swANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 315

number of 30 men, they attacked a fleet of English pirogues ascending
the river, and in two, which were in advance of the rest, killed 6
men and wounded 7. whereupon the boats retreated and the expedi-
tion was abandoned. This attack is said to have been provoked by
the refusal of the English to give up a slave who had fled to them.a
 Some time between 1784, when Hutchins ascended the li--.--ippi,
and the annexation of Louisiana to the United States (1803), oc-
curred the final Tunica migration to Marksville prairie on lower
Red river. The reason for this movement is unknown, but Gat-
schet's Tunica informant stated that his people had purchased the
site of their new village from the Avoyel (called in Tunica
Shi;'rhl'l-tT'ni) .b Here they obtained a grant of a small tract of land
where 7 families are still to be found, numbering about 32 persons.
About twenty-three years ago Gatschet heard of some Tunica Indians
near Beanmont, Tex., perhaps the descendants of those mentioned by
Sibley (1805) as having intermarried with the Atakapa," but in 1908
the writer was unable to learn anything about them. Mooney also
reports a small band in the southern part of the Choctaw Nation,
(kla., but states that they did not speak their own language. Plates
1(;, 17, and 1S show some of the present survivors and thie kind of
house they inhabit.
 The arts. sciences, and daily life of the Tunica were evidently
little different from those of the Natchez. Their houses consisted of
the same framework of slender poles covered with palmetto leaves,
corn husks. mnud, grass, anid nats. O() this point La Source says:
 Their houses are made of palisades and earth, and are very large; they make
fire in then only twice a day, and do their cooking outside in earthen pots."
 Gravier says:
 Their cabins are round and vaulted. They are lathed with canes and plas-
tered with lmud from bottom to top, within and without, with a good covering
of straw. There is no light except by the door; it is as hot as a vapor bath.
At night a lighted torch of dried canes serves as a candle and keeps all the
cabin warm. Their bed is of round canes, raised on 4 posts, 3 feet high, and
a canle nmat serves as a mattress. Nothing is neater than their cabins. You
see there neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor hatchets, nor guns; they
carry all with then, and have no riches but earthenware pots. quite well nade,
especially little glazed pitchers, as neat as you would see in France; their gran-
aries are near their cabins, made like dovecotes, built on 4 large posts, 15 or
16 feet high, well put together and well polished, so that the mice can not
climb up, and il this way they protect their corn and squashes."
 Villiers du Terrage. .Ls IDernibres Anndes de La Louisiane Francaise, 182-183.
 The present Tunica chief seems to have confused this occurrence with traditions of lhe
last Nachez war. He said that in moving to Marksville Prairie his people had been opposed
by the Natchez (Shi'xkal-pa'xka, Stone-pilers ") and had been unsuccessful against them
until the Spaniards caile lo their aid.
 See p. 43, note.
 Shea, Early Voy. Miss., 80. 1861.
 E Ibid., 135.