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.
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]
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.
II. THE SOUTHERN TAENSA.
In early colonial times a portion of the Northern Taensa, driven from their homes on the Taensa river by the rage of the Chicasa, fled to the Mobilians. The French settled them on the western side of Mobile bay, below Fort St. Louis, and thirty miles above Fort Condé, which stood on the site of the present city of Mobile.[24] The French called them "les petits Taënsas" in contradistinction to the "great (or northern) Taënsas," on Mississippi and Taensa rivers. About the middle of the eighteenth century one hundred of their cabins stood north of the French fort St. Louis, and also north of the Tohome Indian settlement. The Taensa were then speaking their native language and, besides this, a corrupt Chicasa dialect, called the Mobilian language by the French.[25] Subsequently they must have removed from there to the eastern channel, for Bartram, Travels, pp. 401. 403, describes Taensa there as a "pretty high bluff, on the eastern channel of the great Mobile river, about thirty miles above Fort Condé, or city of Mobile, at the head of the bay ... with many artificial mounds of earth and other ruins." During the wars of 1813-15 the adjacent country is called the "Tensaw country."