Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/264

252 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920 large force of Padoucas had marched toward the Missouri to attack the French in the Illinois country; but they were attacked by the Otoes and the Panimaha, who killed all but one Spaniard and many Padoucas. This one Spaniard, he said, was a prisoner among the Indians, and de Boisbriant, commandant in the Illinois, had sent for him. (Margry, vol. vi, p. 386).

In this Bienville was only repeating what de Boisbriant had written him April 24, 1721. It is to be noted that these Frenchmen said that the massacre was on the Kansas river, while Bandelier and Dunbar believe it was on the Platte.

The interesting point as to all this is that the Spaniards declared that the Indians who accompanied Villazur were Apaches, while the French, on information from tribes of the Missouri, referred to these native allies of the Spaniards as Padoucas.

Bourgmont, in 1724, left the Kansas village on the west bank of the Missouri north of the Kansas river and marched west or north-west for ten days to reach the Padouca village. A part of his people were on foot, and part mounted. He writes quite fully of the country he passed over and what he says of it suggests that the small camps he passed and this large Padouca village may have been somewhere near the junction of the Saline and the Smoky Hill rivers. He says these people hunt in summer and winter but are not entirely wandering—are partially sedentary—for they have villages with large houses (cabanes), and do some planting. The nation is very numerous and extends for about two hundred leagues. Those distant from the Spanish settlements used flint knives to skin their game and flint axes to cut down trees. The village visited had about one hundred and fifty houses, and the population is given as eight hundred warriors, fifteen hundred women, two thousand children, or nearly thirty persons to a house. This implies permanent houses like those of the earth-lodge people of the Missouri River valley. Into an ordinary skin lodge or tipi not more than ten or fifteen people could be crowded. Thus it would seem that the Padoucas must have lived in villages similar to those of the Pawnees and other earth-lodge people. The Comanches are not supposed to have had permanent houses, or to have

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