been elided from the present form of the name. Isalakti, from whom Albert Gallatin obtained a vocabulary of the language, called himself a Nahktse, not a Natche chief.

The name is of Shetimasha origin, I have reasons to assume. Náksh in that language means _one that is in a hurry, one running_, náksh así,[26] abbrev. náksh _warrior_; and the earliest French explorers may have heard that name from the Shetimasha Indians settled on the Mississippi, where Bayou Lafourche, also called the river of the Shetimasha, branches off from it. Should the name belong to the Chicasa trade language, we might think of the Cha'hta adverb: naksika _aside, away from_, referring to the site of the Naktche villages at some distance from the great "water-road," the Mississippi river.

[Footnote 26: Literally, "a hurrying man." In the sign language
of the Mississippi plains, the sign for _fighting_ or _battle_
is the same as for _riding a horse_.]

The Naktche tribe owes its celebrity and almost romantic fame to several causes: their towns were populous, the government more centralized than that of the surrounding native populations; the French settled in their vicinity, and hence their authors have left to posterity more information concerning their confederacy than concerning other tribes; their stubborn resistance to French encroachments gave them a high reputation for bravery; their religious customs, centering in a highly developed sun-worship, made of them an object of curious interest and far-going ethnologic speculation for the white colonists, whose views on the Naktche we must receive with the utmost caution.

L. d'Iberville reports, that at the time of his visit (March 1699) the villages of the Naktche made up _one town_ only, and formed a complex of contiguous villages called Théloël or Thécoël[27] (Margry IV, 179).

[Footnote 27: The handwriting of this name is indistinct, but in
the sequel, wherever this name is mentioned, Margry prints it
Théloël. There can scarcely be any doubt of its identity with
Thoucoue, the seventh village in the list.]

The annalist Pénicaut, who visited these parts in 1704, states that the nine villages were situated in a delightful country, swarming with buffaloes, drained by rivulets and partly wooded. The village or residence of the head chief, _the Sun_, lay one league from the Mississippi river, and three other villages were on a brook, at a distance of half a league from each other. He alludes to their human sacrifices, the frequency of infanticide, and gives descriptions of their temple, perpetual fire, their "_marche des cadavres_" and articles of dress. The house of the Sun was large enough to contain four thousand persons; he had female servants called _oulchil tichon_, and thirty male attendants ("laquais") or _loüés_, the Allouez of other chroniclers. Mother-right prevailed among them (Margry V, 444-456).

The Taensa guide, who accompanied d'Iberville to the Naktche tribe in 1699, furnished him a list of the nine villages, their names being given in the Chicasa trade language. I presume that they are given in the topographical order as they followed each other on St. Catharine creek, from its mouth upward, since the "Nachés" village or residence of the Sun was distant one league only from the Mississippi river. We are not acquainted with the names given to these villages in the Naktche language. The etymologies of the Cha'hta language were obtained from Allen Wright; the suffixed word -ougoula is the Cha'hta ókla _people, tribe_.

1. Nachés;

2. Pochougoula; "_pond-lily people_," from Cha'hta pántchi
_pond lily_.

3. Ousagoucoulas; "_hickory people_," from Cha'hta û′ssak,
óssak _hickory_.

4. Cogoucoulas; "_swan people_," from ókok _swan_.

5. Yatanocas;

6. Ymacachas; almost homonymous with the Arkansas village
Imahao, mentioned above.

7. Thoucoue; probably identical with Théloël (cf. above) and
the Thioux of later authors.

8. Tougoulas; "_wood_ or _forest people_" from iti _wood_.

9. Achougoulas; "_pipe people_," from ashunga _pipe_,
literally, "the thing they smoke from;" cf. shúngali _I
smoke from_.

Although these names are considerably frenchified in their orthography, the meaning of some admits of no doubt. When I visited Natchez city in January 1882, I was informed that the White Apple village, called Apilua (Vpelois) and mentioned by Le Page du Pratz, is supposed to have existed twelve to fifteen miles southeast of the city. The White Earth village and the village of the Meal were other settlements of theirs. Owing to incessant rains, I could not explore the sites to their full extent, but found a flat mound south of St. Catharine's creek, with a diameter of thirty-two feet and perfectly circular, which lay at the same distance from the Mississippi as given above for the residence of the Sun. Col. J. F. H. Claiborne's _History of Mississippi_, vol. I, 40-47, gives valuable extracts from French archives, pointing to the real sites of the Naktche habitations. The colossal mound of Seltzer-town stands but a short distance from the creek alluded to, and is fourteen miles from Natchez city to the northeast.

The settlement of the French on the heights of Natchez, the growing animosity of the natives against the intruders, the three successive wars, the massacre of the colonists in November, 1729, and the final dispersion of the tribe in February 1730, are well-known historic facts and need not be repeated in this volume. The disorganized warriors retreated with their families to different parts of the country. One party fled across Mississippi river to some locality near Trinity City, La., where they entrenched themselves, but were attacked, defeated and partly captured by a body of French troops two years later. Another party reached the Chicasa country and was granted a home and protection by that tribe; but the revengeful French colonists declared war upon the hospitable Chicasa for sheltering their mortal enemies, and invaded their lands by way of the Yazoo river in 1736, but were compelled to retreat after suffering considerable loss. Fort Tombigbee, constructed in 1735, served as a second base for the French operations. Further French-Chicasa wars occurred in 1739-40 and in 1748.[28]

[Footnote 28: Cf. Adair, History, p. 354 sqq. On Fort Tombigbee,
_ibid._, pp. 285, 291.]

Later on, we find their remnants among the Creeks, who had provided them with seats on Upper Coosa river, and incorporated them into their confederacy. They built a village called Naktche, and a part of them went to reside in the neighboring Abikúdshi town. Naktche town lay, in B. Hawkins' time (1799), on a creek of the same name, joining Coosa river sixty miles above its confluence with Tallapoosa river, and harbored from fifty to one hundred warriors (Hawkins, p. 42). A number of Naktche families, speaking their paternal language, now live in the hilly parts of the Cheroki Nation, Indian Territory.

A body of Indians, called by French and English writers Thioux and Grigras, remained in the vicinity of the Natchez colony after the departure of the Naktche Indians, who had been the ruling tribe of the confederacy. It is doubtful whether these two divisions were of foreign or of Naktche origin, though the latter seems improbable. The Grigras were called so on account of a peculiarity in their pronunciation; it probably referred to what the French call _grasseyer_, and the Canadian French _parler gras_.[29] Eleven Sháwano were once brought to the villages as captives, and were known there as "Stinkards," "Puants," terms which served to interpret the Naktche term métsmetskop _miserable, bad, wretched, inferior_.

[Footnote 29: It is stated that the Thioux were a small body of
Indians, reduced in numbers by the Chicasa, and then
incorporated by the Naktche; their language possessed the sound
R. If this latter statement is true, their language was neither
of the Naktche nor of the Maskoki or Dakota family. In
conversation the Grigras often used this word _grigra_, which
also implies the use of the articulation R. Cf. Le Page du
Pratz, IV, chap, ii, sect. 1; Jefferys, French Dom. in America,
p. 162, and what is said of the Sháwano under Yuchi, p.]

The scanty vocabularies which we possess of the Naktche language contain a sprinkling of foreign terms adopted from the Chicasa or Mobilian. Two languages at least were spoken before 1730 in the Naktche villages; the Naktche by the ruling class or tribe; the other, the Chicasa or trade language by the "low people;" and hence the mixture referred to. Du Pratz gives specimens of both. Naktche is a vocalic language, rich in verbal forms, and, to judge from a few specimens, polysynthetic to a considerable degree in its affixes.

TONICA.

Migratory dispositions seem to have inhered to the Tonica or Tunica tribe in a higher degree than to their southern neighbors, for in the short lapse of two centuries we see them stationed at more than three places.

In a letter addressed by Commander Lemoyne d'Iberville to the Minister of the French Navy, dated from Bayogoulas, February 26th, 1700, he states that an English fur-trader and Indian slave-jobber had just visited the Tonica, who are on a river emptying into the Mississippi, twenty leagues above the Taensa Indians, at some distance from the Chicasa, and 170 leagues from the Gulf of Mexico. When d'Iberville ascended the Yazoo river in the same year, he found a village of this tribe on its right (or western) bank, four days' travel from the Natchez landing. Seven villages were seen upon this river, which is navigable for sixty leagues. The Tonica village, the lowest of them, was two days' travel from Thysia, the uppermost (Margry IV, 180. 362. 398; V, 401). La Harpe mentions the establishment of a mission house among the Tonica on Yazoo river.[30]

[Footnote 30: French, Hist. Coll. III, 16; cf. Margry V, 525.
The names of these villages to be given under Chicasa, q. v.]

In 1706, when expecting to become involved in a conflict with the Chicasa and Alibamu Indians, the Tonica tribe, or a part of it, fled southward to the towns of the Huma, and massacred a number of these near the site where New Orleans was built afterwards (French, Hist. Coll. of La., III, 35). The "Tunica Old Fields" lay in Tunica county, Mississippi State, opposite Helena, Arkansas. Cf. Cha'hta.

They subsequently lived at the Tonica Bluffs, on the east shore of the Mississippi river, two leagues below the influx of the Red river. T. Jefferys, who in 1761 gave a description of their village and chief's house, states that they had settled on a hill near the "River of the Tunicas," which comes from the Lake of the Tunicas, and that in close vicinity two other villages were existing (Hist. of French Dominions, I, 145-146).[31] Th. Hutchins, Louisiana and West Florida, Phila., 1784, p. 44, locates them a few miles below that spot, opposite Pointe Coupée and ten miles below the Pascagoulas, on Mississippi river. So does also Baudry de Lozières in 1802, who speaks of a population of one hundred and twenty men.

[Footnote 31: This was probably the place where Le Page du Pratz
saw them (about 1720 or 1725): "vis-à-vis de la Rivière Rouge,"
II, 220-221.]

In 1817, a portion of the tribe, if not the whole, had gone up the Red river and settled at Avoyelles, ninety miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. A group of these Indians is now in Calcasieu county, Louisiana, in the neighborhood of Lake Charles City.

A separate chapter has been devoted to this tribe, because there is a strong probability that their language differed entirely from the rest of the Southern tongues. Le Page du Pratz, l.l., in confirming this statement, testifies to the existence of the sound R in their language, which occurs neither in Naktche nor in the Maskoki dialects or Shetimasha (II, 220-221). We possess no vocabulary of it, and even the tribal name belongs to Chicasa: túnnig _post, pillar, support_, probably post of territorial demarcation of their lands on the Yazoo river. The only direct intimation which I possess on that tongue is a correspondence of Alphonse L. Pinart, who saw some Tonica individuals, and inferred from their terms that they _might_ belong to the great Pani stock of the Western plains.

ADÁI.

Of this small and obscure Indian community mention is made much earlier than of all the other tribes hitherto spoken of in this volume, for Cabeça de Vaca, in his _Naufragios_, mentions them among the inland tribes as Atayos. In the list of eight Caddo villages, given by a Taensa guide to L. d'Iberville on his expedition up the Red river (March 1699), they figure as the Natao (Margry IV, 178).

The Adái, Atá-i, Háta-i, Adayes (incorrectly called _Adaize_) seem to have persisted at their ancient home, where they formed a tribe belonging to the Caddo confederacy. Charlevoix (Hist. de la Nouvelle France, ed. Shea VI, p. 24) relates that a Spanish mission was founded among the Adaes in 1715. A Spanish fort existed there, seven leagues west of Natchitoches, as late as the commencement of the nineteenth century. Baudry de Lozières puts their population at one hundred men (1802), and Morse (1822) at thirty, who then passed their days in idleness on the Bayou Pierre of Red river. Even at the present time they are remembered as a former division of the Caddo confederacy, and called Háta-i by the Caddo, who are settled in the southeastern part of the Indian Territory.

A list of about 300 Adái words was gathered in 1802 by Martin Duralde, which proves it to be a vocalic language independent of any other, though a few affinities are traceable with the Pani dialects. The orthography of that vocabulary cannot, however, be fully relied on. The original is in the library of the American Philosophical Society, in Philadelphia. Rob. G. Latham, in his "Opuscula; Essays, chiefly philological," etc., London 1860; pp. 402-404, has compared Adahi words with the corresponding terms of other North American languages, but without arriving at a definite result.

PANI.

The great family of Pani Indians has, in historic times, extended from the Platte river southward to the Gulf of Mexico. From the main stock, the Sanish or Arikari have wandered on their hunting trips north to the Middle Missouri river, while the Pani, in four divisions, had the Platte and its tributaries for their headquarters. The southern tribes are the Witchita, the Towákone or Three Canes, who speak the Witchita dialect, the Kichai and the originally Texan tribes of the Caddo and Waco (Wéko, in Spanish: Hueco.)[32]

[Footnote 32: Cf. R. G. Latham, Opuscula, p. 400, who was the
first to hint at a possible affinity of Caddo to Pani.]

The Pani family was too remote from the Maskoki tribes to enter in direct connection with them. Some of the southern septs had intercourse with them, mainly through the French colonists. Fights between Caddos and Cha'hta are recorded for the eighteenth century. The Pani family is mentioned here simply because the legendary caves from which the Creek nation is said to have sprung lay on Red river, within the limits of the territory held by some of the southern Pani nations.

When L. d'Iberville ascended the western branch of the Red river, now called Red river (the eastern branch being Washita or Black river), in March 1699, he saw and visited eight villages of the Caddo connection. His Taensa guide named them as follows:

Yataché; called Yátassi by Americans.

Nactythos; they are the Natchitoches.

Yesito;

Natao; the Adái above.

Cachaymons;

Cadodaquis; full form, Cado-hadatcho or "_chief tribe_."

Natachés;

Natsytos.

The Cachaymons and the Cadodaquis had been previously visited by Cavelier de la Salle, when returning from the Cenys, in the central parts of Texas.[33]

[Footnote 33: Cf. Margry IV, 178. 313. 409.]

The Caddo confederacy consists of the following divisions or tribes, as given me by a Caddo Indian in 1882:

Kado proper; kádo means _chief, principal_.

Anadáko, Anadāku; also Nandako.

Ainai, Ayenai; also Hini, Inies upon an affluent of Sabine
river; identical with the Tachies (Sibley). From this tribal
name is derived _Texas_, anciently Tachus, Taxus.

Natchidosh, Nashédosh; the Natchitoches.

Yátassi.

Anabaidaítcho, Nabádatsu; the Nabedatches, who are nearly
extinct now.

Nátassi; identical with the Natachés above.

Nakúhĕdōtch, Nakohodótse; the Nagogdoches.

Assine, Assíni; the Asinays of French explorers.

Hadaí; the Adái, Adáye, q. v.

Yowā′ni, now in Texas.

A′-ish; a few of these are now living in Texas, called Alish,
Eyish by former writers.

The Caddo relate, as being the mythical origin of their nation, that they came from a water-sink in Louisiana, went westward, shoved up earth by means of arrow-heads, and thus made a mountain. The totems of their gentes once were, as far as remembered, _bear_ ná-ustse, _panther_ kö′she, _wolf_ tá-isha, _snake_ kíka, _wild-cat_ wadó, _owl_ néa, ó-ush.

When Milfort passed through the Red river country about 1780, the Caddo, whom he describes as fallacious in trading, were at war with the Cha'hta (Mémoire, p. 95).

In 1705 some Colapissa from the Talcatcha river, four leagues from Lake Pontchartrain, settled upon the northern bank of this lake at Castembayouque (now Bayou Castin, at Mandeville), and were joined, six months after, by a party of "Nassitoches," whom famine had driven from their homes on Red river.[34]

[Footnote 34: Pénicaut, in Margry V, 459-462.]

SHETIMASHA.

These natives once dwelt in numerous settlements clustering around Bayou Lafourche, Grand river (or Bayou Atchafalaya), and chiefly around Grand Lake or Lake of the Shetimasha. All that is left of them--about fifty-five Indians, of a parentage strongly mixed with white blood, reside at Charenton, St. Mary's Parish, on the southwestern side of the lake, though a few are scattered through the forests on Grand river. They call themselves _Pántch pínunkansh_, "men altogether red." The name Shetimasha, by which they are generally known, is of Cha'hta origin, and means "they possess (imásha) cooking vessels (tchúti)." Their central place of worship was three miles north of Charenton, on a small inlet of Grand Lake. They worshiped there, by dances and exhaustive fasting, their principal deity, Kút-Nähänsh, the "mid-day sun."

They were not warlike, and never figured prominently in colonial history. When a portion of the tribe, settled on Bayou Lafourche, had murdered Mr. Saint-Cosme, a Naktche missionary descending the Mississippi river in 1703, they were attacked by the colonists and their Indian allies. The war ended with a speedy submission of the savages. They called the Naktche Indians their brothers, and their myths related that their "Great Spirit" created them in the country of that people, and gave them laws, women and tobacco. The Cha'hta tribes, who attempted to deprive them of their native land, made continual forays upon them during the eighteenth century.

These Indians were strict monogamists. The chieftaincy was a life-long office among them. The chiefs lived in lodges larger than those of the common people, and their tobacco pipes were larger than those of the warriors. The foreheads of the children were subjected to the flattening process.[35]

[Footnote 35: Of these Indians I have given an ethnographic
sketch in: Transact. Anthropolog. Society of Washington, 1883,
Vol. II, pp. 148-158.]

Their language is extremely polysynthetic as far as derivation by suffixes is concerned, and there are also a number of prefixes. For the pronouns _thou_ and _ye_ a common and a reverential form are in use. The faculty for forming compound words is considerable, and the numerals show the decimal form of computation.

ATÁKAPA.

To close the list of the linguistic families encircling the Maskoki stock, we mention the Atákapa, a language which has been studied but very imperfectly. This tribe once existed upon the upper Bayou Tèche northwest and west of the Shetimasha, north and northwest of the Opelousa Indians, and from the Tèche extended beyond Vermilion river, perhaps down to the sea coast. The Atákapa of old were a well-made race of excellent hunters, but had, as their name indicates, the reputation of being anthropophagists (Cha'hta: hátak, hattak _person_, ápa _to eat_). At first, they suffered no intrusion of the colonists into their territory and cut off expeditions attempting to penetrate into their seats. During the nineteenth century they retreated toward the Sabine river. The name by which they call themselves is unknown; perhaps it is Skunnemoke, which was the name of one of their villages on Vermilion river, six leagues west of New Iberia. Cf. Th. Hutchins (Phila., 1784).

The scanty vocabulary of their language, taken in 1802, shows clusters of consonants, especially at the end of words, but with its queer, half-Spanish orthography does not appear to form a reliable basis for linguistic conclusions. A few words agree with Tónkawē, the language of a small Texan tribe; and according to tradition, the Karánkawas, once the giant people of Matagorda bay, on the Texan Coast, spoke a dialect of Atákapa. These three tribes were, like all other Texan tribes, reputed to be anthropophagists. In extenuation of this charge, Milfort asserts that they "do not eat men, but roast them only, on account of the cruelties first enacted against their ancestors by the Spaniards" (p. 90). This remark refers to a tribe, also called Atákapas, which he met at a distance of five days' travel west of St. Bernard bay.

We have but few notices of expeditions sent by French colonists to explore the unknown interior of what forms now the State of Louisiana. One of these, consisting of three Frenchmen, was in 1703 directed to explore the tribes about the river de la Madeleine, now Bayou Tèche. The two men who returned reported to have met seven "nations" there; the man they lost was eaten by the natives, and this misfortune prompted them to a speedy departure. The location seems to point to the territory of the Atákapa.[36]

[Footnote 36: Pénicaut, in Margry V, 440.]

The enumeration of the southern linguistic stocks winds up with the Atákapa; but it comprises only the families the existence of which is proved by vocabularies. Tonica and the recently-discovered Taensa furnish the proof that the Gulf States may have harbored, or still harbor, allophylic tribes speaking languages unknown to us. The areas of the southern languages being usually small, they could easily escape discovery, insomuch as the attention of the explorers and colonists was directed more toward ethnography than toward aboriginal linguistics.

The southern tribes which _I suspect_ of speaking or having spoken allophylic languages, are the Bidai, the Koroa, the Westo and Stono Indians.

BIDAI.

Rev. Morse, in his Report to the Government (1822), states that their home is on the western or right side of Trinity river, Texas, sixty-five miles above its mouth, and that they count one hundred and twenty people. In 1850 a small settlement of five or six Bidai families existed on Lower Sabine River.

The Opelousas of Louisiana and the Cances of Texas spoke languages differing from all others around them.[37]

[Footnote 37: American State Papers, I, pp. 722-24.]

KOROA.

The earliest home of this tribe, which figures extensively in French colonial history, is a mountainous tract on the western shore of Mississippi river, eight leagues above the Natchez landing. They were visited there, early in 1682, by the explorer, C. de la Salle, who noticed the compression of their skulls (Margry I, 558. 566). They were a warlike and determined people of hunters. In 1705 a party of them, hired by the French priest Foucault to convey him by water to the Yazoos, murderously dispatched him with two other Frenchmen (Pénicaut, in Margry V, 458). A companion of C. de la Salle (in 1682) noticed that the "language of the Coroa differed from that of the Tinsa and Natché," but that in his opinion their manners and customs were the same (Margry I, 558).

Koroas afterward figure as one of the tribes settled on Yazoo river, formerly called also River of the Chicasa, and are mentioned there by D. Coxe, Carolana (1742), p. 10, as Kourouas. They were then the allies of the Chicasa, but afterward merged in the Cha'hta people, who call them Kólwa, Kúlua. Allen Wright, descended from a grandfather of this tribe, states that the term is neither Cha'hta nor Chicasa, and that the Koroa spoke a language differing entirely from Cha'hta.[38] A place Kolua is now in Coahoma county, probably far distant from the ancient home of this tribe. The origin of the name is unknown; the Cha'hta word: káⁿlo _strong, powerful_, presents some analogy in sound.

[Footnote 38: This is corroborated by the fact that the sound R
did exist in the Koroa language: Jefferys (1761), I, 163.]

THE WESTO AND STONO INDIANS

lived in the vicinity of the English colony at Charleston, South Carolina. Their predatory habits made them particularly troublesome in 1669-1671 and in 1674, when they had to be repulsed by an army of volunteers. The Stonos must have lived north of the colony, or on the upper course of some river, for, in 1674, they are described as "coming down" (Hewat, Histor. Account of S. C. and Ga., London 1779; I, 51. 77). Stono Inlet is the name of a cove near Charleston. Both tribes also met with disastrous reverses at the hands of the Savannah Indians, probably the Yámassi (Archdale). They are both mentioned as having belonged to the Kataba confederacy, but this does not by any means prove that they spoke Kataba or a dialect of it. As to the name, the Westo Indians may be identified with the Oustacs of Lederer (who are reported as being at war with the Usherees), and with the Hostaqua of René de Laudonnière, who mentions them as forming a confederacy under a paracusi in the northern parts of the "Floridian" territory. Possibly the Creek word ō′sta _four_, in the sense of "four allied tribes," has given origin to this tribal name (ostáka in Alibamu).

The affinity of the extinct Congaree Indians, on Congaree river, is doubtful also; Lawson relates that they did not understand the speech of the Waterees and Chicarees. Cf. Kataba. Owing to the inactivity of the local historians, our ethnographic information on the North and South Carolina Indians is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory.

REMARKS TO THE LINGUISTIC MAP.

The linguistic map added to this volume is an attempt to locate, in a general way, the settlements pertaining to the Indians of each of the linguistic stocks of the Gulf States, as far as traceable in the eighteenth century. Some of them, as the Timucua and Yámassi settlements, are taken from dates somewhat earlier, while the location of the Atákapa tribe is known to us only from the first decennium of the nineteenth century. The marking of the linguistic areas by dots, pointing to the tribal settlements, answers much better the purpose than the coloring of large areas, which conveys the erroneous impression that the population was scattered all over a certain country. This will do very well for densely populated countries, or for tracts inhabited by roving, erratic Indians, whom we meet only on the west side of the Mississippi river. The Gulf States' Indians were no longer in the condition of pure hunting tribes; they had settled in stationary villages, and derived the main part of their sustenance from agriculture and fishing.

The location of the Chicasa, Cheroki, Seminole and Caddo (Pani) tribes were not indicated with that completeness which the subject requires. The northwest corner of the map shows the tracts occupied at present in the Indian Territory by tribes of Maskoki lineage.