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Tonica Indians
Migratory dispositions
seem to have inhered to the Tonica or Tunica
tribe in a higher degree than to their
southern neighbors, for in the short lapse
of two centuries we see them stationed at
more than three places.
In a letter addressed
by Commander Lemoyne d'Iberville to the
Minister of the French Navy, dated from Bayogoulas, February 26th, 1700, he states
that an English fur-trader and Indian
slave-jobber had just visited the Tonica,
who are on a river emptying into the
Mississippi, twenty leagues above the
Taensa
Indians, at some distance from the Chicasa,
and 170 leagues from the Gulf of Mexico.
When d'Iberville ascended the Yazoo River in
the same year, he found a village of this
tribe on its right (or western) bank, four
days travel from the Natchez landing. Seven
villages were seen upon this river, which is
navigable for sixty leagues. The Tonica
village, the lowest of them, was two days
travel from Thysia, the uppermost (Margry
IV, 180. 362. 398; V, 401). La Harpe
mentions the establishment of a mission
house among the Tonica on Yazoo River.1
In 1706, when expecting
to become involved in a conflict with the
Chicasa and Alibamu Indians, the Tonica
tribe, or a part of it, fled southward to
the towns of the Huma, and massacred a
number of these near the site where New
Orleans was built afterwards (French, Hist.
Coll. of La., Ill, 35). The "Tunica Old
Fields" lay in Tunica County, Mississippi
State, opposite Helena, Arkansas. Cf.
Cha’hta.
They subsequently lived
at the Tonica Bluffs, on the east shore of
the Mississippi River, two leagues below the
influx of the Red River. T. Jefferys, who in
1761 gave a description of their village and
chief's house, states that they had settled
on a hill near the "River of the Tunicas,"
which comes from the Lake of the Tunicas,
and that in close vicinity two other
villages were existing (Hist, of French
Dominions, I, 145-146)2 Th. Hutchins,
Louisiana and West Florida, Phila., 1784, p.
44, locates them a few miles below that
spot, opposite Pointe Coupee and ten miles
below the Pascagoulas, on Mississippi River.
So does also Baudry de Lozières in 1802, who
speaks of a population of one hundred and
twenty men.
In 1817, a portion of
the tribe, if not the whole, had gone up the
Red River and settled at Avoyelles, ninety
miles above its confluence with the
Mississippi. A group of these Indians is now
in Calcasieu County, Louisiana, in the
neighborhood of Lake Charles City.
A separate chapter has
been devoted to this tribe, because there is
a strong probability that their language
differed entirely from the rest of the
Southern tongues. Le Page du Pratz, l.1., in
confirming this statement, testifies to the
existence of the sound R in their language,
which occurs neither in
Naktche nor in the
Maskoki dialects or
Shetimasha (II,
220-221). "We possess no vocabulary of it,
and even the tribal name belongs to Chicasa:
túnnig post, pillar, support, probably post
of territorial demarcation of their lands on
the Yazoo river. The only direct intimation
which I possess on that tongue is a
correspondence of Alphonse L. Pinart, who
saw some Tonica individuals, and inferred
from their terms that they might belong to
the great
Pani stock of the Western plains.
Footnotes:
- French, Hist. Coll.
Ill, 16; cf. Margry V, 525. The names of
these villages to be given under Chicasa, q.
v.
- This was probably the
place where Le Page du Pratz saw them (about
1720 or 1725): "vis-a-vis de la Riviere
Rouge," II, 220-221.
Back to:
Southern Families of Indians
Notes About Book:
Source: Gatschet, Albert S., A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians.
Pub.
D.G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 1884.
Notes about Online Publication: This manuscript has been ocr'd and heavily
edited. Many of the Native American words have been reproduced as clearly as
online publication will allow us, but not all are exactly the way they were in
the original work. The structure of this manuscript has been changed to allow
better online presentation.
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