SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 297

 THE IBITOUPA

 This name perhaps means People at the source (Ibetap, the
 fountain, source, head"). On a map made by Lieutenant Ross, of
 the Thirty-fourth Regiment, the Oiatoupou are placed on Yazoo
 river some distance above the mouth of the Yalobusha; and below
 the latter, apparently between Abyatche and Chicopa creeks, in the
 present Holmes county, Mi--., is the legend Intient land of the
 Ibitupas." a There can be little doubt that the "Oiatoupou" and
 Ibitupas are the same, and this would indicate that anciently
 they lived below the Yalobusha, but in later times had moved above
 it. If such was the case, this movement must have occurred before
 1722, for in that year La Harpe states that they were 3 leagues above
 the Chakchiuma, who were near the mouth of Yalobusha river.b It
 has been suggested elsewhere that the Choulas," placed by him 25 to
 30 leagues above the lower Yazoo tribes and a short distance below
 the Chakchiuma, may have been a band of Ibitoupa left behind
 temporarily at the time of the migration.c They then numbered but
 40 and are never heard of again, a fact which would tend to
 strengthen this suggestion. The Ibitoupa were only a small tribe
 as far back as 1699," numbered only 6 cabins in 1722,P and they were
 probably united with the Chickasaw soon after the Natchez war,
 though they may first have combined with the Chakchiuma.

 THE WASHA

 The Washa are first mentioned by Iberville as one of four nations
west of the Mississippi which came to make an alliance with him
in 1699, shortly after his arrival on the Louisiana coast.e On his
ascent of the river the same year he encountered two canoes, one
belonging to the Bayogoula, living farther up the river, and the
other (containing five men and a woman) to the Washa. These
latter soon left him to proceed to the village of the Washa, on Bayou
La Fourche.f Bayou La Fourche was called by Iberville's Indian
guide "the river of the Washas," though afterward the French
called it the river (or fork) of the Chitimacha," owing to the
greater prominence of the latter tribe. This name, as well as the
later occupancy of Bayou La Fourche by Chitimacha Indians, has
led Gatschet and other writers to consider that bayou as one of the
 "Jefferys Amer. Atlas, 26, 1776.
 b La IIarpe, Jour. Hist., 311, 1831.
 C Ibid. See p. 30.
 d Compete Reni, Cong. Internat. des Amer., 15th sess., I, 30.
 Me argry, Decouvertes, IV, 155, 1880.
 SIbid., 166, 255.