Chitimacha

Chitimacha, North American Indian tribe of the Macro-Algonquian linguistic phylum. Their estimated population in 1650 was 3,000; at that time one of the most powerful tribes on the northern Gulf of Mexico coast (west of what is now Florida), they inhabited the area around Grand Lake in what is now southern Louisiana. The Chitimacha linguistic group also included the Washa and Chawasha tribes. Traditionally, the Chitimacha were sun worshipers who reinterred the bones of their...