The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands in Louisiana. They are a federally recognized tribe, the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.

The Chitimacha have an Indian reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. Their reservation is a small part of their precontact territory. They are the only Louisiana tribe who still control some of their original land, where they have long occupied areas of the Atchafalaya Basin, "one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent." In 2011 they numbered about 1100 people. In 2008 they partnered with Rosetta Stone in a two-year effort to develop software to support learning the language. Each tribal household was given a copy to support use of the language at home. The Chitimacha have used revenues from gambling to promote education and cultural preservation, founding a tribal museum and historic preservation office, and restoration of their language.

The Chitimacha are one of four federally recognized tribes in the state.

Name

According to the Chitimacha, their name comes from the term Pantch Pinankanc, meaning "men altogether red," also meaning "warrior." The name Chawasha, a subtribe of the Chitimacha, is a Choctaw term for "Raccoon Place." Washa is also Choctaw and means "Hunting Pace." Yaganechito means "Big Country."

Subtribes

The Chitimacha were divided into four sub-tribes: the Chawasha, Chitimacha, Washa, and Yagenachito. These were divided by their geography.

Historical lifeways

The Chitimacha established their villages in the many swamps, bayous, and rivers of the Atchafalaya Basin, "one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent."

20th century

The 1900 federal census recorded six Chitimacha families with a total of 55 people, three of whom were classified as full-bloods. In 1910 there were 69 Chitimacha recorded; 19 of their children were students at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where they boarded full time along with other Native American students from a wide variety of tribes. The Indian boarding schools were considered a means to assimilate the children into mainstream United States culture. They disrupted transmission of native languages by forcing the children to use English at school and taking them away from their families for lengthy periods of time.

The tribe was under economic pressure in the early 20th century, and sometimes members were forced to sell land because they could not afford taxes. Sarah Avery McIlhenney, a local benefactor whose family owned and operated the factory to manufacture Tabasco, responded to a call for aid by Chitimacha women. She purchased their last 260 acres of land at a sheriff's sale in 1915; then transferred it to the tribe. They ceded the land to the federal government (Department of Interior) to be held in trust as a reservation for the tribe. McIlhenny also encouraged Federal recognition of the Chitimacha as a tribe,

left|thumb|General [[Douglas MacArthur meeting with Native American troops in 1943, including SSgt. Alvin J. Vilcan of Charenton (third from the left), Louisiana, one of perhaps 70 then-surviving Chitimacha]]

Since that early 20th-century low, the population has increased as the people have recovered. Men began to gain better employment by working in the Louisiana oil fields as drillers and foremen. In the early 21st century, the tribe reported it has more than 900 enrolled members. The 2000 census reported a resident population of 409 persons living on the Chitimacha Indian Reservation. Of these, 285 identified as solely of Native American ancestry.

The reservation is located at in the northern part of the community of Charenton, in St. Mary Parish on Bayou Teche. This is in the Atchafalaya Basin, a rich estuary. The Chitimacha are the only Indigenous people in the state who still control some of their traditional lands. In the early 1990s, the tribe was contacted by the American Philosophical Society Library, which said it held Swadesh's papers and had found extensive notes on the Chitimacha language, including a draft grammar manual and dictionary. A small team was recruited to try to learn the language quickly and begin to prepare materials to transmit it, such as a storybook. Language immersion classes were started in the school for children.

Citizenship

Like all federally recognized tribes, the Chitimacha, through passage of their constitution, have established their own rules for tribal membership. According to the constitution, they require that members have a certain blood quantum and be able to document direct descent from a member listed on one of two official rolls:

  • Annuity Pay Roll of 1926, recorded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or
  • Revised census roll of June 1959, of record at the Choctaw Indian Agency, Philadelphia, Mississippi.

In addition, a prospective member must be able to document having at least one-sixteenth (1/16) degree Chitimacha Indian ancestry (equivalent to one great-great-grandparent). One basket maker who excelled at the double-weave technique, Ada Thomas, was honored as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983. Sarah Sense, an acclaimed artist and scholar of Chitimacha/Choctaw descent, has researched Chitimacha basket designs and incorporates these into two-dimensional woven photoworks and three-dimensional woven basket works.

Notable Chitimacha people

  • Christine Navarro Paul (1874–1946), basket maker
  • Sarah Sense (Chitimacha/Choctaw, born 1980), paper artist, photographer
  • Ada Thomas (1924–1992), basket maker
  • Ned Romero (1926-2017), actor and singer

References

Sources

  • Chitimacha Reservation, Louisiana United States Census Bureau

Further reading

  • Duggan, Betty J. 2000. "Revisiting Peabody Museum Collections and Chitimacha Basketry Revival", Symbols (Spring):18-22.
  • Gregory, Hiram F. 2006. "Asá: la Koasati Cane Basketry", In The Work of Tribal Hands: Southeastern Split Cane Basketry, edited by Dayna Bowker Lee and H.F. Gregory, pp. 115–134. Northwestern State University Press, Natchitoches, Louisiana.
  • Gregory, Hiram F. and Clarence H. Webb. 1975. "Chitimacha Basketry", Louisiana Archaeology 2:23-38.
  • Hoover, Herbert T. 1975. The Chitimacha People, Indian Tribal Series, Phoenix, Arizona.
  • Kniffen, Fred B., Hiram F. Gregory, and George A. Stokes. 1987. The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana from 1542 to the Present, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
  • Lee, Dana Bowker. 2006 "The Ties that Bind: Cane Basketry Traditions among the Chitimacha and Jena Band of Choctaw", In The Work of Tribal Hands: Southeastern Split Cane Basketry, edited by Dayna Bowker Lee and H.F. Gregory, pp. 43–72. Natchitoches, Louisiana: Northwestern State University Press
  • Usner. 2015, Daniel H. Weaving Alliances with Other Women: Chitimacha Indian Work in the New South, University of Georgia Press
  • John R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Smithsonian Institution, 1911, online text available