Atakapa
The Atakapa were Indigenous peoples who inhabited regions of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas, primarily living in small, mobile groups. Their oral traditions recount a history of their ancestors being stranded in Texas after a great flood before they spread eastward. At contact with Europeans, the Atakapa relied on a subsistence lifestyle that included hunting bison and deer, as well as gathering wild plants, distinguishing them from neighboring agricultural societies. Their sociopolitical structure was relatively simple, lacking the stratification seen in more hierarchical cultures nearby. The name "Atakapa," derived from Choctaw, translates to "people eater," reflecting a cannibalistic reputation that emerged from early European accounts. While the Louisiana Atakapa initially avoided the severe impacts of European colonization, the Akokisa and Deadose populations faced significant challenges due to missionization and epidemics. By the early 20th century, the Atakapa had largely disappeared as a distinct culture, as many were integrated into European populations or other Native American groups. Today, their history and cultural practices are primarily documented in historical texts.
Atakapa
Category: Tribe
Culture area: Southeast
Language group: Atakapan
Primary location: Southwestern Louisiana, southeastern Texas
The Atakapa lived in small groups scattered across southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas. Most of the Texas Atakapa were called Akokisa or Deadose by the Spanish.
According to Atakapa oral tradition, their ancestors were stranded in Texas after a great flood, and they later spread eastward. At the time of European contact, Atakapa subsistence depended on collecting wild plants and hunting (bison and deer) across the grasslands and swamps of southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana. Unlike their neighbors to the east, such as the Chitimacha, the Atakapa did not depend on agriculture and had a less sedentary lifestyle. In common with other southeastern cultures, the Atakapa traded with neighboring peoples. Despite their contacts with the hierarchical societies of the Mississippi River, Atakapan sociopolitical organization was not stratified to the same degree. The seeming simplicity of their lifeways (hunting and gathering rather than farming and inhabiting permanent villages) meant that the European settlers recorded little information concerning them, and since their culture had vanished by the twentieth century, no other data were forthcoming.
The word Atakapa is Choctaw, meaning “people eater,” and their cannibalistic reputation is upheld in the account of Simars de Belle-Isle, who was captured and enslaved by the Akokisa (the Atakapa on the Louisiana-Texas border) from 1719 to 1721.
The Louisiana Atakapa inhabited terrain deemed inappropriate for early European settlement, so they were initially spared the depredations suffered by other southeastern Native Americans. The Akokisa and Deadose of Texas were not so lucky. They were missionized in 1748-1749, from the San Ildefonso Mission in Texas. The combined influence of additional missions (begun during the middle to late eighteenth century) and an epidemic (1777-1778) resulted in the Akokisa and the Deadose no longer being mentioned in colonial records by the 1800’s.
The Louisiana Atakapa were affected by European incursions dating from the mid-eighteenth century onward. The locations of several Louisiana Atakapa villages are recorded for the period 1760 to 1836, but afterward there are only scattered reports of Atakapa. In 1885, for example, two Atakapa speakers were living in the vicinity of Lake Charles, Louisiana. By the early twentieth century, the Atakapa had been absorbed into the European population or joined other Native American groups. Atakapa lifeways and history are described in John R. Swanton’s The Indians of the Southeastern United States (1946).