While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Bayogoula
(Choctaw: Báyuk-ókla
'Bayou people'). A Muskhogean tribe which in 1700 lived with the Mugulasha
in a village on the west bank of the Mississippi, about 64 leagues above
its mouth and 30 leagues below the Huma town. Lemoyned' Iberville (Margry,
Dec., iv, 170-172, 1880) gives a brief description of their village, which
he says contained 2 temples and 107 cabins; that a fire was kept
constantly burning in the temples, and near the door were kept many
figures of animals, as the bear, wolf, birds, and in particular the
choucoüacha, or opossum, which
appeared to be a chief deity or image to which offerings were made. At
this time they numbered 200 to 250 men, probably including the Mngulasha.
Not long after the Bayogoula almost exterminated the Mugulasha as the
result of a dispute between the chiefs of the two tribes, but the former
soon fell victims to a similar act of treachery, since having received the
Tonica into their village in 1706, they were surprised and almost all
massacred by their perfidious guests (La Harpe, Jour. Hist. La., 98,
1831). Smallpox destroyed most of the remainder, so that by1721 not a
family was known to exist.
