The Atakapas of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas

The Atakapas of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas

The Atakapas (a-tak-a-paws) are a Southwest Louisiana and Texas branch of Southeast ancient native peoples who inhabited the Gulf of Mexico s northwestern crescent. They called themselves Ishaks (ee-shaks), meaning The People. Dr. McGimsey, of the University of Southwest Louisiana, maintains that "...the Ishaks simply represent the historic descendants of people who had been living in the region for thousands of years." [1]

Most of what is known about the Ishaks' history and language traces to the research of two early ethnologists, Albert S. Gatschet and John R. Swanton. Their 1931 work [2] reveals that the Ishaks had divided into two population groups long before Europeans entered the western Gulf of Mexico. Some Ishaks lived on the south coast of present day Texas as far down as Matagorda Bay. Other Ishaks lived on the upper coast of the Gulf of Mexico's northwestern crescent in present day southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. By 1670 Spaniards, invading from Mexico City, called the south Texas coast Ishaks by a name, that by the 1880s evolved into Akokisacs. By 1690, the Ishaks living on the upper coast were called Atakapas by Spaniards invading from Havana via Tampa. Today, the Akokisacs are considered extinct [2].

Culture and Language

The name Atakapas is a Choctaw word meaning cannibals, spoken to Havana based Spaniards who were exploring southeast Louisiana in the 1690s. This word appears on the maps of what is now southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas. Gatschet was reluctant to believe the charge of cannibalism. During his field research in 1885 he learned from two Atakapa women that the tribe long refused to call themselves Atakapas, which by 1885 was their commonly known name. Instead they preferred to call themselves Yukiti Ishaks (Indian People) or Yukiti (Indians). They also called themselves Les Sauvages, the French name for North American Indians [3].

The Atakapas considered themselves comprised of two population groups; the Sunset People and the Sunrise People because of their habitation sites west or east of the Mermentau River in southwest Louisiana [2]. The French, who ruled Louisiana through its colonial era (1765-1803) considered the Atakapas as five separate bands; two in southeast Texas and three in southwest Louisiana. The French failed...