Page:A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages.djvu/15

 these is uncertain, though the writer when in Texas in 1908 met two Indians near Hortense, Polk county, whose father was a Biloxi. Dorsey was informed that at the close of the Civil War a party of one or two hundred Pascagoula Indians and mixed-blood Biloxi removed from central Louisiana into Texas, “to a place which my informant called ‘Comˊ-mish-y.’”ᵃ Dorsey conjectures that Comˊ-mish-y is Commerce, Hunt county, Texas, but, as Mooney states, it is evidently Kiamichi or Kiamishi river in the Choctaw nation, Oklahoma.ᵇ No doubt there was some truth in this statement, but the number must have been exaggerated very greatly, since Morse in 1817 nukes only 100 Biloxi and Pascagoula together on lower Red river.ᶜ In 1829 Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Caddo are said to have been living near each other on Red river near the eastern border of Texas.ᵈ These may have belonged to the Angelina County band already referred to, but it is still more likely that they were connected with the 60 Pascagoula given by Morse as living 320 leagues above the month of Red river.ᶜ

In Bulletin 43 of the Bureau of American Ethnology the writer has given the following estimate of Biloxi population at various periods: 420 in 1698, 175 in 1750, 105 in 1805, 65 in 1829, 6 to 8 in 1908. A Biloxi woman named Selarney Fixico is living with the Creeks in Oklahoma, and a few other Biloxi are said to be near Atoka and at the mouth of the Kiamichi river, besides which there are a few in Rapides parish, Louisiana.

The last chapter in the history of the Biloxi tribe was its rediscovery by Dr. A. S. Gatschet in the fall of 1886 and his somewhat startling determination of its Siouan relationship. Doctor Gatschet was at that time in Louisiana engaged in visiting the smaller tribes of that State and collecting linguistic data for the Bureau of American Ethnology. After considerable search he located a small band of Biloxi on Indian creek, 5 or 6 miles west of Lecompte, Rapides parish, with the important result already mentioned. His conclusion was confirmed by Mr. Dorsey, and between January 14 and February 21, 1892, Dorsey visited the tribe himself, reviewed and corrected all of the material that Doctor Gatschet had gathered, and added a great amount to it, besides recording several texts in the original. A large part of the year 1892-93 was spent by him in arranging and copying his material, and in pursuance of that work he again visited the Biloxi in February, 1893, when he added considerably to it. In the spring of 1893 he laid this investigation aside and never resumed it, but made the material he had collected the basis of his vice-presidential address before Section H of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Madison, Wisconsin, meeting, August, 1893. His

ᵃ Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, XXX, 268, 1893.

ᵇ Siouan Tribes of the East, Bull, 22, B. A. E., p. 16.

ᶜ Morse, Report on Indian Affairs, 1822, p. 373.

ᵈ Porter in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, III, p. 596.