Chitimacha
The Chitimacha , also Chetimachan or Sitimacha , are members of a North American Indian tribe from the Macro- Algonquin language family and were once a powerful tribe on the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the Mississippi Delta . They inhabited the area around the Grand Lake in what is now southern Louisiana and were recognized as the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana in 1916 .
residential area
The traditional residential area was in the Mississippi Delta and the adjacent Atchafalaya Basin in south-central Louisiana. Legend has it that it was once bordered by four sacred trees. The first was at Maringouin, Louisiana, the second was southeast of New Orleans , the third at the mouth of the Mississippi, and the fourth was a large cypress tree in what is now Cypremort Point State Park . The name Chitimacha appeared regularly on the early French maps of Louisiana. The Grand Lake was then called Lac de Chetimacha , and the Bayou Lafourche was called either Lafourche des Chetimachas or La Rivire des Chetimachas . The relationship between tribal members and their homeland has always been very strong. Although they had to give almost all of their land to the whites, they are the only tribe in Louisiana who have been allowed to keep a small portion of it. Most Chitimacha still live in or near their reservation in Charenton , Louisiana.
Demographics
The Chitimacha consisted of four groups, namely the Chawasha, the actual Chitimacha, the Washa and the Yagenecchito, which around 1500 had a total of around 20,000 members. Because there was practically no direct contact with Europeans in the following two centuries, the European diseases were probably transmitted by Indians from the Spanish missions in northern Florida. The result was devastating epidemics that raged among the indigenous people in the lower Mississippi valley. In some areas in southeastern North America, the number of indigenous people has decreased to 10% of the previous population. The losses of the neighboring tribes suggest that the Chitimacha had also lost half of their tribal members when the first French colonized the lower Mississippi Valley in 1699. Because the Chitimacha villages were very remote and isolated, the first estimates by Bienville and Beaurain can only be guesswork. Thereafter, the Chawasha and Washa together numbered between 700 and 1,400 people, while the Chitimacha had about 4,000 members. There are no figures from this period for the Yagenecchito. At that time the French had no knowledge of the Chitimacha living further west.
In the course of a twelve-year war from 1706 to 1718, the French had almost completely destroyed the eastern Chitimacha. In 1718 the eastern Chitimacha had only 400 tribesmen. The French forced them to resettle on the Mississippi under the watchful eye of their Indian allies, the Washa and Chawasha. In their new place of residence, however, they were exposed to more illnesses and alcohol, and by 1758 the total population of all three tribes had fallen below 400. In 1784 there were only 135 members, and shortly after 1805 the Mississippi Band of Chitimacha was practically extinct. If some of the tribe members still survived, they have been accepted by the Houma . Only the western Chitimacha have retained their tribal identity. By 1880 there were only six families with fewer than 100 members. The 1910 census recorded 69 chitimacha, of which 19 were children at the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania . After federal recognition and assurances in 1917 that they would be allowed to keep the last 260 acres (1,052 km²) of their own land as a reservation, the tribe slowly recovered. Around 1950, 89 Chitimacha lived in the reservation and 400 more in the vicinity. In the 2010 census, 1,552 registered tribal members were listed.
language
The Chitimacha used an isolated language that was spoken only by them and members of the three related tribes Chawasha, Washa and Yagenecchito. With the death of the last speaker Delphine Ducleaux in 1940, the language died out. Although it is no longer spoken, it has been fairly well documented by linguists Morris Swadesh and John Reed Swanton . There is a grammar and dictionary of the language, as well as a collection of numerous texts by the last speakers, which, however, have never been published. Some tribal members are currently striving to revitalize the language. In 2015 a new dictionary was commissioned to be used as teaching material in the Chitimacha reservation. Numerous older tribesmen speak Cajun French.
Culture
When the Chitimacha met the French in 1699, they were believed to be the most powerful people on the Gulf Coast west of Florida. The tribe was politically organized in a confederation of 15 partially semi-autonomous villages. The central authority lay with the Great Chief, who resided in the main village near what is now Charenton in Louisiana. The Chitimacha tribal area resembled a natural fortress. Surrounded by wide rivers and numerous swamps, it was almost impossible for enemies to attack the Chitimacha. Their villages were relatively large with an average of more than 500 inhabitants and were located on rivers or lakeshores that did not require any further fortifications. The houses were made of material that nature provided. The walls consisted of a kind of framework made of posts and struts, the spaces between which were filled with either clay or palmetto branches. The roofs consisted of tree bark or palmetto branches.
The cultivation of crops was the job of women and was the most important part of the diet. Corn had been around since 300 BC. Known in the southeast of North America. The soil was extremely fertile and the annual growing season lasted 320 days, so unlike some of their neighbors, there was ample food. In addition to maize, the Chitimacha grew beans, pumpkins, melons and various kinds of squash. In addition, the women collected wild fruits, wild vegetables and nuts, while the men took over the supply of meat and fish. They hunted buffalo, deer, turkey, alligator and smaller mammals. Large mountains of rubbish made of mussels, the so-called middens near the earlier villages, indicate that mussels were also a popular food. In winter, the dried corn was stored in raised granaries to protect it from rodents and other pests. The public buildings of a typical Chitimacha village included the chieftain's house and the granary, as well as a so-called House of Dances , where religious ceremonies and public gatherings were held, according to French records.
In a residential area traversed by countless watercourses, dugout canoes were the most important means of transport. There were Chitimacha canoes made from huge cypress trunks that could carry more than 40 people. An important raw material, namely stones, which were needed for arrowheads and tools, was missing in their tribal area. These had to be exchanged for food from the Avosell and other tribes in the north. The Chitimacha also used blowguns with arrows made of sugar cane to hunt birds . There was also the atlatl , a type of spear thrower.
The boys' foreheads were flattened to improve their appearance. Most of the men wore their hair long, and some Chitimacha warriors are said to have had scalp locks too. Due to the mild climate, the men's clothing was limited to a loincloth , which made their extensive tattooing visible on the face, body, arms and legs. The women were dressed in short skirts. They wore their hair long, too, but it was usually braided.
The Chitimacha were divided into matrilineal totemic clans . The most important distinguishing feature of the Chitimacha society was its strict caste system, with which the tribesmen were divided into two groups, namely the nobles and the citizens . Both groups used their own dialect, although the nobles expected that the citizens would address them in the dialect of the nobles. The Chitimacha were unique among the indigenous people due to the strict application of endogamy , in which a man was only allowed to marry one woman from his own caste. A noble man or woman who married a civil tribe member lost their higher status.
The Chitimacha women were known for their particular skill in basketry , in which they used a double weaving technique that created different patterns inside and out.
history
Colonial times
When Alonso Álvarez de Pineda explored the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi in 1519, he was believed to be the first European to see the Chitimacha tribal land. He saw no reason to land there, however, because the area with its treacherous labyrinth of watercourses and swamps did not look very inviting. Although the Spaniards were immediately interested in the great river, in which they suspected a possible route to the South Pacific , the natural barriers at its mouth prevented contact with Europeans for almost 200 years.
In 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez, the next European, reached the mouth of the Mississippi. In 1542, Hernando de Soto's expedition traveled north and west of Louisiana and followed the Mississippi south to the Gulf of Mexico . However, the Spanish conquistador did not find the easy fortune he had hoped for, which others in Mexico and Peru had discovered. They were therefore not interested in colonization or in establishing bases in Louisiana and nothing is known of any contact with the Chitimacha.
The French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle reached Louisiana from the north of the Mississippi and the mouth of the largest river in North America. He took possession of the vast area between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico for France and named it Louisiana in honor of the French King Louis XIV . The name was later adopted for the US state of Louisiana, which, however, only covers a fraction of the area of the French colony of Louisiana that has now emerged .
The first contact of the Chitimacha with Europeans took place in 1699 through the expedition of the French Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville . Iberville decided to land with his ships east of the Mississippi Delta in Biloxi Bay in order to then reach the great river by land. Here he met some tribes, such as the Pascagoula , Houma and Bayougoula , who met him kindly and showed him the way to the Mississippi in the spring of 1699. On the tribal territory of the Chitimacha, he met members of the Washa, with whom he concluded friendship agreements and was then invited to a banquet. In January 1700, Iberville bought land from the Bayougoula to build Fort Mississippi 40 miles above the estuary and forestall British colonists. Around 1700, the French began to colonize the lower Mississippi Valley. At that time the Chitimacha had suffered dramatic losses from European diseases. Their population had been reduced by more than 50% as a result of devastating epidemics .
The French saw their Indian allies kill each other. The French reaction to these disputes was subdued. Some families of the Chitimacha and Yaenecchito were invited to a banquet by the Tansea . The unsuspecting guests were captured and tied up to be sold as slaves to the French. In 1707 the Chitimacha responded with a campaign against Tansea in retaliation for this act. Unfortunately, on their way to the Tansea, they met a French missionary, Father Jean Francois Buisson, accompanied by two French men and an Indian slave. The Chitimacha killed the missionary and the two French and freed the slave.
When Bienville found out about this, he immediately declared war on the Chitimacha and demanded that those responsible be extradited to Mobile for punishment. Bienville formed a coalition of different tribes, which in March 1707 undertook a punitive expedition against the Chitimacha together with French Canadians. The Indian allies knew the way through the rivers and swamps west of the Mississippi, and the Chitimacha suffered heavy losses. The war against the Chitimacha was supposed to last 12 years and they were on the verge of total annihilation. Many warriors died defending their villages and families. Captive women and children were sold as slaves. Most of the slaves in the early history of the French colony were Chitimacha. The long and costly war, which the French finally won through their superior weapons, ended in 1718. The few surviving Chitimacha were forcibly relocated upriver by the French.
In the Seven Years' War in North America , the French were defeated by the British and had to surrender their territories east of the Mississippi. Most of the French-speaking Arcadians in eastern Canada have been expelled. Some of them fled south, settled along the Mississippi on Chitimacha land in Louisiana, and came to be known as the Cajun . There were some mixed marriages between Cajuns and Chitimacha, which gradually acculturated were and to the Catholic faith converted . But Europeans were also accepted into the society of the Chitimacha. Mixed race children of Chitimacha women belonged in their families and were generally brought up in accordance with the indigenous culture.
In the mid-19th century, the Chitimacha sued the United States in court for the return of their homeland. The federal government issued a decree granting the Chitimacha ownership of an area of 1,062 acres (4.30 km²) near St. Mary Parish .
20th century and today's situation
At the beginning of the 20th century, the tribe ran into economic difficulties and some relatives had to sell land to pay their taxes. In the end, only 260 acres of tribal land remained. Sarah Avery McIlhenry, owner of a Tabasco factory, petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the land to be held in trust. In addition, as early as 1916, on their initiative, the tribe was recognized as the first in Louisiana to be federally recognized as the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana in 1916 . Most of the tribes of the American Southeast were forcibly relocated to what was then Indian territory and what is now Oklahoma in the 1830s. The Chitimacha received financial grants from the state because of their recognition. Despite this, he continued to lose relatives and by 1930 only 51 tribal members were counted. During this time the tribe was traditionally led by a chief.
Since World War I, interest in petroleum found in Louisiana has grown, and many chitimacha found employment in the oil fields near them in the 1930s. As a result of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act , a law that should allow the Indians to live more independently, the Chitimacha tried to establish a new tribal organization. Since 1971 there has been a constitution in which land is made available on which the tribesmen can settle. In addition, the leadership of the tribe will be handed over to a five-member Tribal Council , the chief executive of which is the Tribal Chairman .
The tribe now operates a museum, a casino, a fish farm and a school on the Charenton Reservation. The profits from these companies were partially used to buy back the land held in trust. Over 1,000 acres could be acquired in addition to the existing 260.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Chitimacha History. Retrieved February 10, 2017 .
- ^ Census 2010. Accessed February 10, 2017 .
- ^ Raymond Fogelson, William C. Sturtevant: Handbook of North American Indians . 14 Southeast. Government Printing Office, Washington 2004, ISBN 978-0-16-087616-5 , pp. 80 f .
- ^ William C. Sturtevant (1967): Early Indian Tribes, Cultures, and Linguistic Stocks , Smithsonian Institution Map (Eastern United States).
- ^ Cajun coast. Retrieved February 15, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c Chitimacha History and Culture. Retrieved February 16, 2017 .
See also
literature
- Raymond D. Fogelson (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians , Vol. 14 Southeast, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 2004 ISBN 0-16-072300-0
