Description
The name Pascagoula is a Choctaw term meaning "bread eater". Choctaw native Americans using the name Pascagoula are named after the words for "bread eaters". In 1699 the Pascagoula Indians lived in southwestern Alabama and southeastern Mississippi, but in the middle eighteenth century they crossed the Mississippi and settled near the mouth of the Red River in Louisiana. In the early nineteenth century pressure from American settlers forced them farther westward. Some of the Pascagoulas entered Texas and lived with the Biloxi Indians near the Neches River in the area of present Angelina County, and others seem to have settled on the Red River in northeastern Texas.
Language
They spoke their own language which was different from neighboring languages in addition to Mobilian Jargon. Their language is undocumented.
Culture
The Mississippian period (AD 1000-1550) marked a new way of life for Native Americans in what is now the midwestern and southeastern United States. Prior to this time, people in those regions gathered wild foods and supplemented them with produce from small garden plots. Most communities were small. About 1,000 years ago, this older way of life changed as communities grew in size. Mississippian culture was not a single “tribe,” but many societies sharing a similar way of life or tradition. Mississippian peoples lived in fortified towns or small homesteads, grew corn, built large earthen mounds, maintained trade networks, had powerful leaders, and shared similar symbols and rituals.