Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of Native Americans: An A to Z of Tribes, Culture, and History - Adele Nozedar - Страница 51

The Biloxi people belong to the Siouxan language family, although their actual dialect is no longer spoken; the last speaker died in the 1930s. Originally they lived near the Gulf of Mexico close to the city that is named for them—Biloxi, Mississippi. The tribe were descended from the mound-building people.

When they were first “discovered” by a French Canadian explorer in 1699, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville was told that the tribe had been quite large before they suffered the ravages of smallpox.

The Biloxi were a farming people who supplemented their agricultural efforts with fishing and hunting; their prey included buffalo, deer, and sometimes bear. The Biloxi society had as its head the Great Sacred One, effectively the monarch, who could be a king or a queen but was always a shaman or spiritual practitioner. In the Biloxi language he or she was called the Yaaxitqaya; nobles below the Yaaxitqaya were called ixi. The tribe lived in cabins made of packed mud and bark.

The Biloxi had unusual funeral practices. The deceased were dried out by means of smoke and fire and then tied to red-painted poles which would be sunk vertically into the ground in the center of the temple.