Description
The Houma are a historic Native American people of Louisiana on the east side of the Red River of the South. Their descendants, the Houma people or the United Houma Nation, have been recognized by the state as a tribe since 1972, but are not recognized by the federal government. According to the tribe, as of 2023 they have more than 17,000 enrolled tribal citizens residing within a six-parish area that encompasses 4,750 square miles. The parishes are St. Mary, Terrebonne, Lafourche, Jefferson, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard. The Houma tribe, was recorded by the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in 1682 as living along the Red River on the east side of Mississippi River. Because their war emblem is the saktce-ho'ma, or Red Crawfish, the anthropologist John R. Swanton speculated that the Houma are an offshoot of the Yazoo River region's Chakchiuma tribe, whose name derives from saktce-ho'ma.
Language
Houma (Houma: uma) is a Western Muskogean language that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley by the indigenous Houma people.
Culture
The Houma continue to have a hunter-gatherer type economy, which he documented, depending on the bayous and swamps for fish and game. They also cultivate small subsistence gardens. By the time of European contact, most of these Native American tribes had settled in villages of 500 people or fewer, and grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, greens, tobacco, and other crops. The southeast Native Americans also gathered berries, nuts, wild plants, and roots from the surrounding forests. For the most part, women tended the fields while men hunted, fished, and engaged in trade with one another, as well as with other groups to the north and west.