BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY


possessions. They are their natural enemies, and the Tchaktas are afraid of
them.
 The proposed location must have been occupied for a very short
period, if at all, by the Tainsa, for Hutchins, who ascended the Mis-
sissippi in 1784, and speaks particularly of the tribes on Bayou la
Fourche, as well as those on the Mississippi, says nothing of them."
Moreover, Sibley, writing in 1805, states they had then been on Red
river about forty years." They were living beside the Apalachee and
between Bayou d'Arro and Bayou Jean de Jean, their village stand-
ing at the head of a turn.c Subsequently both tribes sold their lands
to Colonel Fulton and William Miller and moved 25 miles south to
Bayou Boeuf.4 Later still they parted with this land also and, while
these sales involved considerable litigation at the time, they' were
finally confirmed.
 From this time on the Taensa disappear from written records, but
on a recent visit to Louisiana, in 1907, the writer learned several par-
ticulars concerning their subsequent history. It appears that some
time after the sales above mentioned the Tainsa remnant moved south
to a small bayou at the northern end of Grand lake, still known on
the local maps as Taensa bayou, and lived near it for a considerable
period. They were then on terms of intimacy with the Chitimacha,
Atakapa, and Alibamu, with whom they intermarried to some extent.,
and the father of the oldest woman in the Chitimacha tribe at the
present day was a Taensa. Whether the Taensa proper died out,
scattered, or moved away, is not known, though the Chitimacha chief
remembers some rumor of a quarrel which resulted in the separation
of the hitherto friendly peoples. There are now no Indians on the
bayou just mentioned.
 THTT AVOYEL

 Avoyel perhaps means People of the Rocks."e Nearly every-
 thing that is known of the tribe has been given in treating of their
 relationship. As there stated, they were probably a small branch of
 the Natchez, separated on account of internal disturbances. Iberville,
 in 1699, was given Tassenocogoula,f the Mobilian name of this tribe,
 as a name for Red river, and in 1700 lie met about 40 Avoyel war-
 riors, whom he speaks of as little Tainsas." St. Denis met them
 in 1714, when on his way to Mexico, and P6nicaut, who accompanied
 him, calls them Tassenogoula (or Toux Enongogoula)," which he
 Hutchins. List. Narr.. 38-45.
 "Ann. Oth Cong., 10S7, 1852.
 r Amer. State Papers, Public Lands, II, 796.
 Amer. State Papers, i, 218.
 See p. 25.
 I Margry, I)ecouvertes, Iv, 178-179, 1880.
 v Ibid., 408-409.


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