Page:A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages.djvu/12

 Pascagoula river, 16 leagues from the sea, in a village consisting of fewer than 20 cabins.ᵃ La Harpe reduces the distance to 8 leagues, and places the number of their warriors at 130,ᵇ but it appears from Iberville’s journal, written during his own visit, April, 1700, that Sauvolle’s account is the more reliable. During the latter expedition Iberville found the ruins of the former Biloxi village 6½ leagues from the mouth of the river, and says of it:

This village is abandoned, the nation having been destroyed two years ago by sickness. Two leagues below this village one begins to find many deserted spots quite near each other on both banks of the river. The savages report that this nation was formerly quite numerous. It did not appear to me that there had been in this village more than from thirty to forty cabins, built long, and the roofs, as we make ours, covered with the bark of trees. They were all of one story of about eight feet in height, made of mud. Only three remain; the others are burned. The village was surrounded by palings eight feet in height, of about eighteen inches in diameter. There still remain three square watch-towers (guérites) measuring ten feet on each face; they are raised to a height of eight feet on posts; the sides made of mud mixed with grass, of a thickness of eight inches, well covered. There were many loopholes through which to shoot their arrows. It appeared to me that there had been a watch-tower at each angle, and one midway of the curtains (au milieu des courtines); it was sufficiently strong to defend them against enemies that have only arrows.ᶜ

Eleven and a half leagues beyond, i. e., 18 leagues from the mouth of the river, he came to the Pascagoula village where the Biloxi and Moctobi may then have been settled, as stated by Sauvolle and La Harpe, though Iberville does not mention them. He agrees with Sauvolle, however, when he says that there were only about twenty families in that place.

Iberville’s failure to mention the Biloxi and Moctobi, added to the fact that both Biloxi and Pascagoula kept their autonomy for more than a hundred years after this time in the face of adverse circumstances, leads to a suspicion that the Biloxi were then living somewhere else. In 1702-3, according to Pénicaut, St. Denis, then in command of the first French fort on the Mississippi, induced the Biloxi to abandon their former home and settle on a small bayou back of the present New Orleans called in Choctaw Choupicacha, or Soupnacha.ᵈ Pénicaut is apt to be very much mixed in his chronology, but otherwise his statements are generally reliable, and in this particular he is indirectly confirmed by La Harpe, who says that 15 Biloxi warriors accompanied St. Denis in his expedition against the Chitimacha, March, 1707.ᵉ In 1708 Pénicaut notes the Biloxi still in their new position,ᶠ but in 1722 we are informed that they settled on Pearl river on the

ᵃ French, Hist. Coll. of La., p. 227, 1851.

ᵇ La Harpe, Jour. Hist. de l'Établissement des Français à la Louisiane, 1831, p. 16.

ᶜ Margry, op. Cit., IV, 425-426.

ᵈ Ibid., V, 442.

ᵉ La Harpe, Jour. Hist., p. 102, 1831.

ᶠ Margry, op. cit., V, 476.