From Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who makes a special study of all the Dakota tribes, I obtained the following oral information, founded on his personal intercourse with individuals of the Káppa tribe:
"Ákansa is the Algonkin name by which the Kápa, Quápa were called by the eastern Indians, as Illinois, etc. They call themselves Ugáχpa and once lived in four villages, two of which were on Mississippi, two on Arkansas river, near its mouth: Their towns, though now transferred to the Indian Territory, northeastern angle, have preserved the same names:
"1. Ugaχpáχti or 'real Kápa.' Ugáχpa means 'down stream,' just as O′maha means 'up stream.'
"2. Tiwadímaⁿ, called Toriman by French authors.
"3. Uzutiúhe, corrupted into O′sotchoue, O′sochi, Southois by the French authors. Probably means: 'village upon low-land level.'
"4. Taⁿwaⁿzhika or 'small village;' corrupted into Topinga, Tonginga, Donginga by the French.
"The Pacaha 'province' of de Soto's historians is a name inverted from Capaha, which is Ugáχpa. The form Quápa is incorrect, for Kápa (or Kápaha of La Salle), which is abbreviated from Ugáχpa."
In 1721 LaHarpe saw three of their villages on the Mississippi river, and noticed snake worship among these Indians.
TAENSA.
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 15½ leagues, and in the air-line, 11¼ 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."