Atakapa
The Atakapa or Atacapa were an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico. The competing Choctaw people used this term for this people, and European settlers adopted the term from them. The Atakapan people were made up of several bands. They called themselves the Ishak , which translates as "the people." Within the Ishak there were two moieties which the Ishak identified as "The Sunrise People" and "The Sunset People". Although the people were decimated by infectious disease after European contact and declined as a people, survivors joined  other nations. After 1762, when Louisiana was transferred to Spain following French defeat in the Seven Years' War, little was written about the Atakapa as a people. Due to a high rate of deaths from infectious epidemics of the late 18th century, they ceased to function as a people. Survivors generally joined the Caddo, Koasati, and other neighboring nations, although they kept some traditions. Some culturally distinct Atakapan descendants survived into the early 20th century. Name. Their name was also spelled "Attakapa", "Attakapas", or "Attacapa". The Choctaw used this term, meaning "man-eater", for their practice of ritual cannibalism. Europeans  encountered the Choctaw first during their exploration, and adopted their name for this people to the west. The peoples lived in river valleys, along lake shores, and coasts from present-day Vermilion Bay, Louisiana to Galveston Bay, Texas. Subdivisions or bands. Atakapa-speaking peoples are called Atakapan, while Atakapa refers to a specific tribe. Atakapa-speaking peoples were divided into bands which were represented by totems, such as snake, alligator, and other natural life. Eastern Atakapa. The Eastern Atakapa (Hiyekiti Ishak, "Sunrise People") groups lived in present-day Acadiana parishes in southwestern Louisiana and are organized as three major regional  bands: Western Atakapa. The Western Atakapa (Hikike Ishak, "Sunset People") resided in southeastern Texas. They were organized as follows. Atakapa language. The Atakapa language was a language isolate, once spoken along the Louisiana and East Texas coast and believed extinct since the mid-20th century. John R. Swanton in 1919 proposed a Tunican language family that would include Atakapa, Tunica, and Chitimacha. Mary Haas later expanded this into the Gulf language family with the addition of the Muskogean languages. As of 2001, linguists generally do not consider these proposed families as proven. History. Atakapa oral history says that they originated from  the sea. An ancestral prophet laid out the rules of conduct. The first European contact with the Atakapa may have been in 1528 by survivors of the Spanish Pánfilo de Narváez expedition. Men in Florida had made two barges, in an attempt to sail to Mexico, and these were blown ashore on the Gulf Coast. One group of survivors met the Karankawa, while the other probably landed on Galveston Island. The latter recorded meeting a group who called themselves the Han, who may have been the Akokisa. In 1703, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, the French governor of "La Louisiane", sent  three men to explore the Gulf Coast west of the Mississippi River. The seventh nation they encountered were the Atakapa, who captured, killed and cannibalized one member of their party. In 1714 this tribe was one of 14 that were recorded as coming to Jean-Michel de Lepinay, who was acting French governor of Louisiana between 1717 and 1718, while he was fortifying Dauphin Island, Alabama. The Choctaw told the French settlers about the "People of the West," who represented subdivisions or tribes. The French referred to them as "les sauvages". The Choctaw used the name "Atakapa," meaning "people eater  (hattak" 'person', "apa" 'to eat'), for them. It referred to their practice of ritual cannibalism related to warfare. A French explorer, Francois Simars de Bellisle, lived among the Atakapa from 1719 to 1721. He described Atakapa feasts including consumption of human flesh, which he observed firsthand. The practice of cannibalism likely had a religious, ritualistic basis. French Jesuit missionaries urged the Atakapa to end this practice. The French historian Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz lived in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734. He wrote: Louis LeClerc Milfort, a Frenchman who spent 20 years living with and traveling among the Muscogee  (Creek), came upon the Atakapa in 1781 during his travels. He wrote: In 1760, the French Gabriel Fuselier de la Claire came into the Attakapas Territory, and bought all the land between Vermilion River and Bayou Teche from the Eastern Atakapa Chief Kinemo. Shortly after that a rival Indian tribe, the Appalousa (Opelousas), coming from the area between the Atchafalaya and Sabine rivers, exterminated the Eastern Atakapa. They had occupied the area between Atchafalaya River and "Bayou Nezpique" (Attakapas Territory). William Byrd Powell (1799–1867), a medical doctor and physiologist, regarded the Atakapan as cannibals. He noted that they traditionally flattened  their skulls frontally and not occipitally, a practice opposite to that of neighboring tribes, such as the Natchez Nation. The Atakapa traded with the Chitimacha tribe. In the early 18th century, some Atakapa married into the Houma tribe of Louisiana. Members of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe joined the Atakapa tribe in the late 18th century. Culture. The Atakapan ate shellfish and fish. The women gathered bird eggs, the American lotus ("Nelumbo lutea") for its roots and seeds, as well as other wild plants. The men hunted deer, bear, and bison, which provided meat, fat, and hides. The women cultivated varieties  of maize. They processed the meats, bones and skins to prepare food for storage, as well as to make clothing, tent covers, tools, sewing materials, arrow cases, bridles and rigging for horses, and other necessary items for their survival. The men made their tools for hunting and fishing: bows and arrows, fish spears with bone-tipped points, and flint-tipped spears. They used poisons to catch fish, caught flounder by torchlight, and speared alligators in the eye. The people put alligator oil on exposed skin to repel mosquitoes. The Bidai snared game and trapped animals in cane pens. By 1719 , the Atakapan had obtained horses and were hunting bison from horseback. They used dugout canoes to navigate the bayous and close to shore, but did not venture far into the ocean. In the summer, families moved to the coast. In winters, they moved inland and lived in villages of houses made of pole and thatch. The Bidai lived in bearskin tents. The homes of chiefs and medicine men were erected on earthwork mounds made by several previous cultures including the Mississippian. 20th and 21st centuries. It is believed that most Western Atakapa tribes or subdivisions were decimated by the 1850s , mainly from infectious disease and poverty. Armojean Reon (ca. 1873–1925) of Lake Charles, Louisiana was noted as a fluent Atakapa speaker. Different groups claiming to be descendants of the Atakapa have created several organizations, and some have unsuccessfully petitioned Louisiana, Texas, and the United States for status as a recognized tribe. A member of the "Atakapa Indian de Creole Nation," claiming to be trustee, monarch, and deity, filed a number of lawsuits in federal court claiming, among other things, that the governments of Louisiana and the United States seek to "monopolize intergalactic foreign trade." The suits were dismissed as frivolous . Another group, the Atakapa Ishak Tribe of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana, also called the Atakapa Ishak Nation, based in Lake Charles, Louisiana obtained nonprofit status in 2008 as an "ethnic awareness" organization. They also refer to themselves as the Atakapa-Ishak Nation and met en masse on October 28, 2006. The Atakapas Ishak Nation of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana unsuccessfully petitioned the US federal government for recognition on February 2, 2007. These organizations are not federally recognized or state-recognized as Native American tribes. Legacy. The names of present-day towns in the region can be traced to  the Ishak; they are derived both from their language and from French transliteration of the names of their prominent leaders and names of places. The town of Mermentau is a corrupted form of the local chief "Nementou". "Plaquemine," as in Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée and Plaquemines Parish, is derived from the Atakapa word "pikamin", meaning "persimmon". Bayou Nezpiqué was named for an Atakapan who had a tattooed nose. Bayou Queue de Tortue was believed to have been named for Chief "Celestine La Tortue" of the Atakapas nation. The name "Calcasieu" is a French transliteration of an Atakapa name: "katkosh", for "eagle , and yok", "to cry". The city of Lafayette, Louisiana, is planning a series of trails, funded by the Federal Highway Administration, to be called the "Atakapa-Ishak Trail". It will consist of a bike trail connecting downtown areas along the bayous Vermilion and Teche, which are now accessible only by foot or boat.