Chapter II: A History of Jefferson County, Texas

The Aboriginal Inhabitants

by W. T. Block

To estimate the time span of the occupancy of Jefferson County, Texas by aboriginal inhabitants is extremely difficult, but the best available sources indicate a period of 2,000 years. Dr. D. J. Millet of McNeese State University, who is an authority on the history of Southwest Louisiana, believes that the Attakapas Indian tribe arrived in that area about the time of the birth of Christ.¹ The only known and complete Attakapan vase, of which the writer has knowledge, was excavated at Johnson’s Bayou, Louisiana, four miles east of Sabine Pass, Texas, in 1970. The curator of anthropology at Louisiana State University has identified the dark brown and beautifully incised artifact as belonging to the “Marksville Culture,” dated between the years one and 500 A.D.² However, this does not eliminate the possibility that the Attakapas tribe arrived at a later date, and was preceded by other aborigines.

The domain of the Attakapas Indians during the eighteenth century did not include the locality or political entity known as “Poste des Attakapas” around Lafayette, Louisiana. Instead, this tribe inhabited the region of the Gulf Coast between the San Jacinto River in Texas and Vermillion Bay, Louisiana to a depth of about thirty miles inland. Tribal traditions held that the Attakapan warriors once were sorely defeated in battle near Saint Martinsville, Louisiana, and thus may have fled to the marsh territories along the coast, which were shunned by other tribes.³

The Texas tribes along the Trinity River, the Orcoquisas (Akokisas), Deadose, and Bidais, were marginal Attakapans, who differed from their Louisiana cousins only in their dialect of language.⁴ One writer has speculated that it may have been the Orcoquisa tribe that held Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca as a captive in the year 1528.⁵ At any rate, the Attakapas tribe possessed a stone-age culture similar to that of the Karankawas of the South Texas coast, differing from the latter prin­cipally in language and physique, the Karankawas being “tall, well-built, muscular,” whereas the Attakapans are described as possessing “bodies stout, stature short, and heads of large size placed between the shoulders.”⁶

From the time of their earliest contact with Europeans, the Attakapas tribe bore the unsavory reputation of being cannibals, and the tribal name does mean “man-eater” in the Choctaw language. This reputation stems principally from an account published in Paris in 1758, which described the adventures of Simars de Belle-Isle, a French naval officer, who was held captive for two years by the Orcoquisa tribe. Belle-Isle denied much of the original account, but a subsequent version pub­lished in Paris in 1768 by Jean-Bernard Bossu claimed to have been prepared from Belle-Isle’s own manuscript .⁷

Belle-Isle was one of five officers of the French frigate Marechal d’Estees, who went ashore on Galveston Island in 1719 to supervise the filling of water casks. For some unknown reason, the vessel’s captain sailed away without them, leaving four to die slowly of starvation, and the sturdier Belle-Isle as the lone survivor.⁸ Shortly afterward, he was taken prisoner by a war party of the Orcoquisa tribe. Belle-Isle suffered many indignities, was given as a slave and husband to an old widow, but eventually he was adopted into the tribe as a full-fledged warrior. The Frenchman claimed that the Orcoquisas killed and dried the flesh of Indian prisoners, which was frequently offered to him as food. With the assistance of a friendly Hasinai Indian, Belle-Isle made his escape in 1721, and rejoined the French forces of Louis de Saint Denis at Natchitoches, Louisiana.⁹

Subsequent French officials, Athanase de Mezieres¹⁰ and Jean Baptiste de Bienville, ¹¹ supported Belle-Isle’s account, as did the Spaniard Nemesio de Salcedo, ¹² but they were quoting from secondary sources. However, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bemardo de Galvez, did not hesitate to include 140 Attakapan warriors from Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana in the Spanish army, which attacked British forces along the Mississippi River and in West Florida in 1779. Galvez wrote “the Indian allies, likewise, created no disturbances.”¹³ Also, French traders continued to barter with the Attakapas tribe throughout the eighteenth century with no apparent fear of being eaten.¹⁴

Fred Kniffen, a contemporary Attakapan historian, claims that the tribe was “undeserving of their ancient reputation as wandering cannibals.”¹⁵ So does Lauren C. Post of San Diego State College, who asked “how did Belle-Isle avoid the pot and spit?” According to Post, no case of Attakapan cannibalism was ever reported during the long period of French and Anglo occupancy of Western Louisiana.¹⁶

Father Augustin Morfi, a Spanish priest of Nacogdoches, visited the Attakapas villages in Jefferson and Orange counties during 1777. Although he reported objectively on the primitive state of their culture, Morfi made no mention of cannibalism in his journal entry, which follows:

Although the Atacapas [sicj are to be regarded as dependents of Louisiana, they are numbered among the Texas nations because of the ease with which they changed their domicile, particularly since they are united with the Orcoquisas, with whom they form almost a single nation. They are friends of the Carancahuases [sic] whom they accompany whenever they can on their robberies. They live at the mouths of the Nechas and Trinidad Rivers, along whose banks they wander, without a fixed domicile; they neglect the cultivation of their fertile lands, occupy themselves with and live from robbery when they can manage to do so, or from the game which abounds in the forests. The nation is few in number and very cowardly, nor doesn’t employ its arms except against beasts or the unfortunates who are shipwrecked.¹⁷

Father Morfi accompanied Antonio Gil Ybarbo’s expedition to Jefferson County in July 1777 to investigate the presence of Englishmen on Spanish soil. At that time, the English surveying sloop Florida was mapping and sounding the Sabine River, Sabine Lake, and the Sabine Pass, and both the English and the Spanish recorded some in­formation about the Indians of that area. Father Morfi drew a map, which located the sites of two Attakapan villages, one on each side of the Neches River near its mouth. He noted that the Indians in the western village had traded with the English on two occasions and “were supplied with their goods.” The English map, which shows the wreckage of a Jamaican ship in the Sabine Pass, recorded the rescue of three stranded sailors, and the plundering of the wreck by “the savages.”¹⁸

Although Father Morfi’s map identified the Jefferson County Indian village as being Attakapan, it is possible that it belonged to the Orcoquisa group, for the Bidais tribe once informed Joaquin de Orobio, the Spanish captain at Bahia, that the Orcoquisas “occupied the country from the Neches to a point halfway between the Trinity and the Brazos.”¹⁹ The lower Neches River Indians were also known by the tribal name of Nacazil.²⁰ That the Spanish used the names “Orcoquisa” and “Attakapas” almost interchangeably is apparent in a letter to Juan Maria, Baron de Ripperda, a part of which reads:

The Orcoquisa Indian trader has told the captain of militia…that a stranded English veasel was found in the mouth of the Rio de Nechas and that the English have given presents to the nearby Apelusas and Atakapas Indians. The said captain of militia [Antonio Gil Ybarbo] went at once with thirty of his men… Going directly to the pueblo of the Orcoquisas, he learned from them that the English had withdrawn He went on to inspect this place…with two paid guides from the said Orcoquisas…and later came upon the stranded vessel…completely abandoned, although the Atakapas Indians who were sup­plied with their goods said that the English had left three of their number guarding the vessel…²¹

Utilizing Morfi’s map and other sources, the evidence at hand strongly indicates that Port Neches, Texas, known earlier as Grigsby’s Bluff, was the former site of the Attakapas Indian village in Jefferson County, and may have been occupied by that tribe for several centuries. In 1841, the Houston Telegraph and Texas Register published an account of the six ancient burial mounds at Grigsby’s Plantation, ²² on the ”west bank of Neches River, twelve miles below Beaumont.”²³ The newspaper stated that Joseph Grigsby’s slaves had leveled some of the mounds, each twenty feet high, sixty feet wide, and 200 feet long, as a site for Grigsby’s residence and barns. The report added that the burial mounds contained strata of seashells interspersed with layers of “crude vessels,” broken earthenware, and human bones, which crumbled to dust as soon as exposed to the air. ²⁴

Another article confirmed that one of the six mounds survived until 1893. A visiting geologist in that year reported that “the mound at Grigsby’s Bluff ... is about 1 50 yards long, from 15 to 20 yards wide, and from 10 to 15 feet high,” and contained “remains of human workmanship in the shape of broken pottery, arrow points, etc.”²⁵ An article published in 1905 added that the shells at Grigsby’s Bluff “were carried there by the aboriginal settlers of the land. Pieces of human bone and of animal have been found there, and specimens of broken pottery, blackened by fire, are found among the shells.”²⁶ Since the Attakapan village was small, it is logical to assume that many centuries elapsed while the large quantity of conch, clam, and oyster shell, which the Indians had carried by dugout from Sabine Lake, accumulated in the mounds.

When Father Morfi referred to “the ease with which they changed their domicile,” he meant that the Attakapans had seasonal, nomadic habits. Typically, the Indians of Jefferson County broke up into small bands during the summer months to occupy the marsh ridges along the coast, where seafood existed in abundance. They lived in com­munal existence only during the winter months when they paddled back to their village to be near an abundant supply of firewood. It seems logical that the elderly and sick members of the tribe probably remained in the village throughout the year.²⁷

Although Attakapans were adept at use of the bow and arrow, they were unerringly proficient at hurling the fish spear, so much so that the warriors could stab “small fish but ten inches long at a distance of twenty paces.”²⁸ They used a shorter dart and torchlight to spear flounders at night, and a rake made from two poles to loosen oysters from the reefs.²⁹ Still another Attakapan delicacy was alligator meat, which was procured by spearing the reptiles through the eyes. The carcasses were then cooked upon beds of charcoal and heated oyster shells, and incising entrenchments in the flesh around the backbone collected the alligator oil. The oil was used as fuel for lamps made from conch shells and dried moss. The Attakapans also used alligator oil on their bodies to repel mosquitoes, a practice which caused the tribesmen to emit a particularly offensive odor.³⁰

One historian—Joseph O. Dyer of Lake Charles, Louisiana—believed that the Attakapans obtained their pottery from the Caddo tribes to the north, and their “conical or globular oil jugs from the Karankawas.”³¹ If this is true, then their intertribal trade was extensive, for the shores of Sabine Lake are still lined with the broken shards of Attakapan pottery, the most frequently found vestige of their erstwhile existence. Also illogical is the belief that the Attakapans were forced to obtain their oil jugs from the Karankawas, a tribe whose culture was equally primitive. While the Attakapans undoubtedly obtained some of their pottery through barter, evidence observed by the writer has indicated that the tribe could heat their cooking pits to white-hot temperatures sufficient for firing clay, an abundance of which exists throughout Jefferson County. Whether of their own workmanship or not, existent shards indicate that Attakapan pottery was often of large size, up to five-gallon capacity, and that it was well-fired and utilitarian. Although not ornate in appearance, it was often attractively incised.³²

As is often the case with primitive cultures, the Attakapans had a complex assortment of tribal traditions and social customs. Their rules regarding bigamy and incest were similar to those of Anglo- Americans.³³ Attakapans practiced a nature religion and believed that their ancestors had originated in the sea. Tribal fathers changed their names at the birth of the first child, becoming “father of” plus the name of the child. If the child died, the original name was resumed.³⁴

In general, women held a much inferior position in the village. Because males outnumbered females, Attakapans sometimes bartered for wives with other tribes. They may have unwittingly practiced infant skull deformation because of the type of headrest that they used.³⁵ Women performed all menial labor, including the building of the elevated shell mound where the chief’s abode was constructed. Female attire was simple, a deer skin with a neck hole in the center and gathered with thongs at the waist. During pregnancy, mothers-to-be were isolated in a single hut in the village and cared for by the older women in the tribe.³⁶

Attakapan tribal structure was extremely loose with no centralized authority. Each local chief ruled his village and the waters adjacent to it.³⁷ During the mid-eighteenth century, the chiefs of the four Orcoquisa “rancherias,” or villages, were named Canos, El Gordo, Mateo, and Calzones Colorados.³⁸ In Southwest Louisiana, the once large Attakapan village on Lacassine River was abandoned in 1799, and the Indians moved to the Mermentau River village.³⁹ In 1819, the last Attakapan village in the Lake Charles, Louisiana vicinity “contained forty miserable, dirty huts, the chiefs and shaman’s being on an oyster mound, and somewhat larger in size.”⁴⁰

From existent lexicons of their language, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton was able to establish that the lower Trinity River tribes were actually Attakapan in derivation, not Caddoan as had been previously thought, and that their language contained only minute dialectal differences from the language of the eastern Attakapans.⁴¹ In 1885, Dr. Albert Gatschet utilized two old squaws to prepare a vocabulary of the language spoken in the Lake Charles, Louisiana vicinity. Jean Berenger, a French sea captain, prepared a similar vocabulary from members of the Orcoquisa tribe, “which differed but slightly from the dialect of Lake Charles.”⁴²

While the population of the Attakapas tribe may have been large at some time in the past, it was never so during the eighteenth century, during which time the tribe steadily declined in numbers. John R. Swanton, a leading Indian historian, stated that there were approximately 3,500 Attakapans alive in 1698, half of which lived in Texas. Swanton reported that only 175 tribal members were living in Louisiana in 1805,⁴³ but his figure conflicts with another account. 0. B. Faulk, in The Last Years of Spanish Texas, noted that, in 1806, three hundred Attakapan families petitioned for and received permission from the Spanish to re-settle in Texas on the northern waters of the Sabine River.⁴⁴

Exactly how and when the Attakapas tribe vanished from Jefferson County may always re­main an unsolved mystery, but the writer believes that their disappearance was rapid and possibly calamitous in nature. Florence Stratton, in The Story of Beaumont, recounted the tales of elderly persons, who claimed that mounted Indians still existed in the county as late as l860.⁴⁵ However, such Indians, probably members of the Alabama tribe who had come south to trade, had no connection with Jefferson County’s aboriginal inhabitants.

In 1820, Juan Antonio Padilla claimed that the Orcoquisa and Bidais Indians on the Trinity River and the Nacazil on the lower Neches still numbered 800 persons.⁴⁶ However, Padilla’s figure seems inflated when compared to the estimates of his contemporary historians, and the writer believes that Padilla quoted from an obsolete source. Padilla’s description of the Jefferson and Orange County Indians reads:

The Nacazil live on the Neches River near the lagoons where it empties into the sea. They number about two hundred. Their customs are simple. They are fond of hunting and of farming. They frequent the seacoast and visit Atascosito when troops are stationed there. They are skilled in the management of canoes, and they go in them to Opelousas [sic] and Carcashu [Calcasieu] with their products. They drink all kinds of liquors, of which they are very fond.⁴⁷

It is doubtful that the Jefferson County Indians migrated to Louisiana at a time when, following the Louisiana Purchase, the Louisiana members of the tribe were seeking refuge in Texas. As early as June, 1785, at a time when Attakapan families would be frequenting the sea coast, Don Jose de Evia made no mention of Indians when he mapped Sabine Lake, the Sabine River, and the Neches River, although he noted the presence of Indians on the Calcasieu River nearby.⁴⁸ Colonel William F. Gray crossed Jefferson and Orange counties in April 1836, spending a day and night at present day Port Neches, but recorded nothing about the existence of Indians there.⁴⁹ And there is no mention of the presence of Indians anywhere among the early records of the 1830’s at the Jefferson County courthouse.

The disappearance of the Attakapas tribe collectively is somewhat less shrouded in mystery, for it is known that small pox was a contributing factor. Of the last nine survivors of the eastern Attakapans still alive in Louisiana in 1908, all had been absorbed through intermarriage into Acadian or Anglo-American families.⁵⁰ The fate of the 300 Attakapan families said to have migrated to Texas in 1806 is unknown. The Attakapas, Orcoquisa, Bidais, and Deadose tribes are not listed among those tribes who signed treaties with the Republic of Texas at Bird’s Fort on Trinity River on September 9, 1843, or later at Tehuacana Creek on October 9, 1844.⁵¹ Perhaps by those dates, any large remnants of Attakapan survivors had already re-settled in Oklahoma (in the case of the migrants from Louisiana), or been absorbed into other tribes.

Because of Spanish missionary activities among the Orcoquisas and Bidais, more is known about the extinction of those tribes. Small pox outbreaks among the Bidais killed half of that tribe during the years l776-l777.⁵² The Spanish calculated the total number of Orcoquisa warriors as being only fifty in l785, ⁵³ and General Manuel Mier y Teran, Mexican commander of the Eastern Provinces, estimated the combined Orcoquisa-Bidais population to number only forty families in 1828, the lower Trinity River Orcoquisa villages having been abandoned by that date.⁵⁴ In 1854, a handful of Orcoquisa-Bidais survivors were removed to the Brazos reservation, but, five years later, were re-settled in Oklahoma, where they were absorbed by other tribes.⁵⁵

For lack of acceptable evidence to the contrary, it is the writer’s surmise that the aboriginal inhabitants of Jefferson County either had mi­grated or become extinct by the time of the first white settlement there in 1824-1825. Had Indians survived there to a later date, their presence would certainly have been recorded in one of the many journals or public records of that period. Today, only arrow heads or pottery shards remain to be found, silent testimony of the highly-skilled fishermen who occupied Jefferson County more than two centuries ago.

INDIAN ARTIFACTS—Pictured above are a variety of Attakapas Indian artifacts, including pottery shards, spear and arrow points, skin scrapers, etc., found by John Prescott of Johnson’s Bayou along the shore of Sabine Lake. The incised vase dates to about the year 500 A.D.

ATTAKAPAS OIL JUG—Used principally for storing alligator oil, the bullet- shaped fragment (left, center) also served as a canteen.

Grigsby’s Bluff Shell Banks Old Indian Burial Place

Beaumont, Texas, Dec. 26—Captain Jack Caswell, an old-timer of this county and a steam boatman away back before the war, was in the city a day or two since, when asked by the News correspondent if he knew anything of interest, he answered, “Well, no...” He was about to walk away when his eye turned downward and he saw a little round white shell.

“Why, here are some of the old shells from the shellbank,” continued the captain. “We brought these shells up on the old steamer Rabb. It took us a long time to handle them, and we made some curious discoveries. We found several perfect skeletons buried in the banks, and the people that lived in them must have been seven feet high. We took a bone from a lower leg and placed it by Captain Rabb’s, and he is six feet, and the bone was six inches too long for him. We supposed that they were the old Flathead Indians, as the skull from about an inch above the eye socket turned straight back and was as flat as a pancake clear to the rear end of the head. The skeletons were arranged in such a manner as to indicate that they were all buried at once and that Grigsby’s Bluff [Port Neches] was a favorite happy hunting ground for the once extensive tribe of Flathead Indians. According to their custom they had placed clay pots and various cooking utensils made of earthenware alongside their bodies. There were also large pan-shaped shells, shells for holding water, and cooking shells that, even left the signs of the fire visible.”

The deeper into the bank we went, the more signs we saw, and when we left with the shells, the old relics and skeletons were lying on the surface.” This historic old point, named Grigsby ‘s Bluff for an old settler, is fifteen miles southeast of Beaumont on the Neches River. It is one of the prettiest Spots in the country. The bluff rises gradually and beautiful shade and fig trees cover the pretty natural lawn. Then just below is the shell bank, where thousands of tons of these round little white shells form a bank ten to twenty feet high and running back some distance… The steamer W. P. Rabb brought several cargoes of them up to Beaumont, and it was on one of these trips that Captain Jack and his party discovered the old relics. (Galveston Daily News, Dec. 28, 1896).

Endnotes

¹ Quoted from “Some Notes on The History of Cameron Parish,” p. 4, a sixteen-page address delivered by Dr. D. J. Millet at the April 1972 session of Cameron Parish Historical Society, Cameron, Louisiana, copy owned by the writer.

² Letter, R. W. Newman, curator of anthropology, to John Prescott, Cameron, Louisiana, dated Louisiana State University, June 16, 1970. Prescott has excavated six Attakapan fire pits at one site, and observed that the Attakapans’ diet included deer, bear, and alligator in addition to seafood. Despite human skull fragments, the evidence found there is inconclusive concerning alleged Attakapan cannibalism.

³ Harry L. Griffin, The Attakapas Country. A History of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana (New Orleans: Pelican Publishing Company, 1959), pp. 7-5.

⁴ Lauren C. Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians of Southwest Louisiana,” Louisiana History, III (Summer 1962), p. 228.

⁵ W. W. Newcomb, The Indians of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), p. 317.

⁶ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, pp. 63, 320; Griffin, Attakapas County, p.7.

⁷ S. Feiler (editor translator), Jean-Bernard Bossu’s Travels in The Interior of North America, 1751-1762 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Ness, 1962), p. 186n; Griffin, Attakapas Country, p. 7.

⁸ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, p. 317; Gerald Ashford, Spanish Texas Yesterday and Today (New York: Jenkins Book Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 115-121.

⁹ Feiler (ed.), Jean-Bernard Bossu ‘s Travels, pp. 186-190.

¹⁰ Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, pp. 227-228.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 224-225.

¹² Charles W. Hackett (ed.), Pichardo’s Treatise on The Limits of Texas and Louisiana (4 volumes; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931), p. 221.

¹³ Griffin, Attakapas Country, p. 8; Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, p. 230.

¹⁴ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, p. 318.

¹⁵ Fred B. Kniffen, “The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana,” Louisiana Conservation Review, IV (July 1935), p. 10.

¹⁶ Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, pp. 225-226.

¹⁷ Hackett (ed.), Piehardo s Treatise, III, pp. 65-66; Fray Juan Augustin Morfi, History of Texas, 1673-1779 (2 volumes; Albuquerque: The Quivira Society, 1935) p. 80. The quote is from Piehardo s Treatise, which differs somewhat from the one in History of Texas, perhaps due to translation loss.

¹⁸ Hackett (ed.), Pichardo’s Treatise, I, p. 384, map p. 389; Map D-965, Captain George Gauld, July 22, 1777, British Admiralty Archives, copy owned by the writer; H. E. Bolton, Texas in The Middle Eighteenth Century (reprint; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), p. 425.

¹⁹ Bolton, Texas in The Middle Eighteenth Century, p. 334n.

²⁰ Juan Antonio Padilla, “Texas In 1820,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXIII (July 1919), p. 51.

²¹ Hackett (ed), Pichardo ‘s Treatise, I, pp. 384-385.

²² Joseph Grigsby, a pioneer cotton grower, settled at Port Neches, Texas on a Mexican land grant issued in 1834.

²³ (Houston) Telegraph and Texas Register, June 2, 1841.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Kennedy, ‘The Geology of Jefferson County, Texas,” American Geologist, p. 269.

²⁶ Russell, “Pioneer Remisences of Jefferson County: Biography of Joseph Grigsby,” Beaumont Journal  November 5, 1905.

²⁷ Hackett (ed.), Pichardo’s Treatise, III, pp. 65-66, H. E. Bolton, “Spanish Activities on The Lower Trinity River, 1746-1771,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVI (April, 1913), p. 346; Marvin C. Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LX (July, 1956), p. 48. The Bidais and Deadose branches were the only Attakapans without seasonal, migratory habits.

²⁸ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, p. 323.

²⁹ Ibid

³⁰ Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, p. 42.

³¹ Ibid., p.41.

³² W. T. Block and W. D. Quick, “Artifacts Still Abound,” Port Arthur News, October 3, 1971, p. 1c.

³³ Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, p. 43.

³⁴ John R. Swanton, “Indian Tribes of The Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of The Gulf of Mexico,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 43 (Washington, D. C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1911), p. 363.

³⁵ Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, p. 42.

³⁶ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, pp. 321, 327-328.

³⁷ Ibid. pp. 325-326.

³⁸ Bolton, “Spanish Activities on The Lower Trinity River” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, pp. 344-345. Several Attakapan chiefs living between 1775-1800 gave their names to the streams of Southwest Louisiana. These include Mermentau, Lacassine, Celestine le Tortue, and Calcasieu, the latter name meaning “crying eagle” in the Attakapas language. See Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, pp. 229, 231, 238.

³⁹ Post, “Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, p.238.

⁴⁰ Newcomb, Indians of Texas, p. 326.

⁴¹ Bolton, Texas In The Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 3, 50, 334n; Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, pp. 38, 46.

⁴² Post, "Some Notes on The Attakapas Indians,” Louisiana History, p. 228.

⁴³ Swanton, “Indian Tribes of The Lower Mississippi Valley,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 43, pp. 43-45.

⁴⁴ Odie B. Faulk, The Last Years of Spanish Texas (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1964), p. 70.

⁴⁵ Florence Stratton, The Story of Beaumont (Houston: Hercules Printing Company, 1925), pp. 170-171.

⁴⁶ Juan Antonio Padilla, “Texas In 1820,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXIII (July, 1919), pp. 50-51.

⁴⁷ Juan Antonio Padilla, “Texas In 1820,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXIII (July, 1919), p. 51. The name “Nacazil” does not appear in the volumes of Pichardo’s Treatise, but may be the Naquize tribe that is frequently mentioned.

⁴⁸ Hackett (ed.), Pichardo’s Treatise, 1, pp. 365-367.

⁴⁹ William F. Gray, From Virginia To Texas, 1835: Diary of Colonel William F. Gray (reprint; Houston: Fletcher Young Publishing Company, 1965), pp. 166-170.

⁵⁰ Griffin, Attakapas Country, p. 9.

⁵¹ E. W. Winkler (ed.), Secret Journals of The Senate, Republic of Texas, 18 36-1845, in Texas Library and Historical Commission First Biennial Report, 1909-1910 (Austin: Austin Printing Company, 1911), pp. 39, 288-293, 300, 306, 309.

⁵² Burch, “The Indigenous Indians of The Lower Trinity Area,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, p. 50.

⁵³ Faulk, Last Years of Spanish Texas, p. 58.

⁵⁴ Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830 (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), p. 139.

⁵⁵ Ibid. pp. 105n, 106n.