Atakapan Indians of Orange County

The name on the marker is one the people did not use for themselves. Atakapa comes from Choctaw and means "people eater," a label one reference ties to cannibalism claims in early European accounts. The Atakapa call themselves Ishak. Atakapan-speaking groups in Texas included the Akokisa, Deadose, Bidai and Patiri. The Akokisa and Deadose were gathered at San Ildefonso Mission in 1748 and 1749, and the Akokisa appear in records into the early 1800s. Bands calling themselves Atakapa-Ishak live in southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas today, working to keep their language, history and crafts.

What the plaque says

Atakapan Indians of Orange County The Atakapan Indians, a tribe associated with southeastern U. S. bands, lived in this area for centuries. Studies have suggested their presence covered a large region of southeast Texas. Their name comes from the Choctaw Indians, and means "Man-Eaters". It is believed that Indians encountered by Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in 1528 along the Gulf Coast may have been Atakapans. The first documented contact with the tribe was by French sailor Simars de Bellisle in 1719. Put ashore with four others to collect fresh water, the men were abandoned and de Bellisle, after the deaths of his companions, was made a captive of the Indian tribe for a time. Later contact with the Atakapans included trade with French and Spanish explorers. The tribe was evidently a fairly loose confederacy of small, scattered bands. Archeological evidence suggests they subsisted mainly on small game, fish, and wild plants, and evidently were not farmers. Shell middens found indicated the existence of Atakapan campsites in this vicinity. The tribe disappeared from Texas in the early 19th century, either becoming extinct or integrating into other tribes. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.3 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.4 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 19 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Site of End of the Line Station — steps away
• Old Niblett's Bluff, C.S.A. — steps away
• John Harmon — steps away
• The Sawmill Industry in Orange County — steps away