Houma (people)
The Houma (they call themselves the United Houma Nation ) are a Native American tribe living in Louisiana in the counties of East Feliciana Parish , West Feliciana Parish, and Pointe Coupee Parish , approximately 100 miles (160 km) north of the town of Houma , which is on the West side of the mouth of the Mississippi River lies and is named after them.
The Houma are not yet recognized as a tribe by the US federal government. You have been waiting for a response from the Bureau of Indian Affairs , a Home Office agency , for over 20 years .
origin
The French explorer Nicolas de la Salle made records in 1682 about a village of the "Oumas" opposite the Red River on the east side of the Mississippi . He assumed they spoke Muskogee like the other tribes of the Choctaw . Since their war emblem is the saktce-ho'ma , the Louisiana crayfish , the anthropologist John Reed Swanton has suggested that the Houma are a branch of the Chakchiuma who live in the area on the Yazoo River , and their name is a modification of the Word is saktce-ho'ma .
After settling in the lower Lafourche Parish and Terrebonne Parish areas, individual tribal members remained in touch with the other Choctaw communities. It is not known exactly how the Houma came to settle at the mouth of the Red River. which was previously called the "Houma River". The French explorers found it on the site where the Louisiana State Penitentiary is now the maximum security prison .
language
In 1907 Swanton asked an old woman to record vocabulary from what he called Houma. This is very similar to the standard Choctaw, which gave some linguists reason to believe that the Houma language was a Western Muskogee language and related to the Choctaw or Chickasaw . But it has also been suggested that the words from Swanton's vocabulary come from the Mobilian jargon , a commercial language used among the tribes in the Gulf of Mexico . Some unidentified words could come from other languages spoken on the Mississippi. The tunica (see Biloxi ) called the Mobilian jargon húma ʼúlu , d. i.e., "Houma language".
history
French era
Nicolas de la Salle's note from 1682 is the first mention of the Houma in written history. Later, researchers such as Henri de Tonti and Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville wrote in greater detail about the Houma. Iberville reports that the Houma village was six to eight miles inland, measured from the east bank of the Mississippi at the mouth of the Red River. When the Europeans came to the area in greater numbers, they believed that each settlement represented its own tribe. Iberville and his people were escorted around the area by guides from the Bayougoula and asked what kind of group of people it was that lived on the opposite bank of a particular bayou. The leaders replied that they were mugulashai , meaning "the people on the other side (of the bayou)". The French thought that was the name of the group and called them the Mugulasha tribe. It is more likely that it was a group of the Bayougoula, like the Houma, descended from the Choctaw. Several groups of Choctaw have immigrated to the Louisiana area throughout history. They are known today as Jena, Clifton, and Lacombe.
Around 1700 the Houma and the Bayougoula were in dispute over the hunting grounds. Through the mediation of Iberville's brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville , the dispute was settled in March of this year. The tribes erected a large red stake on the banks of the bayou, in what is now called Scott's Bluff , about five miles above Bayou Manchac on the east bank of the Mississippi, marking the new border between their tribal areas. This border post was called Istrouma by the locals and Baton Rouge by the French , and this is where the city of Baton Rouge lies today .
In 1706 the Houma left their villages in the Red River area and moved south. One explanation for this was that they wanted to live closer to their new French allies and further away from the northern tribes that were allied with the English. From the 1730s to the Seven Years' War in North America (1754–1763), European wars were fought in North America. Because of these conflicts, many groups of Indians formed protective communities. As early as 1739 the French reported that Houma, Bayougoula, and Acolapissa had merged to form a tribe. Although the tribe mainly consisted of Houma, the last remnants of many nations found refuge in it.
Because of the increasing conflicts between the English, French and Spanish, the Houma migrated south to their current settlement area in Lafourche-Terrebonne. Oral tradition and contemporary science agree that the ancestors of the Houma of Lafourche-Terrebonne originally lived near what is now the city of Houma, Louisiana, in what the indigenous people called Chukunamous , which roughly means "Red House."
Early USA
Napoleon agreed to sell the Louisiana colony to the United States , which would double the land area of the new republic. On April 30, 1803, both nations signed the treaty that sealed the Louisiana Purchase . With reference to the indigenous people living there, Article Six of the treaty states:
"The United States promises to keep agreements and articles made between Spain and the tribes and peoples of the Indians until other relevant articles are agreed upon by mutual agreement between the United States and said tribes."
The United States signed the treaty, but did not maintain this practice. Dr. John Sibley was named Indian envoy for the area by President Thomas Jefferson . He did not visit any of the villages in the southern Louisiana Marshes and the Houma had no official representation with the federal government.
In 1885 the Houma lost a great leader in Rosalie Courteau . She had helped them survive the aftermath of the American Civil War . To this day it is held in high regard.
Modern age
At the end of the 19th century, the Houma language had merged with the French language of the former colony. The Houma French the Houma speak today is a mixture of the French the early explorers spoke with Houma words such as: B. shaui (raccoon). Houma French is still French, however, and communication is possible with anyone who speaks French, from Canada, France, Rwanda, or Louisiana. There are some special features in the vocabulary, e.g. B. chevrette instead of crevette (shrimp). The French-speaking Houma accent is no stronger than that which distinguishes American English from British. Each linguistic group forms many different accents, and the Houma are no exception.
While the modern world slowly began to penetrate southern Louisiana, the Houma remained relatively isolated in their settlements in the bayous . At that time their population was spread over six settlements. The traffic between the settlements took place with pirogues on the waterway. Until the 1940s, the state did not build roads connecting the settlements.
In 1907 John R. Swanton, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution , visited the Houma.
Today's Houma continue to have a hunter-gatherer economy. They cultivate small gardens for self-sufficiency and supply themselves with fish and game from the bayous and swamps. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, Houma children were banned from attending public schools and until then only attended missionary schools .
One of the main concerns of the Houma is the unanswered question of their recognition by the US government. The Houma tribe applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for recognition in 1983 and the process has been ongoing ever since. In the late 1990s, the agency gave the tribe a false positive and requested further information. The Houma Tribe is currently waiting for their application to be resumed and for a final decision.
Coastal erosion
As is the case with many coastal tribal communities whose sources of food and income are the swamps and bayous, continued coastal erosion is a major problem facing the Houma tribe. Coastal erosion is mainly caused by oil companies laying pipelines in the ground and not covering them properly, as well as penetrating salt water as a result of the canals for shipping by the same oil companies.
The community is currently threatened by erosion on the Isle de Jean Charles , a narrow strip of land in Terrebonne Parish. Members of the Biloxi Chitimacha , who belong to the Choctaw, also live there. Scientists estimate that the island will disappear within the next 15 years if nothing is done about it. The Houma tribe are looking for land to buy in the area to relocate the community there. Coastal erosion has also adversely affected the quality of the fish caught and the tribe has suffered a decline in fishing yield as salt water has entered many of the old fish ponds.
See also
List of North American Indian tribes
Web links
- The United Houma Nation website
- Lee Sultzman, "Houma History"
- Greg English, "History of the United Houma Nation," Louisiana 101
Individual evidence
- ↑ Swanton, John R. Indians of the Southeastern United States (Washington: United States Government Printing Office , 1946) p. 139.
- ↑ Pritzker, Barry M. Native American: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture and Peoples Vol. 2, p. 550
- ↑ See engl. Wikipedia: Mobilian jargon .
- ↑ Scott's Bluff - Baton Rouge, LA