After 1,000 years the elaborate burial practices from the Tchefuncte Period were revived and expanded into a “Cult of the Dead”. Great burial mounds were built to contain the dead and their burial artifacts. Many wooden forms of men and animals covered with hammered copper, pottery shaped as human or animal heads, and pottery depicting bones, skulls, rattlesnakes, and “feathered serpents” were placed with the corpse in the mound.
Villages were enclosed by walls of poles plastered with mud. During this period Indian populations decreased significantly. As they decreased and the palisade walls rotted, smaller and smaller compounds were built around the remaining village.
1540-Present
It is not known how many Indians lived in Louisiana, however, archaeological evidence, as well as written accounts by early Spanish and French explorers indicate there were large numbers. From the northern farmlands of the Caddo and Tunica to the southern swamps and bayous of the Chitimacha; from the southwestern prairie of the Atakapa to the eastern hills and rivers of the Natchez and the Muskhogee (Houma) were many tribes who adapted their culture, their lives, and their economy to available products in their segment of Louisiana’s environment. Following is a brief history of the major tribes and those groups which merged with them.
HISTORIC PERIOD
ATAKAPA
Atakapa—
This large group of Indians occupied the prairies of southwestern Louisiana from Bayou Teche to the Sabine River and from Opelousas to the coastal marshes. They were a semi-settled, partially agricultural people occupying a number of favorable villages along waterways; the lower coast of the Calcasieu and around the shores of Calcasieu Lake, lower Mermentau, Grand Lake, along Bayou Plaquemine, along the Vermillion near the present site of Abbeville and a site near the present town of Opelousas.
They were culturally less advanced than their neighbors, however they were more advanced than their reputation as wandering cannibals would lead us to imagine. They had several semi-permanent villages and are known to have participated in trade with other Indians along the Texas coast. They traded fish to the Opelousas for flints and other items they did not manufacture.
Although individuals frequented various French posts with other Indian tribes, it was well into the 18th century that the Atakapa began to feel the influences of the Europeans on their culture. This was probably due in part to the relative isolation of their villages.