CHITIMACHA

North American Indian tribe of the Macro-Algonquian linguistic phylum, once the most powerful tribe on the northern Gulf of Mexico coast, west of what is now Florida. They inhabited the area around Grand Lake in present southern Louisiana, and their estimated population in 1650 was 3,000. The Chitimacha linguistic group included, besides the Chitimacha tribe, the Washa and Chawasha tribes. The Chitimacha were sun worshipers who reinterred the bones of their dead and practiced ritual head deformation. The men used nose ornaments, wore their hair long, and tattooed their arms, legs, and faces. Their dwellings were the cabinlike structures common to many of the southeastern tribes. The Chitimacha were particularly noted for the skill of their basket weaving, employing a "double-weave" technique resulting in different designs on two surfaces. They subsisted on corn (maize), beans, and squash; wild fruits and berries; deer and bear; and many varieties of fish. Early in the 18th century the Chitimacha went to war with the French for 12 years. The French prevailed, with the result that French slaves in the early days of the Louisiana colony were mostly Chitimacha. In 1781 the Chitimacha were assigned a place near present-day Plaquemine for settlement. By 1881 the surviving Chitimacha were living near Charenton, on Grand Lake in Louisiana. In the late 20th century there were about 260 descendants of the tribe living on reservations in that part of the state.