On account of the recent discovery of their consonantic language,
which proves to be disconnected from any other aboriginal tongue
spoken in North America, a peculiar interest attaches itself to the
tribe of the Taensa Indians, whose cabins stood in Tensas county,
Louisiana, bordering east on Mississippi river. The Tensas river, in
French _Bayou Tensa_, which joins the Washita river at Trinity City,
after forming a prodigious number of bends, and flowing past a
multitude of artificial mounds, still keeps up the memory of this
extinct tribe.
In March 1700, the French commander L. d'Iberville calculated the
distance from the landing of the Natchez to that of the Taensas,
following the river, at about 15-1/2 leagues, and in the air-line,
11-1/4 leagues. That Taensa landing, at the foot of a bluff nine
hundred feet high (150 _toises_), was about 32°5´ Lat., while
d'Iberville, trusting his inaccurate methods of measuring, located it
at 32°47´ Lat. (Margry IV, 413).
The tribe occupied seven villages at the time of d'Iberville's visit,
which were distant four leagues from the Mississippi river, and
grouped around a semi-circular lake, probably _Lake St. Joseph_. One
hundred and twenty of these cabins were extending for two leagues on
the lake shore, and a "temple" was among them. The missionary
Montigny, who visited the locality about the same epoch, estimated the
population of that part of the Taensa settlement which he saw at 400
persons. "They were scattered over an area of eight leagues, and their
cabins lay along a river."
The seven villages visited by d'Iberville constitute _one town_ only,
as he was told. This means to say that they formed a confederacy. A
Taensa Indian, who accompanied him, gave their names in the Chicasa
trade language, or, as the French called it, the Mobilian jargon
(Margry IV, 179).