A Chitimacha (besides Chitimachan, Chetimacha) come the Native American group that lives in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly in St. Mary Parish. It presently total astir 720 humans. the Chitimacha language, a language isolate, has no known relatives. These are there is no yearn spoken, though these are swell documented in the operate (mostly unpublished) of the late linguist Morris Swadesh.

History

A Chitimacha's historic residence is a southern Louisiana coast, in which it got lived for astir 2,500 years, migrating there from either the vicinity surrounding modern Natchez, Louisiana, and before that, from either eastern Texas. In the late 1600s, they inherit email using a French, who raided their territory around look for of slaves. Per period peace was reached around 1718, a people got declined drastically, across warfare & disease, & the survivors were forced to move n.

1 hundred years late, a arrival of Acadian refugees in their area, brought a farther decline in the Chitimacha people, following of intermarriage & acculturation, particularly the introduction of Catholicism, when well as land-grabbing per recently settlers. Inside 1917, the tribal leadership sold what was left of the Chitimacha land to the United States government.

By 1930, the Chitimacha humans got dropped to simply 51 people, though it has since climbed steadily, & there are nowadays 720 registered Chitimacha. Good concluded 200 however sleep around a Chitimacha Reservation in St. Mary Parish, in which there is a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. A governing Council is included within on-going negotiations sustaining a United States to obtain compensation for the land expropriations of the past.