siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

76 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
We are helped to visualize the appearance presented by some of
these towns in the early part of the eighteenth century by passages
in the journal of Du RouUet, who was among them from April to
August, 1732.
I will say that the village of Boukfouka is one of those of the Choctaw
Nation whose Huts are the most separated one from the other; this village
is divided into three hamlets, each hamlet at a quarter of a league from the
others, and all three surrounded by Bayous : lastly this village is at least
twenty leagues "'" in circumference. . . .
The village of Castachas is one of the finest of the nation ; it is situated
in a large plain, in the middle of which there is a small hill from the top
of which one can see all the Indian huts placed on the plain and the (blank
in ms.) around the Huts of each savage. . . .
The village of Jachou [Yazoo] is situated in a great plain which lies on a
neight ; the savages have their fields in this plain and a large part of their
huts are around the plain. The plain of Jachou is not so vast as that of
Castachas, but it is of about two leagues circumference at the least. . . .
The village of Jachene atchoukima [Yakni adhukma] is situated on a little
elevation or height. The huts are well separa^ted from one another.
The village of Crouetchitou [Kowi chito] or the Great Village is situated
on a small plain surrounded by very liigh hills, where nearly all the huts of
the savages are built and their fields are in the plain. . . .
Sapatchitou [Sapa chito] ... is a small hamlet of the village of Boukfouka,
which lies in a small plain where the savages have built a little stockaded fort,
into which they retreat with their families every night on account of the frequent
incursions of the Chikachas [Chickasaws] who cross the river near this
hamlet when they come in a band upon the Choctaws.*'
Moieties
Like the Chickasaw, the Choctaw were divided into two great
moieties, but in contradistinction to them these were strictly exogamous
and there was greater constancy in the terms applied to
them. All of the four authorities on which we have to depend
give the same name to one of these divisions, i°hulahta. Morgan,
who derived his information from Byington, gives the form
" Wa-tak-i-Hula'-ta," but "Wa-tak" is evidently a misspelling
of Ha-tak, "man," "person." Similarly "Ukla," in the " Ukla
i^hula'hta " of Alfred Wright, is " people." I- is the objective
pronominal prefix of the third person, used in singular or plural,
and °- is the sign of the indirect object. These are used with
either substantives or verbs. Hulahta or hula'ta resembles holihta,
"fence," "yard," or "fort," with which Cushman does, in fact,
identify it,'° or it may be related to holitopa, " beloved," " dear,"
*^"A figure which includes all the town lands, but even so, must he regarded as excessive.
•» See " Notes sur les Chactas d'aprfes les Journaux de Voyage de Regis du Roullet
1 1729-1732)," by Le Baron Marc de Villiers, in the Journal de la Socl6t6 des Am^ricanistes
de Paris (n. s.). Vol. xv, 1923, pp. 239-241.
'« Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 73.