17th century 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 west side of
Mississippi River. In 1682, the French explorer
Nicolas de la Salle noted in his journal that he had passed near the village of the Oumas. They wore minimal clothing, primarily foot-wide belts and breechcloths, and adornments such as feathers and copper jewelry. By 1699–1700, the Houma tribe and the Bayougoula tribe had established a border for their hunting grounds by placing a tall red pole marked by sacred animal carcasses and feathers in the ground. Named
Istrouma or ''Ete' Uma
by those tribes and Baton Rouge'' by French colonizer
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, this marker was at a site five miles above
Bayou Manchac on the Mississippi's east bank. The area developed as a trading post and the modern city of
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
18th century In 1700, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville returned to the Houma village and discovered that half of them had died from disease. A Jesuit priest whom the French had left with the Houma had overseen the construction of a church which was in place in 1700. The Jesuit missionary
Jacques Gravier described the Houma as playing
chunkey and their village as having 80 cabins. Gravier described Houma women's clothing as similar to the
Tunica's, featuring a fringed skirt and robes of turkey feathers or
muskrat skins. They tattooed their faces, wore their hair in braids, and blackened their teeth, as did the neighboring Tunica and
Natchez people. They maintained two settlements, the smaller Little Houmas on the Mississippi River and the larger Great Houma village more than one and a half miles inland. In 1758, French naval officer
Louis Billouart wrote that the Houma population had been greatly reduced but they had about 60 fighting men. Natchiabe was one of their chiefs in 1784.
19th century In 1803, the United States paid for French land claims in what became the United States through the
Louisiana Purchase. This included Houma lands. In his
An Account of Louisiana (1803), President Thomas Jefferson wrote that about 60 "Houmas or Red Men" lived 25 leagues upriver of New Orleans. In 1805, American surgeon
John Sibley wrote: "There are a few of the Houmas still living on the east side of the Mississippi, in Ixusees [Ascension] Parish, below Manchack, but scarcely exist as a nation.". Houma residing in
Terrebonne Parish were segregated in schooling until 1963, when the Naquin v. Terrebonne Parish School Board ruling stated that they should be allowed to enroll in white schools in accordance with federal mandate. A plan for full integration of Houma into schools was submitted by August 13, 1964. ==Ethnobotany==