It is not unlikely that these Taensa were identical with the "petits Taënsas" seen by Lemoyne d'Iberville at the Huma town in March 1700, and described by him as migratory, but living most of the time at three days' distance west of Huma, and then warring against the Bayogoulas. They gained their sustenance by hunting, though buffaloes were scarce in their country, and were men of a fine physique (Margry IV, 408). In 1702 they defeated the Bayogoulas and burnt their village on Mississippi river; the Bayogoulas fled to the French fort on that river, then commanded by Mr. St. Denis. If identical with the Taensa on Mobile river, these fights of theirs must have occurred during their passage from the North to the bay of Mobile.
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.
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).
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).