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Shetimasha Indians
These natives once
dwelt in numerous settlements clustering
around Bayou Lafourche, Grand River (or
Bayou Atchafalaya), and chiefly around Grand
Lake or Lake of the Shetimasha. All that is
left of them about fifty-five Indians, of a
parentage strongly mixed with white blood,
reside at Charenton, St. Mary's Parish, on
the southwestern side of the lake, though a
few are scattered through the forests on
Grand River. They call themselves Pántch
pinunkansh, "men altogether red." The name
Shetimasha, by which they are generally
known, is of
Cha’hta origin, and means "they
possess (imásha) cooking vessels (tchúti)."
Their central place of worship was three
miles north of Charenton, on a small inlet
of Grand Lake. They worshiped there, by
dances and exhaustive fasting, their
principal deity, Kút-Nähänsh, the "midday
sun."
They were not warlike,
and never figured prominently in colonial
history. When a portion of the tribe,
settled on Bayou Lafourche, had murdered Mr.
Saint-Cosme, a Naktche missionary descending
the Mississippi river in 1703, they were
attacked by the colonists and their Indian
allies. The war ended with a speedy
submission of the savages. They called the Naktche Indians their brothers, and their
myths related that their "Great Spirit"
created them in the country of that people,
and gave them laws, women and tobacco. The Cha’hta tribes, who attempted to deprive
them of their native land, made continual
forays upon them during the eighteenth
century.
These Indians were
strict monogamists. The chieftaincy was a
life-long office among them. The chiefs
lived in lodges larger than those of the
common people, and their tobacco pipes were
larger than those of the warriors. The
foreheads of the children were subjected to
the flattening process.1
The
Shetimasha language is
extremely polysynthetic as far as derivation
by suffixes is concerned, and there are also
a number of prefixes. For the pronouns thou
and ye a common and a reverential form are
in use. The faculty for forming compound
words is considerable, and the numerals show
the decimal form of computation.
Footnotes:
-
Gatschet, Albert S.,
The Shetimasha Indians of St.
Mary's Parish, Southern Louisiana. Society of
Washington, 1883, Vol. II, pp. 148- 158.
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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