BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY


and which formed a village with the Baiougoula as the Pioiiarolia do with
the Kaskaskia. The blood of so many innocent persons cries vengeance and
God begins to punish them by famine and sickness, and they must be in fear
lest the Houmnas and Kolapissas avenge the murder of all their allies. I never
saw anything so beggarly. I know some words of their language; but as more
than two-thirds were absent from their village, whence they hl:d been driven
by hunger, I remained only four days. They promised to rebuild the chapel
and do all that I asked, but unless the chief is very far from there, there is
not much for a missionary to do.a
 About five years afterward (i. e., in 1706)b the judgment which
 Gravier believed this tribe deserved fell upon them. This was their
 massacre by the Tainsa, spoken of in treating that tribe (p. 270).
 The Bayogoula remnant fled to the neighborhood of the new
 French fort below New Orleans and were given a place by Bienville
 within two gunshots, where they made a new settlement.e The spring
.following they took part in St. Denis's expedition against the Chiti-
macha to avenge the death of St. Cosme, furnishing 20 warriors,"
but we hear nothing more regarding them for several years.
 Indeed, Charlevoix, who passed the site of their old village in 1721,
 says:
 The smallpox has destroyed a part of its inhabitants, the rest are gone away
 and dispersed. They have not so much as even heard any news of them for
 several years, and it is doubtful whether there is a single family remaining.,
 As in so many other cases, however, the trouble was that the rever-
 end father did not look in the right place.
 In.1739 Bienville was assembling all the troops at his disposal for
 a finishing blow against the Chickasaw, a blow that ended in a fiasco.
 An officer of the troops under M. de Nouaille which ascended the
 Mississippi in September to the point of rendezvous has left an inter-
 esting journal, however, translated in Claiborne's History of Mis-
 sissippi, from which we cull the following important information:
 On the 5th [of September, 1739], at daybreak, we decamped and dined that
 day at the Colapissas village [which was then 5 or 6 miles above a settlement
 of Germans]. We sailed at 1 o'clock and proceeded on our way to stop among
 the Bayagoulas, distant from the former about 0 miles on the right bank.
 On the 6th instant, we started at sunrise and dined at the first settlements
 of the Houmas, a distance of 4 leagues from the Bayagoulas. Thence we set
 out and slept at a small French habitation 1 league distant on the left
 bank. *
 On the 7th of September we decamped at daybreak, and at 9 o'clock arrived
 at the headquarters of the Houmas, where we procured 20 barrels of vege-
 tables. *
 The Houmas, Bayagoulas, and Colapissas are but one and the same nation
 in different settlements, and may be all classified as Colapissas, the first two
 a Shea's Early Voy. Miss., 150-151, 1861; Jes. Rel., LXV, 156-159.
 Pnieaut says 1702; as usual, erroneously.
 SPenicaut in Margry, Drcouvertes, v, 431, 1883.
 d La Harpe, Jour. Hist., 102, 1831.
 SFrench, Hist. Coll. La., 176, 1851.


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