9. Achougoulas; "_pipe people_," from ashunga _pipe_,
literally, "the thing they smoke from;" cf. shúngali _I
smoke from_.
Although these names are considerably frenchified in their
orthography, the meaning of some admits of no doubt. When I visited
Natchez city in January 1882, I was informed that the White Apple
village, called Apilua (Vpelois) and mentioned by Le Page du Pratz, is
supposed to have existed twelve to fifteen miles southeast of the
city. The White Earth village and the village of the Meal were other
settlements of theirs. Owing to incessant rains, I could not explore
the sites to their full extent, but found a flat mound south of St.
Catharine's creek, with a diameter of thirty-two feet and perfectly
circular, which lay at the same distance from the Mississippi as given
above for the residence of the Sun. Col. J. F. H. Claiborne's _History
of Mississippi_, vol. I, 40-47, gives valuable extracts from French
archives, pointing to the real sites of the Naktche habitations. The
colossal mound of Seltzer-town stands but a short distance from the
creek alluded to, and is fourteen miles from Natchez city to the
northeast.
The settlement of the French on the heights of Natchez, the growing
animosity of the natives against the intruders, the three successive
wars, the massacre of the colonists in November, 1729, and the final
dispersion of the tribe in February 1730, are well-known historic
facts and need not be repeated in this volume. The disorganized
warriors retreated with their families to different parts of the
country. One party fled across Mississippi river to some locality near
Trinity City, La., where they entrenched themselves, but were
attacked, defeated and partly captured by a body of French troops two
years later. Another party reached the Chicasa country and was granted
a home and protection by that tribe; but the revengeful French
colonists declared war upon the hospitable Chicasa for sheltering
their mortal enemies, and invaded their lands by way of the Yazoo
river in 1736, but were compelled to retreat after suffering
considerable loss. Fort Tombigbee, constructed in 1735, served as a
second base for the French operations. Further French-Chicasa wars
occurred in 1739-40 and in 1748.[28]
[Footnote 28: Cf. Adair, History, p. 354 sqq. On Fort Tombigbee,
_ibid._, pp. 285, 291.]
Later on, we find their remnants among the Creeks, who had provided
them with seats on Upper Coosa river, and incorporated them into their
confederacy. They built a village called Naktche, and a part of them
went to reside in the neighboring Abikúdshi town. Naktche town lay, in
B. Hawkins' time (1799), on a creek of the same name, joining Coosa
river sixty miles above its confluence with Tallapoosa river, and
harbored from fifty to one hundred warriors (Hawkins, p. 42). A number
of Naktche families, speaking their paternal language, now live in the
hilly parts of the Cheroki Nation, Indian Territory.
A body of Indians, called by French and English writers Thioux and
Grigras, remained in the vicinity of the Natchez colony after the
departure of the Naktche Indians, who had been the ruling tribe of the
confederacy. It is doubtful whether these two divisions were of
foreign or of Naktche origin, though the latter seems improbable. The
Grigras were called so on account of a peculiarity in their
pronunciation; it probably referred to what the French call
_grasseyer_, and the Canadian French _parler gras_.[29] Eleven Sháwano
were once brought to the villages as captives, and were known there as
"Stinkards," "Puants," terms which served to interpret the Naktche
term métsmetskop _miserable, bad, wretched, inferior_.
[Footnote 29: It is stated that the Thioux were a small body of
Indians, reduced in numbers by the Chicasa, and then
incorporated by the Naktche; their language possessed the sound
R. If this latter statement is true, their language was neither
of the Naktche nor of the Maskoki or Dakota family. In
conversation the Grigras often used this word _grigra_, which
also implies the use of the articulation R. Cf. Le Page du
Pratz, IV, chap, ii, sect. 1; Jefferys, French Dom. in America,
p. 162, and what is said of the Sháwano under Yuchi, p.]
The scanty vocabularies which we possess of the Naktche language
contain a sprinkling of foreign terms adopted from the Chicasa or
Mobilian. Two languages at least were spoken before 1730 in the
Naktche villages; the Naktche by the ruling class or tribe; the other,
the Chicasa or trade language by the "low people;" and hence the
mixture referred to. Du Pratz gives specimens of both. Naktche is a
vocalic language, rich in verbal forms, and, to judge from a few
specimens, polysynthetic to a considerable degree in its affixes.