Page:A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages.djvu/17

 who comprise in all 50 or 60 small cabins.”ᵃ In this narrative “Ounspik” is evidently a misreading or misprint of Ounspie, which is a variant of Ouispie. In the Tunica mission of Father Davion, Gravier did not learn the proper name of the tribe. In the journal of his descent of the Mississippi in 1721, Charlevoix mentions “a village of Yasous mixed with Curoas and Ofogoulas, which may have been at most two hundred men fit to bear arms.”ᵇ January 26, 1722, La Harpe entered the Yazoo, and describes the condition of the lower Yazoo tribes thus: “The river of the Yasons runs from its mouth north-northeast to Fort St. Peter, then north a quarter northwest hall a league, and turning back by the north until it is east a quarter northeast another half league as far as the low stone bluffs on which are situated settlements of the Yasons, Courois, Offogoula, and Onspée nations; their cabins are disposed by cantons, the greater part situated on artificial earthen mounds between the valleys, which leads one to suppose that anciently these nations were numerous. Now they are reduced to about two hundred and fifty persons.”ᶜ Father Poisson, ascending to his mission among the Quapaw in 1727, speaks of “three villages [on the lower Yazoo] in which three different languages are spoken,”ᵈ but professes no further knowledge regarding them. In his general survey of Louisiana tribes, founded on information received between the years 1718 and 1734, Du Pratz assigns this tribe “about 60 cabins” as against 100 tor the Yazoo and 40 for the Korea,ᵉ which would appear to be a very considerable overestimate.

In 1729 the Yazoo and Korea joined in the Natchez uprising, slew their missionary, and destroyed the French post that had been established among them. “Tho Offogoulas,” says Charlevoix, “were then on a hunt; on their return they were strongly urged to enter the plot; but they steadily refused, and withdrew to the Tonicas, whom they knew to be of all the Indians the most inviolably attached to the French.”ᶠ The earlier association which we know to have subsisted between these two tribes may also be assigned as a probable cause of their association with them at that period. During the subsequent hostilities they continued firm friends and efficient allies of the French. In 1739 an officer under M. de Noailles, ascending the Mississippi to take part in Bienville’s projected attack on the Chickasaw, says: “This last [the Natchez tribe] is the cause of our war against the latter [the Chickasaw], and induces them to extend their expeditions to this very fort [Fort Rosalie] against the Ossogoulas, a small tribe of fourteen or fifteen warriors who have settled here

ᵃ Shes, Early Voyages on the Mississippi, p. 133, 1861.

ᵇ French, Historical Collections of Louisiana, pt. 3, pp. 138-139, 1851.

ᶜ La Harpe, Jour. Hist. de l'Établissement des Français à la Louisiane, pp. 310-311, 1831.

ᵈ Jesuit Relations, Thwaites ed. LXVII, p. 317, 1900.

ᵉ Du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, II, pp. 225-226, 1758.

ᶠ Shea’s Charlevoix’s History of New France, VI, p. 86, 1872.