Akokisa

Atakapa
Ishak

Location of the Sabine River
Total population
Ceased to exist as a tribe by the early 19th century
Regions with significant populations
United States (Southeastern Texas)
Languages
Akokisa dialect (Atakapa)
Religion
Christianity, Indigenous religion
Related ethnic groups
other Atakapa peoples

The Akokisa (also known as the Accokesaws, Arkokisa, Orcoquiza or Orkokisak) were an Indigenous tribe who lived on the upper Texan coast. They were a band of the Atakapa ethnolinguistic group, constituting the westernmost division of the Atakapan people.

Their ancestral territory centers on Galveston Bay, and encompasses the drainage basins of the lower Trinity River, the San Jacinto River, Cypress Creek and surrounding coastal areas in the present day Greater Houston area and Southeast Texas. They spoke the Yukhíti (Western) dialect of the Atakapa (Ishākkoy) language.

By the early 19th century, surviving Akokisa merged with the closely related Bidai band before facing displacement from Anglo-American colonization.

History

16th century

The earliest recorded European encounter with the Akokisa occurred in November 1528, when Spanish explorer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his shipwrecked companions landed on Isla de Malhado ("Isle of Bad Luck"), identified by modern scholarship as Follett's Island. Cabeza de vaca documented two distinct cultural and linguistic groups cohabiting the island: the Coco (Capoque) and the Han. Ethnohistorical and linguistic analyses by John R. Swanton connect the Han to the Akokisa, deriving the name from the Atakapan word aņ, meaning "house."

This encounter brought the first documented outbreak of European epidemic disease to the region. During the winter of 1528, a severe stomach illness impacted the island, killing half the native population within weeks. Believing the Spaniards possessed supernatural control over the plague, the native population initially plotted to execute the Spanish survivors. However, a Native persuaded against the planned killings by pointing out that the Spaniards were dying alongside them.

18th century

Direct interaction between Europeans and the Akokisa increased in 1719, when French officer, François Simars de Bellisle was abandoned on the Galveston coast by mistake and captured by an Akokisa band. Held in captivity for over a year, Bellisle recorded the earliest detailed observations of Akokisa seasonal behaviors, which had included summer foraging for wild tubers, deer, and bison along the Galveston Bay, followed by early winter communal bison hunts on the Katy Prairie.

In August 1721, Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe and Jean Béranger returned to the Galveston Bay with Bellisle. At the mouth of the San Jacinto River, they encountered a camp of 150 Akokisa who had horses. Béranger captured several Akokisa and recorded a 45 word vocabulary, which linguists have later confirmed as the Western (Yukhíti) dialect of the Atakapan language.

By the late 1730s, French traders from Louisiana established regular trade routes along the Neches, Trinity,San Jacinto, and Brazos rivers. They exchanged muskets, gunpowder, and shot for deerskins, bison hides, bear grease, horses and mules stolen from Spanish posts. French trader, Joseph Blancpain, established a permanent trading post on the lower Trinity River by 1744, trading with the Akokisa for over two decades.

Spanish reactions and missions

To investigate French intrusions, Spanish captain Joaquín de Orobio y Basterra led an expedition in 1746 alongside a Bidai guide along what became known as the Bidai Trail. Orbio y Basterra noted four primary Akokia winter villages noting them by their chiefs:

• Chief Canos, who was at village at the junction of Spring Creek and the San Jacinto River. Chief Canos being noted as "Great Captain of the Orcoquisac nation"
• Chief El Gordo, at Santa Rosa del Alcázar (at the headwaters of Cypress Creek near Hoskins Mound)
• Chief El Mateo, who lived in a village northwest of El Gordo
• Chief Calzones Colorado ("Red Breeches"), who lived in a village on the lower Trinity River

Counteracting French influence, Franciscan friars established three missions along the San Gabriel River, specifically founding Mission San Ildefonso in 1749 to gather Atakapan groups. Originally it housed 59 Akokisa, 88 Bidai, and 55 Deadose. However, in May 1750 a devastating smallpox epidemic impacted Mission Ildefonso, causing catastrophic deaths among adults. Surviving natives fled into the countryside, and after years of drought and native resistance to conversion, the missions were abandoned by 1755.

Presidio San Agustín de Ahumada and Nuestra Señora de la Luz de la Orcoquisac

In 1756, the Spanish crown constructed Presidio San de Ahumada and Mission Nuestra Señora de la Luz de la Orcoquisac (commonly called El Orcoquisac) on the lower Trinity River to create authority over the Akokisa and Bidai.

Spanish officials recommended relocating the mission to Santa Rosa del Alcázar at Chief El Gordo's village due to the swampy disease ridden conditions at Orcoquisac. Delays prevented the relocation and following the 1763 Treaty of Paris which transferred Louisiana to Spain and the 1766-167 inspection by the Marquis of Rubí, Spain abandoned both the presidio and mission at Orcoquisac in 1771, shifting military focus to the northern frontier.

Compounding epidemics of smallpox, measles, and dysentery severely decimated the population of the Akokisa throughout the late 18th century. A major smallpox outbreak in 1776-1779 reduced the Akokisa to roughly 50 warriors by 1778.

Although severe demographic losses occurred, coastal groups including the Akokisa maintained traditional intertribal alliances. In September 1772, Spanish captain, Don Luis Cazorla, encountered a multi tribal ranchería on the Katy Prairie close to the former Akokisa village of Chief El Gordo where the Akokisa, Bidai, Coco, and Karankawa and Aranama hunters were conducting a joint deer hunt to obtain hides for trade with the English and French merchants.

19th century

By the early 19th century, severe loss of population forced surviving Akokisa remnants to join with the closely related Bidai and Atakapa proper. According to archaeologist Thomas N. Campbell, in 1805, the Akokisa were reduced to two villages. One coastal village lay between the Sabine and Neches Rivers; the other was on the west side of the Colorado River.

In 1820, Mexican official Juan Antonia Padilla reported that approximately 300 Akokisa remained near the mouth of the Trintiy River and the military post of Atascosito. They practiced small-scale agriculture, hunted, used dugout canoes, and traded furs at Calcasieu and Opelousas in Louisiana.

By 1828 reports by General Manuel de Mier y Terán listed the Akokisa alongside the Bidai as a single combined demographic remnant. The Akokisas may have been absorbed into other tribes at the wake of the Texas Revolution of 1835–36.

Small bands of survivors maintained local settlements into the mid to late 19th century, including one at Cypress Creek (Harris County) and Addicks Mound (Buffalo Bayou).

In Cypress Creek (near modern Telge Park) some Akokisa lived in a community on land settled by Matthew Burnett in 1836. It was led by Chief Francisco with the community self-identifying as Bidai, reflecting the post 1820-1830 tribal merging. They lived in a "wigwam town," baked traditional pontuck bread from wild tubers, held seasonal dances in bark pavilions, and Chief Francisco played rhythmic music using a stone rubbed over a stretched alligator skin. A few years later, Chief Francisco’s group would seen at a second location, along Willow Creek, about ten miles north of the Burnett farm.

At the Addicks Mound location, another group of Akokisa survivors made annual autumn pilgrimages to Addicks Mound on Buffalo Bayou to honor their ancestral birthplace. These visits continued until a severe winter and an epidemic in 1875 decimated the visiting group.

Modern era

Several 20th-century ethnologists categorized the Akokisa and Atakapa as extinct. Andrew Jolivétte, a member of the Atakapa Ishak Nation, an unrecognized organization, wrote that descendants joined Louisiana Creole and African American communities, keeping their identity hidden during Jim Crow segregation.

In 2007, over 80 in Lafayette, Louisiana organized Atakapa-Ishak Nation.

Persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) of Orkokisak (Akokisa) namesake

Name

Linguist Geoffrey Kimball reconstructed the name Orkokisak as an Ishakkoyan (Atakapan) compound meaning "persimmon-gathering people" (ōl "persimmon" + kókish "gather/take" + ishāk "person").

Previously, the name Akokisa was believed to be of unknown origin, with John R. Swanton originally speculating that the name may be from the Atakapa word icāk meaning "person". Akokisa as a name is a anglicized name given by Swanton.

The Akokisa have also been known by the following names and spelling variations: Arkokisa, Caque, Han, Orcoquiza, Accocesaw, Accockesaw, Accokesaus, Accokesaw,

Culture

Akokisa people lived in settled villages and built airy structures to cope with their warm climate. Their homes were beehive-shaped and thatched with grass or palmetto leaves. A hearth lined with dirt or oyster shells would be located in the center of the floor with a smokehole in the ceiling. During summer months, an Akokisa would sleep in a Chickee, a raised platform with a thatched roof and open sides. Beds were made of straw, covered with animal skins. As a form of mobile temporary housing, the Akokisa utilized hide covered homes during seasonal migrations. By leaving pole frames standing, the Akokisa would carry hides and mats, covering them throughout seasons.

For water transportation and fishing, Akokisas carved cypress logs into dugout canoes.

Both men and women decorated their bodies and faces with tattoos.

The Akokisa, like the Atakapa, practiced cannibalism, which was connected to their religious beliefs. Ritual cannibalism was practiced strictly as a war custom against slain enemy combatants in the belief that so doing allowed them to obtain the dead person’s strength and valor. However, cannibalism was strictly forbidden against family members, allies, or shipwrecked castaways. In 1810, a council of Akokisa were reported as considering consuming shipwrecked sailors as food was not plentiful due to a storm that had destroyed huts, and supplies. This council roasted the bodies before a medicine man warned that eating white flesh would cause skin disease, thus the bodies were not eaten.

Akokisa were hunter-gatherers and had a diet of deer, fish, oysters and bison.

Black drink was used for purification in certain ceremonies.

They are reported to have grown "superfine" maize. Tubers of the greenbrier vine provided meal for baking and cooking. During warm seasons they ate bird eggs, fish, shellfish, and American lotus rhizomes and seeds; during cold seasons they moved further inland and hunted deer, bear, and bison. Horses were used to hunt bison. Tanned deer hides and bear fat were their primary commercial exports.

Almost nothing is known about their kinship systems, life cycle, or marriage customs.

Language

The Akokisa spoke the Yukhíti (Western) dialect of Atakapa (natively known as Ishākkoy or Yukhíti Kóy), a language isolate native to the northern Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.

Within traditional Atakapan divisions, Western Atakapa Speakers referred to themselves as Hikike Ishak ("western people" or "sunset people") or Orkokisak ("persimmon-gathering people").

The earliest documentation of the Akokisa dialect occurred in August 1721, when Jean Béranger recorded a 45 word vocabulary list from Akokisas on Galveston Bay. Ethnologist John R. Swanton identified this list as Akokisa, and integrated it into the Bureau of American Ethnology's 1932 A Dictionary of the Atakapa Language. Sibley also reported that they had their own language "peculiar to themselves" and used sign language to communicate with other Indians (also reported for other peoples in eastern Texas). He did not connect them with the Atakapa.

Linguist Geoffrey Kimball formally integrated Béranger's 1721 vocabulary in his reference grammar, Yukhíti Kóy, while linguist David V. Kaufman confirmed its structural and lexical similarities with the broader Yukhíti dialect spoken across the upper Texas coast and southwest Louisiana, establishing that Orkokisak (akokisa) was a dialect rather than a separate language.

See also

• List of Native American peoples in the United States

Bibliography

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• Sibley, John. (1806). Historical sketches of the several Indian tribes in Louisiana, south of the Arkansas River, and between the Mississippi and River Grand [5 April 1805]. In T. Jefferson (Ed.), Message from the President of the United States communicating the discoveries made in exploring the Missouri, Red River, and Washita (p. 48–62). New York: G. F. Hopkins.
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