Note III'-21 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: THROUGH TEXAS TO NATCHITOCHES ON THE RED RIVER OF LOUISIANA, JUNE 1ST-JULY 1ST, 1807.

This short clause brings up a number of interesting points. The hill is among the slight elevations which together form the water-shed between the Sabine and Red r. This rise of ground corresponds in a general way with the boundary between Sabine and Nachitoches cos. in Louisiana, parting the numberless and mostly unnamed small waters which make on either hand for their respective outlets in the two rivers. Pike is already on the Red River side, among the runs which discharge into the body of water known as the Spanish l., and which finds its way into Red r. by various channels. This is the place where "anciently stood," as he informs us, the village of the mysterious tribe of Indians he calls Adyes and Adayes. These have a long history; but the literature of the subject is mainly a presentation of our ignorance. Powell says that the first mention of them occurs in the Naufragios of Cabeça de Vaca, who calls them Atayos, about 1540, and that they are also noted by various early French explorers of the Mississippi, as d'Iberville and Joutel. The fortified camp of which Pike speaks was built in 1715 and known as the Mission of Adayes. From documents preserved in San Antonio de Bexar, examined by Mr. A. S. Gatschet in 1886, it appears that 14 Adai families emigrated to a place S. of that town in 1792; these were afterward lost sight of. According to Baudry de Lozieres, as cited by Powell, 100 Adaizans were left at home in 1802. Turning to Sibley (l. c. p. 42), we find that in 1805 there were 20 men and more women living "about 40 miles from Natchitoches, below the Yattassees [a tribe that lived on Bayou Pierre or Stony creek], on a lake called Lac Macdon, which communicated with the division of Red river that passes by Bayau Pierre. They live at or near where their ancestors have lived from time immemorial. They being the nearest nation to the old Spanish fort, or Mission of Adaize, that place was named after them, being about 20 miles from them, to the south." Dr. Sibley collected a vocabulary of about 250 words, the sole basis we have for the modern scientific classification of the tribe, upon the only sure principle of natural generation as indicated by mother-tongues. "Their language differs from all others," says Dr. Sibley, "and is so difficult to speak or understand, that no [other] nation can speak ten words of it: but they all speak Caddo, and most of them French." He adds that they were always attached to the latter, with whom they sided against the Natchez; and that after the Natchez massacre of 1798, while the Spanish occupied Fort Adaize, the priests took much pains in vain to make them believe what was told them about Catholic dogma. This is practically the sum of what is known of these evidently intelligent and manly people; the rest of the literature is mainly the conclusions reached upon the subject by various authors. The consensus of opinion very properly classifies the Adaize, Adaizi, Adaise, Adaes, Adees, Adayes, Adyes, Adahi, or Adai, as a distinct linguistic stock, lately called the Adaizan family, whose affinities, more or less remote, are with the Caddoan.