Chitimacha Notebook: Writings of Emile Stouff—A Chitimacha Chief

by Emile Stouff

HISTORY OF THE CHITIMACHA INDIANS

I will try to write here what I know of the Chitimacha Indians as I know it and what I heard from the old people.

The tribe once lived on Grand Lake from Bayou Portage, as that is where the Sacred tree now stands, to the shell beach here in Charenton. That is where they were living when one day a large boat came up from where the sun rises. It stopped out in the lake a distance from shore. The Indians were amazed at its size and stood on shore looking when some men came ashore to see about coming ashore. Since they did not speak the same language, they were chased back to their ship. (They were Spanish.) Next day they decided to come ashore by force, but the night before the chief consulted the medicine man to find out what should he do. The medicine man took some kind of herbs and burnt them and gathered the ashes and told the chief if he would spread the ashes on the shore line, not one would put the foot on land. So it was done by the chief. They tried, but the warriors held them off as the chief stood on the shell knolls with the ashes in hand throwing bits in the air. They Spaniards were so badly defeated, they went off in their ship. The Chitimacha, thinking they had chased them off for good, forgot about them and again were enjoying life like it was.

Not too many moons later, the Spaniards came back to the Indians on Bayou de Chittamach (known now as Bayou Lafourche) and gathered the Houma Indian which they had defeated and enslaved to fight the Chitimachas. Somehow they came up Bayou Teche and attacked from that side. While they were fighting the Houma Indians, the Spaniards came and landed on the lake side, which is known now as the Shell Beach and attacked from that side. The Chitimacha did not have a chance. Thousands were killed and wounded and nothing to eat. We had to give up.

The enemy told the few remaining Chitimachas, “This is what we will give you. You may remain here on this bayou and live. No harm will come to you, but any Indian caught in the woods or lakeshore will be shot on sight.”

This parcel of land we now hold is the very same place that they were talking about.

We have no record of what happened to the Houmas that survived the war. Perhaps the Spaniards took them home or they remained here and intermixed with us. I do not know.

Hunting along the Bayou Teche was not so very good, so the Indians had to eat whatever they could find such as acorns, wild fruit, and some grass was edible until they could grow some vegetables. Then life became more bearable.

Now that is the way I heard, true or not.

I do know that the Houma Indians were hated by all the old Indians as late as the twenties. Few Houma Indians came over and were not received by the old Indians with the exception of two women. I will cover them later.

After the Spaniards settled, they had their first governor by the name of Galvez. The year 1763, Galvez signed a treaty with the Chitimachas for living so peaceful. He granted them 1100 acres of land on both sides of Bayou Teche.

There is no record I can find how they built the town of Charenton in the middle of the grant. The older Indians did not say what happened from then to the time when Spain sold out to France.

When the Frenchmen came over, they started to take over the land that was donated to the Chitimachas which they claimed the French had bought it all from Spain. The treaty was no more good.

Then the French started killing Indians. The Indians tried to fight back, but were no match for Frenchmen who nearly wiped out the Indians. They killed them like animals, slaughtered, murdered until a few that remained gave up. So the French took them and made slaves out of them, those able to work in the fields. The women were made servants, the young ones taken by the French as concubines. They were forced to lay with the men, as young as ten years old. There were more men than there were Indian women, so one Indian woman would satisfy the lust of five or six Frenchmen.

Then half breeds were born to the Indian women. Some of us still have French names.

There were only about fifty Indians escaped to Plaquemine, Weeks Island, and all about. Some of them came back here and lived pretty peaceful with the French. They populated well.

By that time the Frenchmen decided that the Indian worship of the Great Spirit was wrong. They must forget their way of living and live like the Frenchmen. So they sent a missionary among the Indians to teach them their invisible God. The Indians, ready to believe anything to help their plight, believed what this man was saying. His name was St. Cosmos. He was so pleased with his work, he talked the Chief into letting him take some Indians to meet the General to show him how they had accepted the white God. So the Chief consented to let them go. He took six of the Indian braves and left. It was not known where the French army was located. Anyhow, when they got there the soldiers killed all the Indians. The priest was outdone, so to speak, so he returned to the reservation. When the Chief asked where were his men, the priest told him they were all dead, shot by the French army. The chief was so very angry, he ordered the priest killed and brought back to the French. So be it. When the French woke up the next morning, there was the dead priest. That is when all hell broke loose. The French hunted the Chitimachas down and killed everyone in sight. Some Chitimachas ran and hid all over the woods. Some went to what is now Weeks Island, some got to Plaquemine. There were about fifty Chitimachas remaining on the same land that is now the reservation.

At that time, O’Reilly was governor of Louisiana. He issued a proclamation that the Indians could live there as long as they remained peaceful and that they were on their own and that parcel of land would show as a body of water on the map of Louisiana. This map can be found in the archive of the state Capitol today.

Now about that time, Negro slaves were brought into the South. The white plantation owners brought black slaves and began to let the Indians go as they were not too good at work. So the free Indians had no place to go but back to the Indian reserve with their half breed French and Indian. It was assumed that is how the Chitimachas got their names until today. Some of the ones that had escaped started to come back and some did not. Some remained in Plaquemine where some of them still show the Indian trace. Of course, they are whites today. And that is how we of today are descendants of that bunch of Indians. There is no record of how many there were. We are a small tribe today.

Now there is not much said about the Chief. It seems like they lived without a chief until the late 1700’s when one Chief, Soulier Rouge, seems like he acquired a pair of red shoes. Somehow the French started calling him Soulier Rouge. His first name was Eugene. Nothing was said about his reign. Only when he died, his squaw took over (Euginie) and that is when the land started to disappear. She seems to be one of those Indians that lick white man’s boots just to be with them. It is recorded that she sold Rose Pecot 610 acres for $9.00 per acre and a man by the name of Alex Frere 640 acres of land. The record shows that some of the money was divided among some Indians at $40.00. That is the way it was recorded in the Court House. The names on the record do not jive with any name of the now Chitimachas. Somebody gave her an old Mexican silver crown for a large acreage, but we cannot find out where, but we have the crown. And it is recorded that in 1817 they leased 610 acres of 99 years. That was 168 years ago. It is also recorded that land was sold the same year it was leased—which the sale is no good. Now my lawyer told me that after the lease expires it cannot be re-leased by the same party.

But we Chitimachas are a nation of people that are afraid to venture as we may make the whites mad, and we seem as we do not want that. We have the money to regain that property, but we do not trust lawyers in this vicinity as we think they would work for the white instead of the Indians, which was proven in the period of 1903 to 1910. One white lawyer named George Demerest and one civil engineer named Fusilier contacted the Indians stating that (the agreement with) Soulier Rouge and Alex Dardenne was illegal as they could not read or write, that they could gain all that land back for the Chitimachas. (I think John Paul might have been Chief then.) The Indians had no money, so it was agreed that Demerest would work for part of the land. It would not cost the Indians one penny. So I guess the tribe, thinking that the land was lost anyhow, so whatever they got back would be okay. So it was agreed that Demerest would get 4/9 of the land for the Indians. The legal papers were drawn and signed by both parties. So Demerest took to court in Franklin. As to be expected, he lost the case. So the Indians must have been a little outdone, but they figured the case was closed. But they had signed to give George Demerest 4/9 of the land, win or lose. So Demerest took all of Georgetown.

Fusilier surveyed the land and found that it was three acres short of 4/9, so he came over and started to measure three acres on Uncle Regis’ land. He was stopped by a shotgun pointing at his head and ordered to get off. So he did, and they thought that was the end of it. I can remember that incident. They would laugh when they said Regis was going to shoot Fusilier. But what they did not know was that Demerest took out a lien on the land. The Indians ignored the judgement until 1916, when Demerest foreclosed on the land, which by now included all of the Chitimacha’s land. The lien was to be sold on the courthouse steps. Now Tante MiMi was Chief Ben Paul’s wife. She was in cahoots with one Sarah McIlhenny at Avery Island in a basket trade. Miss Sarah would buy all the baskets the Chitimacha women would make. The basket makers gathered at Tante MiMi’s and decided to write to Miss Sarah and ask her help. Being a very rich woman, they were sure that she would help. She did not say she would or would not. She sent her lawyer to Franklin to pay off the mortgage, and there was no sale. The land belonged to Avery Island. Miss Sarah then made arrangements with Chief Ben Paul to rent the land to some farmers and pay her back, as she did not want the land. She only wanted her money back. So this was done. The chief let some Negro farmers work on share as they had no money to pay rental. Come harvest time, the Chief had a barn full of corn and sweet potatoes and no market. The stuff just stayed there and rotted. He sold some. Up to 1918, he had sold and paid back $600.00, more or less.

In the meantime, McIlhenny lawyers were checking the title of the property and found that the sale was illegal as some of the people had title to the land, and the best thing for her to do was to petition the B.I.A. (Bureau of Indian Affairs) to pay her back and take the land in trust for the Indians. The B.I.A. hired a lawyer in Franklin named C.J. Boatner to transact the deal in which he had all the Indians sign the land over to the government, except some were not available at the time. What the ignorant Indians did not know was that this property was not a reserve any more. They were giving title to the land, and were paying taxes on their property. The then Chief who made the deal with Demerest did not have the authority to sign any deal with anyone. So the government took over some private land which is not lawful. This statement is recorded in the courthouse and can be made available anytime. These records are not in Franklin, as Franklin is twenty miles from here.