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 pínunkansh_, "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 "mid-day 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.[35]
[Footnote 35: Of these Indians I have given an ethnographic
sketch in: Transact. Anthropolog. Society of Washington, 1883,
Vol. II, pp. 148-158.]
Their 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.