Avoyel#Language

Also called variously Shi'xkaltī'ni (Stone-Arrow-Point people){{citation needed|date=May 2024}} in Tunican and Tassenocogoula, Tassenogoula, Toux Enongogoula, and Tasånåk Okla in the Mobilian trade language; all names (including the autonym Avoyel) are said by early French chroniclers to mean either "Flint People" or "People of the Rocks". This is thought to either reflect their active trading of flint for tools from local sources on their land in the eponymously named modern Avoyelles Parish or more likely as their status as middlemen in trading flint from Caddoan peoples to their north to the stone deficit Atakapa and Chitimacha peoples of the Gulf Coast.{{cite book |title=Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico |author=Swanton, John R. |authorlink=John R. Swanton |date=1911 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1QgTAAAAYAAJ&q=avoyel&pg=PA272 |isbn=978-1332017836 |pages=272–74 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office }}{{Cite book |title=Archaeology, History, and Predictive Modeling: Research at Fort Polk, 1972-2002 |editor1= David G. Anderson |editor2= Steven D. Smith | publisher= University of Alabama Press| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=IVmw67Ey7UoC&q=Avoyel+indians&pg=PA396 |page=396 | isbn=978-0817312718 |year=2003 }}

French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville misleadingly called the Avoyel petits Taensas in 1699. However, they are a different group than the Natchez–speaking Taensa, whom the French called the grand Taensas.{{cite book |title=Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico N-Z |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology | author=Hodge, Frederick Webb |authorlink=Frederick Webb Hodge |date=1910 |url= https://archive.org/details/handbookamindians01hodgrich | pages=668–69}}

{{Infobox language

| name = Avoyel

| nativename = {{lang|mis|Avoyel}}

| region = Louisiana

| extinct = ?

| family = unclassified (Natchez?
Caddoan?)

| familycolor = American

| iso3 = none

| glotto = none

| linglist = 076

| acceptance = unattested

| ethnicity = Avoyel

| map = Natchez_map.png

| mapcaption = {{legend|#344ee9|Avoyel}}

| states = United States

}}

The Avoyel language may have{{cite thesis |last=Kaufman |first=David V. |date=2014-05-30 |title=The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Language Area |url=https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/16837/Kaufman_ku_0099D_13528_DATA_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |type=PhD |publisher=University of Kansas |access-date=2023-02-08}} been related to the Natchez language.{{Cite book |last1=Kniffen |first1=Fred B. |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/913650946 |title=Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present. |last2=Gregory |first2=Hiram F. |last3=Stokes |first3=George A. |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1994 |isbn=978-0-8071-1963-1 |location=Baton Rouge, LA |pages=77 |language=en |oclc=913650946}}

Described by some historians as being a Caddoan group,{{cite book |title=Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology |author=Hodge, Frederick Webb |authorlink= Frederick Webb Hodge |date=1911 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ze4YAAAAYAAJ&q=avoyelles+indians&pg=PA118 | asin= B009QMIT10 |page=118 }} and by others as a Natchez-speaking group of Mary Haas' Gulf hypothesis{{cite book |title=The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present Louisiana |author1=Kniffen, Fred B. | author2=Gregory, Hiram F. |author3=Stokes, George A. | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wLkyZStoIXQC&q=taensa+village+located+lake+st+joseph&pg=PA48 | publisher = LSU Press| date= 1994 | isbn= 9780807119631 | pages= 48–49}} along with the Natchez and Taensa; their true linguistic and ethnic affiliation is somewhat uncertain because no written or spoken version of their language has survived.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}

At the time of European contact, the Avoyel lived in several villages on the Red River in locations near present-day Alexandria and a palisaded village near Marksville. They controlled the river to its confluence with the lower Black River, Upper Atchafalaya River and the Mississippi.

Never numerous, the Avoyel numbered 280 in 1698, according to French records. Their population declined markedly after that. The Avoyel likely experienced the same drastic decimation as Native American tribes, primarily due to newly introduced European infectious diseases to which they had no acquired immunity.

The Avoyel survivors were believed to have been absorbed by marriage into the neighboring Tunica, Ofo, and Biloxi peoples who had moved to the area sometime in the late 1780s or 1790s because of encroachment by Euro-Americans at their previous locations.{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=KnowLouisiana |title=Tunica Tribe: 1680-Present |url=http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/tunica-tribe | access-date=2018-01-23}}{{cite web |title=On the Tunica Trail: Marksville |url=https://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/archaeology/virtualbooks/TUNICA/mark.htm |publisher=Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission |access-date= 2018-01-23|archive-date=2016-03-03 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160303170127/http://www.crt.state.la.us/dataprojects/archaeology/virtualbooks/TUNICA/mark.htm| url-status= dead}}{{cite web |title= Tunica Language Project: A collaboration of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and Tulane University |date=6 November 2014 |url=http://tunica.wp.tulane.edu/about/about-the-tunica-people/ |publisher=Tulane University |access-date=2018-01-23 }}

Indian Agent John Sibley wrote in 1805 that the only surviving Avoyel were two or three women living along the Washita River.Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, p. 17

Since the 19th century, descendants of the Avoyel people have been part of the Tunica-Biloxi.

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book |title=Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico |author=Swanton, John R. |authorlink=John R. Swanton |date=1911 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UtFh6CwE7T0C |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |location=Washington, DC}}

• [https://www.tunicabiloxi.org/ Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana]

{{Mississippian and related cultures}}

{{Pre-Columbian North America}}

{{authority control}}

Category:Extinct Native American tribes

Category:Native American tribes in Louisiana

Category:Plaquemine Mississippian culture

Category:Unattested languages of North America

Category:Tunica-Biloxi