According to Chitimacha legend, Bayou Teche began as the imprint of a giant dying snake left in the soil and later filled with water. The one hundred twenty-five-mile bayou, whose name may come from a Chitimacha word sometimes documented as tenche meaning snake or giant serpent, is one of the most important bayous in south Louisiana, running from Bayou Courtableau in Port Barre to the lower Atchafalaya in Patterson. It is also a relict channel of the Mississippi River and served as its main course three thousand eight hundred to five thousand five hundred years ago. The Chitimacha Tribe settled along the lower Teche in approximately five hundred A.D., built permanent villages from local trees, rivercane stalks, and palmetto leaves, used the bayou as a major trade network, and built several mounds along its banks. At the time of European contact, their population is believed to have approached twenty thousand people in fifteen distinct villages across the Mississippi River Delta and Atchafalaya Basin, moving with the seasons and water levels while building settlements, trading on waterways, and living on seafood and other abundant plant and animal resources. The French nearly annihilated the Chitimacha in a twelve-year war from seventeen oh six to seventeen eighteen after Chitimacha retaliation against French slaving raids on their villages, and they became the most enslaved population in Louisiana at that time. The tribe survived and was present when the first Acadians arrived in Louisiana in seventeen sixty-five in the Attakapas Region, sharing knowledge of foods, housing, and navigating the waterways that influenced Acadian culture. Yellow fever in eighteen fifty-five greatly reduced a population already damaged by war and European diseases, and by eighteen eighty-one fewer than fifty members lived in Charenton, the site that later became their two hundred sixty-one point five four acre reservation created by law in nineteen sixteen. Today the Chitimacha remain on a portion of their aboriginal lands, maintain distinct customs through dance, music, language, native arts, and intricate rivercane baskets dyed red, black, and yellow, and their tribal government operates successful businesses while Bayou Teche also serves as a recreational waterway.
