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PREHISTORIC LOUISIANA INDIANS

According to anthropologists there have been people in Louisiana for at least 12,000 years. They probably migrated from the northern United States in search of game as more and more of the northern areas fell under sheets of advancing ice. Louisiana was much cooler and the plant-life very different from modern times.

These early men hunted bison, mastodon, camels, and horses with simple spears made by attaching a sharpened rock flake to the end of a spear. They were the true pioneers of this state. They came here without benefit of guides to show them the best hunting farm lands.

The large animals gradually became extinct as the glaciers melted, the climate grew warmer, and the plant life changed. The native Louisianians were forced by necessity to hunt smaller animals and to supplement their diet with shellfish. The people of the Archaic Period moved from place to place leaving behind huge mounds of discarded shells which eventually increased the elevation of area and reduced flooding. During this period they developed such tools as spear--throwers, knives, scrapers, drills, and darts.

In northeastern Louisiana, near Epps, is an ancient village site called Poverty Point. It contains a unique bird effigy mound and a large geometrical village. Houses of palmetto were built on ridges of earth arranged in an octagon east of the 600 foot long and 70 foot high bird mound.

Since they did not have clay pottery, food was cooked by placing it in an earthen pit lined with hot baked clay balls. Tools, called micro-flints, were made from stone slivers to open shellfish, nuts, and seeds.

There are also indications of developing trade with other areas.

In coastal Louisiana much of the old Archaic tradition of shellfish gathering, augmented by hunting, continued long after the Poverty Point culture was 1,000 years old. About 200 BC crude pottery was added to the basic Archaic Culture on the coast and around Lake Ponchartrain. They continued to eat shellfish, supplemented with small game and wild plants. They lived on shell middens in circular houses made from poles and thatch.

The development of agriculture during this period freed the early Louisianians from daily hunting and food gathering which allowed them time for more religious and recreational activities. They began making fine pottery and flint projectile points for ceremonial and burial purposes rather than for purely utilitarian uses.

They continued building earthen mounds and added rather elaborate burial practices by placing the deceased in the mound with pottery and recreational items such as chunkey stones. Some of these burial artifacts were made from materials from as far away as Yellowstone Park and marine shells from the Gulf. Their artifacts included copper items.

This was basically a continuation of the Marksville Period. Mound building became more advanced with a shift toward large flat topped pyramidal mounds as foundations for temples. These were probably used for sacred and ceremonial activities. The burial mounds continued to be built in conical shapes.

Agriculture improvements included clearing fields by slashing the trees and burning them in the fields to provide fertilizer for crops. Bows and arrows were used for the first time which increased their hunting successes. With these improvements came larger populations as the people developed methods for feeding their growing numbers.

It also meant time for improving the art of pottery making. Archaeologists are able to tell the tribe and with whom they traded by examining the styles of decoration and the lines incised on the pottery.

Maize agriculture was important during this period. Villages were located on bluffs and terraces near large streams and rivers to utilize the rich alluvial bottom land for farming and water for the villagers.

Rectangular shaped houses were built by digging trenches 12-18 inches wide and as deep. Poles 6 inches or smaller were set upright in the trench and earth was packed around them until the trench was filled. Sometimes rocks or horizontal logs were laid in the trench to brace the upright poles. The spaces between the rows of upright poles were intertwined and woven with vines and mud smeared over the entire structure. When the first Europeans came to Louisiana this type of house was very common among the Indians.

The houses were usually arranged in small clusters around several large mounds which surrounded a central plaza. The plaza was used primarily for ceremonies. The famous Emerald Mound near Natchez, said to be the second largest prehistoric man-made object in the United States, is a nearby example of such a village arrangement.

Trade routes with other Indians in the Southwest and Mexico increased and cultural diffusion was extensive. Trade with the first Europeans began during the 16th century.

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.

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 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

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.

In 1760 Skunnemoke sold the land on which his village stood along with a wide strip between Bayou Teche and Vermillion village, the group did not abandon their site until the early 19th century. Other lands of the Atakapa were steadily sold and the villages moved and combined to survive the advance of the Europeans.

In 1787 the principle Atakapa village was at the "Island of Woods" later known as the "Island Lacasine". It was abandoned about 1799 when they moved to a village on the Mermentau. This was the last village of the Eastern Atakapa and is said to have been occupied as late as 1836. Some of the Indians united with the Western Atakapa around Lake Charles, but others scattered as far as Oklahoma. The last village of the Western Atakapa was on "Indian Lake", later called "Lake Prein", which was occupied until after the middle of the 19th century.

In 1885 a considerable vocabulary of Atakapa was gathered from two women living in Lake Charles who had belonged to this last Atakapa town. A later survey disclosed a few former residents of the old town were still living in 1907-1908 but, by 1942 all known villagers of the last Atakapa town were dead.

Probably a divergent group of Atakapa. They lived in the vicinity of the present city of Opelousas and acted as middlemen in trade between other Indians in the South. They bought fish from the Chitimacha and Atakapa which they exchanged for flints from the Avoyels. Some of these flints were passed on to the Karankawas from the Texas coast for globular or conical oil jugs. They traded such items as Caddo pottery, Texas pots, stone beads, arrow points and salt along routes from the interior of Texas to the coast and inland through Caddo country in northern Louisiana and onward through Arkansas.

The last representatives of this tribe apparently joined the Atakapa to whom they were probably related.

CHITIMACHA

The Chitimacha are the only Louisiana Indians known to currently live in the vicinity of their ancestral homelands. It is evident they were one of the largest tribes in Louisiana. Their large population was probably the result of a favorable environment which provided an abundant food supply of plants, animals and marine life without the necessity of extensive hunting or fishing expeditions, or the necessity to periodically abandon their village sites for lack of food. The men did the hunting and fishing.

Although the women planted such crops as maize and sweet potatoes, many of their foods grew wild. Foods such as beans, wild potatoes, pond lily seeds, palmetto grains, rhizoma of common sagittaria and large leaf sagittaria, persimmons, strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, white berries, many kinds of tree fruits, pumpkins, and several others grew close to their villages.

The Chitimacha inhabited two groups of villages. One group was located along the upper reaches of Bayou Lafourche near the Mississippi River while the other group was located on Grand Lake and the Bayou Teche area. These areas consist of many bayous and swamps which were easy to protect.

They made their houses from poles covered with palmetto leaves on the roofs and walls. All the necessary building materials were readily available and easily replaced when damaged or destroyed by storms and hurricanes.

Women exerted strong influence in the tribe's affairs because important political positions were available to them. Usually the men controlled the governmental offices, however if a chief died his widow could assume his responsibilities if she were a capable leader. Women could also work as medicine men. Only the leadership of religious affairs was denied them.

The political system was run by a group of powerful men. One head chief controlled the affairs of the entire confederation, with sub-chiefs governing the outlying villages. These leaders inherited their offices, lived in large homes, and carried heavily decorated peacepipes to all ceremonies and social affairs as reminders of their importance. They ruled by personal edicts, which were enforced by sub-administrators appointed especially for that purpose. They maintained groups of warriors to protect them, and to defend their villages against raids by neighboring tribes.

The head chief, sub-chiefs, sub-administrators and war leaders were entrenched by the rules of a rigidly stratified society. The Chitimacha were the only southeastern tribe with a true caste system. The leaders and their respective families comprised the "noble class"; all others belonged to the "commoner" class. Noblemen addressed commoners in popular language, but commoners spoke to noblemen only in terms that were used solely for that purpose. With rare exceptions, noblemen married only noblemen because the husband joined the clan of the wife, therefore he would become a commoner. A nobleman was inclined to remain unwed if no woman of his class was free to marry.

Religious affairs were controlled by Holy Men . Holy Men were in charge of the sacred ceremonies of their respective clans. They had the responsibility of perpetuating the ancient parables and stories of miraculous events which embodied the moral codes of their villages, and which contained beliefs concerning man's kinship to nature and to nature's creatures.

The Chitimacha men wore long hair, weighted with pieces of lead to hold their heads erect. They wore necklaces, bracelets and rings made of copper, gold and silver. Women wore their hair in braids, used makeup of red and white dyes, and wore bracelets, earrings and finger rings.

Their aesthetic appreciation is revealed in their manufacture of objects from shells and stones and in their excellent baskets. Basket-makers gathered swamp cane, split it into strands then dyed it either black or yellow or red, and let it dry. When the strands were completely dry they wove them into baskets in two layers, in such a way as to produce symbolic designs on the exterior walls. Their first contact with Europeans in 1699. Between 1701 and 1705 war broke out after a party of French soldiers reinforced by Acolapissa and Natchitoches Indians took twenty Chitimacha women and children prisoner. In retaliation, Chitimacha warriors killed French missionary, St. Cosme, and his 3 companions in a battle near the Mississippi River. When news of the incident reached New Orleans the governor of the new French colony declared war.

When peace finally came thirteen years later many Chitimacha had been killed, displaced, or enslaved. This mighty Chitimacha nation was not only reduced in population; it had lost its power and political importance among the southern Louisiana tribes.

In 1762 another important milestone in Chitimacha history occurred. The Acadians from Nova Scotia began to arrive at New Orleans and move out along the bayous to escape persecution from British colonial authorities. These cajun French people married Chitimachas and within a century full bloods became scarce. The Chitimachas began to speak "cajun French" instead of their own language. Many converted to the Roman Catholic religion.

In 1905 the Chitimacha fought a court battle to retain the last 505 acres of their once vast territory. An out of court settlement was made and they were given title to 280.36 acres of the disputed tract. This too was almost lost when the attorney in the litigation presented them a bill plus interest almost a decade later. However, Miss Sarah Avery McIlhenney, a wealthy philanthropist intervened and purchased the judgement on the land for 50. She agreed to assign ownership to the United States government on behalf of the Chitimacha, therefore preventing the loss of the last of their land.

In response to Miss McIlhenney's efforts government officials took an interest in the Chitimacha affairs for the first time. On May 8, 1916, Congress placed the land in trust for the benefit of the tribe and established a roll of all known living members. Only 60 members were named. However, they did not receive any actual government assistance until a reservation school was established in 1934.

Until the 1940's they still relied upon traditional occupations because there were few job opportunities near the reservations. Many Chitimacha shuttled back and forth between the reservation and area lakes where fishing was good, while others lived out on the lakes. It took all day to get to the outlying lakes from the reservations in their "push-skiff" or pirogue.

World War II marked a general turning point in tribal history as returning war veterans infused the tribe with new ideas, enthusiasm and a desire to insure tribal identity for the future. On November 28, 1946 Chief Earnest Darden resigned as chief and urged the tribe to appoint someone to engineer the formation of a constitutional form of government, thus ending the traditional chief-type of rule that had existed since prehistoric times.

Through the years there were many obstacles to obtaining the education necessary for the Chitimacha to secure well paying jobs. Until recently those desiring a high school education had to attend the Haskell High School in Kansas. Since few tribesmen could afford to send their children to Kansas for a high school degree a cycle of low education and low paying jobs continued.

After World War II several Chitimachas began working in the oil industry on "in-shore" drilling crews and more were working "off-shore" operations by the early 1950's. Their success soon attracted others to more middle income jobs and today there are Chitimacha working as mechanics, plant workers, carpenters, mental health directors, community health representatives and administrators and other such professions.

On January 14, 1971 the Chitimachas became members of the first organized tribe in the state of Louisiana to be recognized by the United States government.

They were also one of the founding members of the Inter-Tribal Council in May, 1975 and have continued to play an important role in the agency.

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