Biloxi Tribe
Biloxi Indians. A name of uncertain meaning, apparently from the Choctaw language. They call themselves Taneks haya, ‘first people.’ A small Siouan tribe formerly living in south Mississippi, now nearly or quite extinct. The Biloxi were supposed to belong to the Muskhogean stock until Gatschet visited the survivors of the tribe in Louisiana in 1886 and found that many of the words bore strong resemblance to those in Siouan languages, a determination fully substantiated in 1892 by J. Owen Dorsey. To what particular group of the Siouan family the tribe is to be assigned has not been determined; but it … Read more