This large group of Indians occupied the prairies of southwestern Louisiana from Bayou Teche to the Sabine River and from Opelousas to the coastal marshes. They were a semi-settled, partially agricultural people occupying a number of favorable villages along waterways; the lower coast of the Calcasieu and around the shores of Calcasieu Lake, lower Mermentau, Grand Lake, along Bayou Plaquemine, along the Vermillion near the present site of Abbeville and a site near the present town of Opelousas. They were culturally less advanced than their neighbors, however they were more advanced than their reputation as wandering cannibals would lead us to imagine. They had several semi-permanent villages and are known to have participated in trade with other Indians along the Texas coast. They traded fish to the Opelousas for flints and other items they did not manufacture. Although individuals frequented various French posts with other Indian tribes, it was well into the 18th century that the Atakapa began to feel the influences of the Europeans on their culture. This was probably due in part to the relative isolation of their villages. In 1760 Skunnemoke (“Short Arrow”) sold the land on which his village stood along with a wide strip between Bayou Teche and Vermillion village, the group did not abandon their site until the early 19th century. Other lands of the Atakapa were steadily sold and the villages moved and combined to survive the advance of the Europeans. In 1787 the principle Atakapa village was at the “Island of Woods” later known as the “Island Lacasine”. It was abandoned about 1799 when they moved to a village on the Mermentau. This was the last village of the Eastern Atakapa and is said to have been occupied as late as 1836. Some of the Indians united with the Western Atakapa around Lake Charles, but others scattered as far as Oklahoma. The last village of the Western Atakapa was on “Indian Lake”, later called “Lake Prein”, which was occupied until after the middle of the 19th century. In 1885 a considerable vocabulary of Atakapa was gathered from two women living in Lake Charles who had belonged to this last Atakapa town. A later survey disclosed a few former residents of the old town were still living in 1907-1908 but, by 1942 all known villagers of the last Atakapa town were dead. _Opelousa_— Probably a divergent group of Atakapa. They lived in the vicinity of the present city of Opelousas and acted as middlemen in trade between other Indians in the South. They bought fish from the Chitimacha and Atakapa which they exchanged for flints from the Avoyels. Some of these flints were passed on to the Karankawas from the Texas coast for globular or conical oil jugs. They traded such items as Caddo pottery, Texas pots, stone beads, arrow points and salt along routes from the interior of Texas to the coast and inland through Caddo country in northern Louisiana and onward through Arkansas. (737)