siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SwANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL LIFE 91
not punished among them, and they do not usually do what is requested
of them, except when they want to, it may be said that it is an ill-disciplined
government. In each village, besides tlie chief and the war chief, there are
two Tascamingoutchy ["made a war chief"] who are like lieutenants of
the w:ir chief, and a Tichou-mingo ["assistant chief"] who is like a major.
It is he who arranges for all of the ceremonies, the feasts, and the dances.
He acts as speaker for the chief, and oversees the warriors and strangers wlien
they smoke. These Tichou-mingo usually become village chiefs. They (the
people) are divided into four orders, as follows. [The first are] the head
chiefs, village chiefs, and war chief; the second are the Atacoulitoupa
[Hatak-holitopa] or beloved men (hommes de valleur) ; the third is com-
posed of those whom they call simply tasca or warriors; tlie fourth and last
is atac emittla [hatak imatahaliV]. Tliey are those who have not struck
blows or who have killed only a woman or a child.
As already stated, a considerable number of the leaders of the
Choctaw Nation resided in 1732 in the central group of towns.
Thus, at the time when the memoir just quoted was written, or in
the period to which it refers, the head chief of the nation lived in
Koweh chito, the name of which is said to signify " a big league,"
because it was a league in circuit. Later the word koweh (koi) came
to mean " a mile." Its aboriginal connotation has been lost, but
it is identical in form with the word for " panther," and Du Roullet,
writing in 1732, confounds the two. D'Anville's map, oi about the
same date, labels this town "the village of the head (grand) chief,"
and on other maps it is called the "Choctaw capital." The author
of the Anonymous Memoir informs us that " in this village, besides
the head chief of the nation, there are three leading national chiefs,
two of whom are head war chiefs and the other a chief who assigns
duties." He also says that the heir apparent of the Choctaw head
chiefship was always chief of Boktokolo and adds that "the head
chief also lives there, very often."
The authority which we have been following calls Skanapa " the
village of the chief." He places it in the western division but, as
Du Roullet informs us that the chief of Kashtasha was leader of the
western towns, Skanapa may actually have been the headquarters of
the chief of the eastern district, with which it is classed by De Lusser.
None of these writers indicates which Sixtown chief Avas recognized
as the head of that group, but since tlie author of the Memoir
says that the prerogatives of the chief of the Sixtowns were " the
same as those of the head chief [of the nation]," we know that there
was such a divisional chief and that he had considerable independence.
The above represents Choctaw conditions about the third decade
of the eighteenth century, but the reader must be warned against
the assumption that it was a hard-and-fast system. Aside from
Father Baudouin's assertion that the head chieftainship was a new
institution, we learn of various shifts in the location of both head