"On the 20th M. de Bienville embarked in a felucca with a Bayagoula chief and twelve Canadians, to visit the Colapissa nation, who lived on the right bank of lake Pontchartrain, about eight leagues inland.
On the 22d he arrived at their landing ; and on the 23d he repaired to the Colapissa village, which he found to contain upwards of three hundred warriors, all armed and waiting to attack him. He kept at a distance, and sent the Bayagoula chief to hold a parley with them, and to ascertain their object. He learned from them that two days before, two Englishmen, with two hundred Chicachas, had surprised their village, and carried off a great number of their men, and they had supposed them to be of the same nation. The Bayagoula chief having undeceived them, advised them to form an alliance. They accordingly laid down their arms and received M. de Bienville peaceably ; after which he returned to Biloxi, where he arrived on the 29th." - Jean Baptist Bénard de La Harpe, from the Historical journal of the establishment of the French in Louisiana“In some histories and maps you will find the Choctaw country called Colapisa. Some white dignitary was being rowed past a portion of land where Choctaws stood at intervals watching the boat. The stranger asked who they were. ‘Haklo Pisa,’ replied his guide. Haklo pisa means watch and see, the Indian’s way of saying sentinels, but the stranger mistook it for the name of the tribe and reported the people as Colapisas.” - Fr. Adrien Rouquette, in interview with the Times Picayune, opens a new window, September 22, 1882
At the time of the coming of the French to Louisiana, a tribe known as the Acolapissa was living in present-day St. Tammany Parish. When Bienville visited them in 1699, they dwelt in six villages a few miles inland up the Pearl River. Sometime between 1702 and 1705 they relocated to Bayou Castine. André Pénicaut, opens a new window, a French carpenter-turned-envoy, stayed with them for a time in 1706, observing their lifeways and customs. He recorded how the Acolapissa were adept at fishing, employing nets, fishing lines, and hooks to quickly and efficiently bring in large catches. They farmed the land, gathered fruits from the woods, and hunted game. Their dishes included fish grilled in bear fat and sagamite, made of cornmeal and beans. They made sculptures in wood and stone of animals and dragons, and these they displayed in their temples where they interred the bones of their dearly departed.
According to Pénicaut, the Acolapissa moved again in 1718, this time establishing themselves on the Mississippi River. In 1732, architect Alexander De Batz, opens a new window visited them in their new location and made a sketch of their temple and their chief’s residence, shown on the right. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Acolapissa had joined with the Houma and the Bayougoula to become (in the words of one observer quoted by Swanton, opens a new window) “but one and the same nation in different settlements”.
John Swanton, in Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, opens a new window, identified two possible etymologies for the name Acolapissa, both coming from Choctaw: the first one, suggested earlier by Adrien Rouquette, was haklo pisa, "(those who) listen and look", the other being okla pisa, "the people who watch". Adrien Rouquette, opens a new window believed that they were a southern branch of the larger Choctaw, opens a new window nation tasked with reconnaissance of the coast. The author of Mandeville: A Historical Compedium, opens a new window wrote, “The Acolapissa and Choctaw tribes of Indians were greatly mixed together ; the language being the same, differentiating only by idioms adapted to circumstances.” Although the Acolapissa had moved to the banks of Mississippi River above New Orleans, a remnant may have stayed behind, but whether the Choctaw who lived in St. Tammany Parish in the nineteenth century were directly or partly descended from the Acolapissa might no longer be known for sure.
To learn more about the Acolapissa, check out these books from St. Tammany Parish Library:
Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico
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