Chitimacha Notebook: Writings of Emile Stouff—A Chitimacha Chief

Edited by Marcia Gaudet
Lafayette Natural History Museum and Planetarium Lafayette, Louisiana 1986
Emile Stouff, Chief of the Chitimachas
Chitimacha Chief Benjamin Paul and the Chitimacha children are pictured with a pirogue near the Chitimacha reservation in Charenton. The little girl is Jane Bernard Wilson, the boy in the center is Arthur Darden, and the boy sitting in the pirogue is Gabriel Darden.
(M.R. Harrington, 1908. Photo courtesy of Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation)
The Regis Darden Chitimacha family. Pictured from left to right are Lucy Mora Darden, Delphine Stouff (in back), Adelle Darden, Gaston Darden, Regis Darden (in back), and Stacy Darden. Adelle Darden, wife of Regis Darden, was known as “Gum DaDa.” Lucy Mora Darden was the wife of Gaston Darden. Chitimacha baskets are pictured in front of the group. Basket weaving is a traditional craft of the Chitimacha Indians.
(M.R. Harrington, 1908. Photo courtesy of Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation)
Emile Stouff was Chief of the Chitimachas of Charenton, Louisiana, from 1948 to 1968. After Chief Stouff died in 1978, his widow, Faye Roger Stouff, discovered two notebooks in which he had recorded some of the things about the Chitimachas that he had learned from oral tradition. The two manuscripts were written in Emile Stouff’s handwriting. Though Chief Stouff had no formal education, Mrs. Stouff, who is not a Native American, taught him to read and write after they were married and she came to live with him on the Chitimacha land.
Mrs. Stouff said that her husband told her he had learned most of the legends, stories, and myths that he knew from an aunt who would sit him down and beat him with a cane to make him listen. She would tell him, “You’ve got to learn this.” Learning the history, religious beliefs, legends, and traditions of the tribe was apparently a very important part of the education and development of the Chitimachas.
There are two separate notebooks with writings by Emile Stouff. One begins with the story of creation and deals with the beliefs of the Chitimachas. The other deals more with the history since the white man came. Previous publications about the Chitimachas have presented parts of the legend about the cypress tree in Lake Dauterive and the legend about the little bird of the Chitimachas. Since Chief Stouff’s version of the history is from the perspective of the Chitimachas, it differs somewhat from previously published accounts. This is particularly evident in a comparison of the Chitimacha account of the murder of St. Cosme with accounts that rely on French historical sources.