Tiou Tribe: Meaning unknown. The name has occasionally been misprinted “Sioux,” thus causing confusion with the famous Sioux or Dakota of Minnesota and the Dakotas.
Tiou Connections.-The Tiou are proved by a statement of Diron d’Artaguiette (1916) to have belonged to the Tunica linguistic group of the Tunican family.
Tiou Location.-Their earliest location was near the upper course of Yazoo River; later they lived a little south of the Natchez and then among them.
Tiou History. Shortly before 1697 the Tiou appear to have been in the locality first mentioned, and a map 1699 towns of that date seems to give two Tiou, one above the Tunica and one below them. By 1699 part had settled among the Natchez, having been drive them their former homes, according to Le Page du Pratz (1758), by the Chickasaw. Before establishing themselves finally with the Natchez, they seem to have lived for a time a short distance below them on the Mississippi River, where La Salle and his companions speak of them as Koroa. Part of the tribe appears to have remained on the Yazoo for some years after the rest had left. At a later period the Bayogoula called in Tiou and Acolapissato take the place of the Mugulasha with whom they had formerly lived and whom they had destroyed. Soon after Fort Rosalie had been built, the Tiou sold the lands upon which they had settled to the Sieur Roussin and moved elsewhere. After the Natchez massacre the hostile Indians sent them to the Tunica in a vain endeavor to induce the latter to declare against the French. In 1731, if we may trust a statement by Charlevoix, they were utterly cut off by the Quapaw, and while the completeness of this destruction may well be doubted, we hear nothing of them afterward.
Tiou Population. No estimate of Tiou population separate from that of the Natchez is known.