7. Chaoucoula; from Cha'hta issi _deer_, or hátche _river,
water-course_.
In the Taensa Grammar and Vocabulary of Haumonté, Parisot and Adam
(Paris, 1882), the name by which the people called itself is
Hâstriryini "_warriors, men, tribe_;" cf. p. 91: hâstri _to fight_,
_make war_; hâstrir _warrior, man_; hâstriryi _people, tribe_; but
Tensagini also occurs in the texts, which would point to an extensive
maize culture.
The Taensa were sun worshipers, and had a temple with idols and a
perpetual fire. When d'Iberville sojourned among them, lightning
struck their temple and destroyed it, upon which the mothers
sacrificed their infants, to appease the wrath of the incensed deity,
by throwing them into the burning edifice (Margry IV, 414, etc.; V,
398). The people then rubbed their faces and bodies with _earth_.
Nothing definite is known about their gentes, phratries and totems.
Several French authors represent them as speaking the Naktche language
(which is untrue) and as being of the same nation.[22] D'Iberville
states that their language differed from that of the Huma tribe.
[Footnote 22: Grammaire et Voc. Taensa, _Introd._, pp. xii. xiv.
Compare also Margry, _Déc. et Etabl._, I, 556-557, 566-568,
600-602, 609-610, 616; IV, 414. Their temple, described by le
Sieur de Tonty (traveling with la Salle in 1682) in French,
Hist. Coll. of La., I, pp. 61. 64.]
The remnants of a tribe called Mosopellea, probably of
Illinois-Algonkin origin and previously residing west of the "Isle of
Tamaroa," on western shore of Mississippi river, joined the Taensa,
and were met there in 1682 by Tonti. They had been almost annihilated
by the Iroquois.[23]
[Footnote 23: Margry I, 610. Mosopolea, _ibid._ II, 237;
Monsopela, on the map in D. Coxe, Carolana.]
The Taensa had, at one time, formed an alliance with the Koroa, then
on Yazoo river, and another with the Arkansas Indians.
The Taensa grammar speaks of a northern and of a southern, more
polished dialect, but does not locate them topographically. The only
word of Taensa which I have found to agree with any other language, is
ista _eye_; it also occurs in Southern Dakotan dialects.