Tangipahoa
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The Tangipahoa were a Native American tribe that lived just north of Lake Pontchartrain and between the Pearl River and the Mississippi River.
The name Tangipahoa is derived from the Muskogean words (tonche pahoha) which translates to "corncob people" or "people of the corn" or "corncob".[1] It is from this Native American tribe that the modern Tangipahoa Parish gets its name, as well as the Tangipahoa River and the village of Tangipahoa.
Population
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville wrote that in the year 1650 the population of both the Acolapissa and Tangipahoa combined consisted of 250 families and around 150 men. However the research by James Mooney determined that a more accurate count was proposed by Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe when he found that the tribe population was around 1500 people.[2]
Language
The Tangipahoa language was closely related to Choctaw and Chickasaw, which are both Muskogean languages.[3]