The Avoyel or Avoyelles were a small Native American tribe who at the time of European contact inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the

Atchafalaya River The Atchafalaya River ( french: La Rivière Atchafalaya, es, Río Atchafalaya) is a distributary of the Mississippi River and Red River in south central Louisiana in the United States. It flows south, just west of the Mississippi River, and ...

near present-day

Marksville, Louisiana Marksville is a small city in and the parish seat of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 5,702 at the 2010 census, an increase of 165 over the 2000 tabulation of 5,537. Louisiana's first land-based casino, Paragon Casi ...

. Also called variously ''Shi'xkaltī'ni'' (Stone-Arrow-Point people) in Tunican and ''Tassenocogoula'', ''Tassenogoula'', ''Toux Enongogoula'', and ''Tasånåk Okla'' in the Mobilian trade language; all names (including the

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

''Avoyel'') are said by early French chroniclers to mean either "Flint People" or "People of the Rocks". This is thought to either reflect their active trading of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

for tools from local sources on their land in the eponymously named modern

Avoyelles Parish Avoyelles (french: Paroisse des Avoyelles) is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,07 ...

or more likely as their status as middlemen in trading flint from

Caddoan The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of ...

peoples to their north to the stone deficit Atakapa and

Chitimacha The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who live in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly on their reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. They are the only Indigenous people in the st ...

peoples of the Gulf Coast. The Avoyel were also known by the French as the ''petits Taensas'' (English: Little Taensa), who were mentioned in writings by explorer

Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville (16 July 1661 – 9 July 1706) or Sieur d'Iberville was a French soldier, explorer, colonial administrator, and trader. He is noted for founding the colony of Louisiana in New France. He was born in Montreal to French ...

in 1699. But they are a different group than the Natchezan

speaking Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

Taensa The Taensa (also Taënsas, Tensas, Tensaw, and ''Grands Taensas'' in French) were a Native American people whose settlements at the time of European contact in the late 17th century were located in present-day Tensas Parish, Louisiana. The mean ...

or ''grand Taensas''.

Language

History

Described by some historians as being a

group, and by others as a Natchezan member of the Mary Haas' Gulf hypothesis Muskogean Language Macrofamily along with the

Natchez Natchez may refer to: Places * Natchez, Alabama, United States * Natchez, Indiana, United States * Natchez, Louisiana, United States * Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States * Grand Village of the Natchez, a site o ...

and

; their true linguistic and ethnic affiliation is somewhat uncertain because no written or spoken version of their language has survived. At the time of European contact they lived in a number of villages on the Red River in locations near present-day

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

and a palisaded village near Marksville. They controlled the river to its confluence with the lower Black River, Upper Atchafalaya River and the Mississippi. Never numerous, they are recorded by the French as numbering 280 in 1698, and with their population declining markedly after that. They were likely affected by the same drastic decimation as were other native groups, primarily due to new infectious diseases unwittingly carried by Europeans to which they had no acquired

immunity Immunity may refer to: Medicine * Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease * ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press Biology * Immune system Engineering * Radiofrequence immunity desc ...

. By 1805 the Avoyel were said to number only two or three women. The Avoyel survivors were believed to have been absorbed by marriage into the neighboring Tunica, Ofo, and Biloxi peoples who had moved to the area sometime in the late 1780s or 1790s because of encroachment by Euro-Americans at their previous locations.

References

External links

The Avoyel-TaensaTribe/Nation of Louisiana Inc.
Natchez people Plaquemine Mississippian culture Native American tribes in Louisiana Unattested languages of North America {{NorthAm-native-stub