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Adái Indians
Of this small and
obscure Indian community mention is made
much earlier than of all the other tribes
hitherto spoken of in this volume, for
Cabeça de Vaca, in his Naufragios, mentions
them among the inland tribes as Atayos. In
the list of eight Caddo villages, given by a
Taensa guide to L. d Iberville on his
expedition up the Red River (March 1699),
they figure as the Natao (Margry IV, 178).
The Adái, Ada-i, Háta-i,
Adayes (incorrectly called Adaize) seem to
have persisted at their ancient home, where
they formed a tribe belonging to the
Caddo
confederacy. Charlevoix (Hist, de la
Nouvelle France, ed. Shea VI, p. 24) relates
that a Spanish mission was founded among the
Adaes in 1715. A Spanish fort existed there,
seven leagues west of Natchitoches, as late
as the commencement of the nineteenth
century. Baudry de Lozičres puts their
population at one hundred men (1802), and
Morse (1822) at thirty, who then passed
their days in idleness on the Bayou Pierre
of Red River. Even at the present time they
are remembered as a former division of the
Caddo confederacy, and called Háta-i by the
Caddo, who are settled in the southeastern
part of the Indian Territory.
A list of about 300
Adai words was gathered in 1802 by Martin
Duralde, which proves it to be a vocalic
language independent of any other, though a
few affinities are traceable with the
Pani
dialects. The orthography of that vocabulary
cannot, however, be fully relied on. The
original is in the library of the American
Philosophical Society, in Philadelphia. Rob.
G. Latham, in his "Opuscula; Essays, chiefly
philological," etc., London 1860; pp.
402-404, has compared Adahi words with the
corresponding terms of other North American
languages, but without arriving at a
definite result.
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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