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   Acolapissa

   Originally, Acolapissa were located both sides of the lower Pearl River which is the current eastern border of Louisiana with Mississippi. During 1702 the Acolapissa left their original location and moved a short distance west to Bayou Costine on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. By 1718 they relocated once again, this time to the east bank of the Mississippi just above the new French settlement at New Orleans. Pressured by the expansion of French settlement during the next few years, the Acolapissa were absorbed by the Houma and moved upstream with them to Ascension Parish (Donaldsonville, La.). The Houma remained in this area until they sold their land in 1776 and moved to Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes southwest of New Orleans. Their descendants still live in this area and have provided the name for present-day Houma, Louisiana.

   Like most of the original tribes near the mouth of the Mississippi River, the Acolapissa was not large, probably numbering in 1600 no more than 3-4 000. However, the native populations of the region had been decimated by disease and warfare during the proceeding 150 years. By 1739 the Acolapissa were so few that the French no longer bothered with a separate enumeration. The combined population of the Acolapissa, Bayougoula, and Houma for that year was given as only 500, representing a 90 percent population loss for these three tribes in a period of only forty years. Currently recognized by Louisiana, the 11,000 members of the United Houma Nation are the state's largest tribe. However, their petition for federal status was denied by the Department of the Interior in 1994.

   A Choctaw word meanings "those who listen and see" which seems to indicate that the Acolapissa were considered a border tribe by their neighbors. Variations of this name were: Aqueloupissa, Cenepisa, Colapissa, Coulapissa, Equinipicha, Kinipissa, Kolapissa, and Mouisa
Most of their diet was provided by agriculture: corn, beans, squash, several varieties of melon, and tobacco. Farming was supplemented by hunting and fishing, and in what may come as something of a surprise, buffalo were a major source of meat.

   The mild climate of the lower Mississippi required little clothing. Acolapissa men limited themselves pretty much to a breechcloth, women a short skirt, and children ran nude until puberty. With so little clothing with which to adorn themselves, the Acolapissa were fond of decorating their entire bodies with tattoos. In cold weather a buffalo robe or feathered cloak was added for warmth. Housing was circular in shape and utilized the wattle-and-daub construction distinctive to the Southeast. Walls were fashioned from vertical poles interwoven with branches and reeds (similar to a basket) to which mud was applied for a stucco effect. Roofs were either palmetto, thatch, or bark. Like the towns of the earlier Mississippian mound, each village had two large public buildings: a circular (30' diameter) dome-roofed temple which housed sacred objects and an eternal fire kept by the village priest; and the chief's house (similar in size to the temple) but with a peaked, rather than domed, roof.

   Like most of the small tribes near the mouth of the Mississippi, each Acolapissa village prior to 1682 was politically independent with its own defined territory. The drawback to this arrangement were frequent wars, usually over boundaries.

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