The Taensa guide, who accompanied d'Iberville to the Naktche tribe in 1699, furnished him a list of the nine villages, their names being given in the Chicasa trade language. I presume that they are given in the topographical order as they followed each other on St. Catharine creek, from its mouth upward, since the "Nachés" village or residence of the Sun was distant one league only from the Mississippi river. We are not acquainted with the names given to these villages in the Naktche language. The etymologies of the Cha'hta language were obtained from Allen Wright; the suffixed word -ougoula is the Cha'hta ókla people, tribe.
1. Nachés;
2. Pochougoula; "pond-lily people," from Cha'hta pántchi pond lily.
3. Ousagoucoulas; "hickory people," from Cha'hta û′ssak, óssak hickory.
4. Cogoucoulas; "swan people," from ókok swan.
5. Yatanocas;
6. Ymacachas; almost homonymous with the Arkansas village Imahao, mentioned above.
7. Thoucoue; probably identical with Théloël (cf. above) and the Thioux of later authors.
8. Tougoulas; "wood or forest people" from iti wood.
9. Achougoulas; "pipe people," from ashunga pipe, literally, "the thing they smoke from;" cf. shúngali I smoke from.
Although these names are considerably frenchified in their orthography, the meaning of some admits of no doubt. When I visited Natchez city in January 1882, I was informed that the White Apple village, called Apilua (Vpelois) and mentioned by Le Page du Pratz, is supposed to have existed twelve to fifteen miles southeast of the city. The White Earth village and the village of the Meal were other settlements of theirs. Owing to incessant rains, I could not explore the sites to their full extent, but found a flat mound south of St. Catharine's creek, with a diameter of thirty-two feet and perfectly circular, which lay at the same distance from the Mississippi as given above for the residence of the Sun. Col. J. F. H. Claiborne's History of Mississippi, vol. I, 40-47, gives valuable extracts from French archives, pointing to the real sites of the Naktche habitations. The colossal mound of Seltzer-town stands but a short distance from the creek alluded to, and is fourteen miles from Natchez city to the northeast.
The settlement of the French on the heights of Natchez, the growing animosity of the natives against the intruders, the three successive wars, the massacre of the colonists in November, 1729, and the final dispersion of the tribe in February 1730, are well-known historic facts and need not be repeated in this volume. The disorganized warriors retreated with their families to different parts of the country. One party fled across Mississippi river to some locality near Trinity City, La., where they entrenched themselves, but were attacked, defeated and partly captured by a body of French troops two years later. Another party reached the Chicasa country and was granted a home and protection by that tribe; but the revengeful French colonists declared war upon the hospitable Chicasa for sheltering their mortal enemies, and invaded their lands by way of the Yazoo river in 1736, but were compelled to retreat after suffering considerable loss. Fort Tombigbee, constructed in 1735, served as a second base for the French operations. Further French-Chicasa wars occurred in 1739-40 and in 1748.[28]
Later on, we find their remnants among the Creeks, who had provided them with seats on Upper Coosa river, and incorporated them into their confederacy. They built a village called Naktche, and a part of them went to reside in the neighboring Abikúdshi town. Naktche town lay, in B. Hawkins' time (1799), on a creek of the same name, joining Coosa river sixty miles above its confluence with Tallapoosa river, and harbored from fifty to one hundred warriors (Hawkins, p. 42). A number of Naktche families, speaking their paternal language, now live in the hilly parts of the Cheroki Nation, Indian Territory.
A body of Indians, called by French and English writers Thioux and Grigras, remained in the vicinity of the Natchez colony after the departure of the Naktche Indians, who had been the ruling tribe of the confederacy. It is doubtful whether these two divisions were of foreign or of Naktche origin, though the latter seems improbable. The Grigras were called so on account of a peculiarity in their pronunciation; it probably referred to what the French call grasseyer, and the Canadian French parler gras.[29] Eleven Sháwano were once brought to the villages as captives, and were known there as "Stinkards," "Puants," terms which served to interpret the Naktche term métsmetskop miserable, bad, wretched, inferior.
The scanty vocabularies which we possess of the Naktche language contain a sprinkling of foreign terms adopted from the Chicasa or Mobilian. Two languages at least were spoken before 1730 in the Naktche villages; the Naktche by the ruling class or tribe; the other, the Chicasa or trade language by the "low people;" and hence the mixture referred to. Du Pratz gives specimens of both. Naktche is a vocalic language, rich in verbal forms, and, to judge from a few specimens, polysynthetic to a considerable degree in its affixes.
TONICA.
Migratory dispositions seem to have inhered to the Tonica or Tunica tribe in a higher degree than to their southern neighbors, for in the short lapse of two centuries we see them stationed at more than three places.