The Chitimacha ( ;Robert A. Brightman, 2004, "Chitimacha", In: William Sturtevant (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 14: Southeast, p. 642 or Carl Waldman, 2009, Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands in Louisiana. They are a federally recognized tribe, the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.
The Chitimacha have an Indian reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. Their reservation is a small part of their precontact territory. They are the only Louisiana tribe who still control some of their original land, where they have long occupied areas of the Atchafalaya Basin, "one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent."NATIVE WATERS: A CHITIMACHA RECOLLECTION (1/30/2011) , American Public Television, Louisiana Public Broadcasting; accessed 20 September 2011 In 2011 they numbered about 1100 people.
Historically, the Chitimacha spoke the Chitimacha language, a language isolate. The last two fluent speakers died in the 1930s, but the tribe has been working to revitalize the language since the 1990s. They use notes and recordings made by linguist Morris Swadesh around 1930. They have also started immersion classes for children and adults. In 2008 they partnered with Rosetta Stone in a two-year effort to develop software to support learning the language. Each tribal household was given a copy to support use of the language at home. The Chitimacha have used revenues from gambling to promote education and cultural preservation, founding a tribal museum and historic preservation office, and restoration of their language.
The Chitimacha are one of four federally recognized tribes in the state. Fred B. Kniffen, Hiram F. Gregory, and George A. Stokes, The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present Louisiana (1987), Louisiana State University Press, Kindle Edition; accessed 20 September 2016
Name The name Chitimacha is believed to derive from a Chitimacha term meaning “people who live on the Grand river.” In the Chitimacha language, the people have also referred to themselves as “men all together red.” Another name, Yaknechitto, meaning “big country” was used for a group also referred to as the Chitimacha. The term may have instead referred to the Atakapa or to a geographic division of the Chitimacha. Historical lifeways The Chitimacha established their villages in the many swamps, bayous, and rivers of the Atchafalaya Basin, "one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent." They knew this area intimately. The site conditions provided them with a natural defense against enemy attack and made these villages almost impregnable. As a result, they did not fortify them. The villages were rather large, with an average of about 500 inhabitants. Dwellings were constructed from available resources. Typically the people built walls from a framework of poles and plastered them with mud or palmetto leaves. The roofs were thatched.
The Chitimacha raised a variety of crops, and agricultural produce provided the mainstay of their diet. The women tended cultivation and the crops. They were skilled horticulturalists, raising numerous, distinct varieties of corn, beans, and squash. Corn was the main crop, supplemented by beans, squash and melons. The women also gathered wild foods and nuts. The men hunted for such game as deer, turkey and alligator. They also caught fish. The people stored grain crops in an elevated winter granary to supplement hunting and fishing.
Living by the waters, the Chitimacha made dugout canoes for transport. These vessels were constructed by carving out cypress logs. The largest could hold as many as 50 people. To gain the stones they needed for fashioning arrowheads and tools, the people traded crops for stone with tribes to the north. They also developed such weapons as the blow gun and cane dart. They adapted fish bones to use as arrowheads.
The Chitimacha were distinctive in their custom of flattening the foreheads of their male babies. They would bind them as infants to shape their skulls. Adult men would typically wear their hair long and loose. They were skilled practitioners of the art of tattooing, often covering their face, body, arms and legs with tattooed designs. Because of the hot and humid climate, the men generally wore only a breechcloth, and the women a short skirt.
Like many Native American peoples, the Chitimacha had a matrilineal kinship system, in which property and descent passed through the female lines. The hereditary male chiefs, who governed until early in the 20th century, came from the maternal lines and were approved by female elders. Children were considered to belong to their mother's family and clan and took their status from her. Like other Native American tribes, the Chitimacha at times absorbed and acculturated other peoples. In addition, as Chitimacha women had relationships with European traders in the decades of more interaction, their mixed-race children were considered to belong to the mother's family and were acculturated as Chitimacha.
The Chitimacha were divided into a strict class system of nobles and commoners. They had such a distinction that the two classes spoke different dialects. Intermarriage between the classes was forbidden.
History Precontact
The Chitimacha Indians and their ancestors inhabited the Mississippi River Delta area of south central Louisiana for thousands of years before European encounter. Their oral history states that their territory was marked by four prominent trees. Archaeological evidences suggest that the Chitimacha and their ancestors have lived in Louisiana for perhaps 6,000 years. Prior to that, they may have migrated into the area from west of the Mississippi River.
Colonial period to 20th century At the time of Columbus’ arrival in America, historians estimate the combined strength of the four Chitimacha groups was about 20,000. Although the Chitimacha had virtually no direct contact with Europeans for two more centuries, they suffered Eurasian infectious diseases contracted from other Natives who had traded with them, such as measles, smallpox, and typhoid fever. Like other Native Americans, the Chitimacha had no immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities in epidemics.
In 1650, the Chitimacha were estimated to have a population of around 4,000. In 1699, the Washa, Chawasha, and Okelousa were estimated to have a combined population of around 700.
The Chitimacha fought a long war against the French. Infectious diseases such as measles and smallpox devastated the Chitimacha population and they were driven from their villages in Bayou Lafourche. Many survivors were subsequently sold into slavery by the French.
The Chawasha participated in a French expedition against the Chitimacha in 1707, in 1730, French authorities in New Orleans ordered a massacre of the Chawasha with the aim of destroying the tribe. Following the massacre, some Chawasha are believed to have merged with the Chitimacha.
The Chitimacha absorbed remaining Taensa and some Houma, while some Chitimacha were absorbed into the mixed group known as the Houma.In the late 18th century, the British deported the Acadians (French colonists in Acadia) from eastern Canada after defeating France in the Seven Years' War and taking over their territories in North America east of the Mississippi River. Some Acadian refugees were resettled in Louisiana along the Mississippi River; their descendants became known as Cajuns."Chitimacha", Cajun Coast website, accessed 18 October 2013 They also put pressure on the Chitimacha population because they took over their land.
Eventually some Chitimacha married Acadians and gradually became acculturated to their community, including converting to Catholicism. Others absorbed Europeans into Chitimacha society. Mixed-race children born to Chitimacha women were considered to belong to their mother's families and generally were raised within the Indigenous culture.
The Chitimacha in the mid-19th century sued the United States for confirmation of title to their tribal land. The federal government issued a decree establishing an area of 1,062 acres in St. Mary Parish as Chitimacha land.
20th century The 1900 federal census recorded six Chitimacha families with a total of 55 people, three of whom were classified as full-bloods. In 1910 there were 69 Chitimacha recorded; 19 of their children were students at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where they boarded full time along with other Native American students from a wide variety of tribes. The Indian boarding schools were considered a means to assimilate the children into mainstream United States culture. They disrupted transmission of native languages by forcing the children to use English at school and taking them away from their families for lengthy periods of time.
In December of 1901, a fight broke out among several Chitimacha youths in Charenton. Tribal member Jules Darden brought them home before returning to the town, where deputy sheriff Alfred Pecot confronted him about the incident. Darden denied involvement and resisted arrest, after which he was badly beaten by a crowd. Delphine Stouff, who feared Picot might shoot her, pulled Darden away from the crowd.The following day, Pecot and two other men went to Chief John Paul's home to arrest his son Oliver. Although Oliver denied involvement in the fight, he was shot and killed when he attempted to flee. His uncle William Paul was also shot and killed after confronting Pecot. The men then turned on John Paul, beating him with their guns. When his pregnant daughter Virginia Darden intervened, she was shot in the head. Jules Darden, injured in the previous night’s attack, arrived after hearing his wife scream and fired at the posse, forcing them to retreat. Virginia survived the shooting but died within a year.
Newspapers sensationalized the incident as an “Indian uprising” claiming that the Chitimacha had carried out a series of attacks and emphasizing injuries sustained by the posse during the incident.
Jules Darden was later stabbed to death by whites in 1908. One of the perpetrators, George Veeder, was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives only months after the killing. When Anthropologist Mark Harrington attempted to bring the 1901 and 1908 murders to the attention of the Office of Indian Affairs, the acting commissioner told him that the office had no jurisdiction over the Chitimacha and directed him to raise the matter with the governor of Louisiana.
The tribe was under economic pressure in the early 20th century, and sometimes members were forced to sell land because they could not afford taxes. Sarah Avery Mcllhenny, a local benefactor whose family owned and operated the factory to manufacture Tabasco, responded to a call for aid by Chitimacha women. She purchased their last 260 acres of land at a sheriff's sale in 1915; then transferred it to the tribe. They ceded the land to the federal government (Department of Interior) to be held in trust as a reservation for the tribe. McIlhenny also encouraged Federal recognition of the Chitimacha as a tribe,