Story of a People (continued-5)
FACTS:
The following was extracted from the petition of the United Houma Nation for federal acknowledgement.
Numerous citations document that the home base for the Houma nation was just downriver from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, near a sharp bend in the Mississippi River called “Houmas Point” and the modern village of Burnside, located across the river. Catholic missionary Pere Francis Le Maire logged the tribe’s location roughly in this area in 1714. In 1718 Charles LeGac noted the presence of the Houma near the “River of the Chetis.” The highly-regarded map by Guillaume De L’Isle of 1718 showed the tribe’s (Houmas) village between New Orleans, Louisiana and the first distributaries branching from the Mississippi River to the north. On his arrival in Louisiana in the same year, Le Page Du Pratz listed the Houma Nation as living near La Fourche, i.e., in his words, 20 leagues above New Orleans. In 1725, Bienville said the tribe was 12 leagues above the Bayougoula and 6 leagues below the Chitimacha.
The Houma Indian tribe stayed near LaFourche for nearly a century, living on one or both sides continuously during that time. Even today, the Houma people refer to the land as having been given to them by the “French emperor” and both Spanish and English colonial governments respected their rights to the property.
More fraternal relations prevailed between the Houma and Chitimacha in 1716 when the Chitimacha tribe’s chiefs invoked the help of the Houma tribal leaders in seeking a formal peace agreement with the French. The influence of the river-biding Houma was apparently more recognized at that time than that of the Chitimacha, whose ranks had been severely thinned by slave trade and whose settlements were dispersed through the lower Atchafalaya Basin. Peace between the decimated Chitimacha and the French was officially established in 1718.
The Houma tribe was active diplomatically in this time. Two tribes sued for peace with the Houma by “signing the calumet”, the Chitimacha in 1716 and the Tunica and Natchez in 1723. The Houma tribe joined with the other Indian Nations in signing their calumet at a peace parley called by the French governor M. de L’Epinet at the Isle Dauphine in 1717. Attending were delegates of the “Chaqtos, the Tequachas, the Apalaches, the Tinssas, the Mobiliens, the Tomez, the Gens des Forches, the Natchez, the Chicachas, the Nassitoches, the Yatacez, the Alibamons, the Canapouces and others.
Despite their apparently frequent tribal conflicts, Bienville offers a highly positive assessment of Houma relations with the French in 1725: This Nation [Houma] is very brave and very laborious… They have rendered us good service in the famines we have experienced in recent years by the abundance of provisions they have furnished us.
OPINIONS:
The Houmas were recognized as a sovereign nation by colonial governments. Perhaps they will be once again.
