Long before the advent of the French explorers, the area now known as Hancock County was inhabited by Native Americans, members of the Choctaw Muskhogean family. The area of present-day Bay St. Louis contained an Indian village called Chicapoula (or Chou-cou-pou-lou), meaning “bad grass.” Living in this paradise, the natives hunted plentiful game such as venison and buffalo and fished the bountiful waters of the Mississippi Sound.
After the white settlers came, remnants of those early inhabitants moved further from the Bay of St. Louis into an area known as Devil’s Swamp and lived in houses mostly along Bayou LaCroix. The men continued to hunt and fish, but they also tanned skins, and all members of the tribe were constantly on guard against the depredations of occasional wolves. The women cultivated crops consisting of corn, beans, and rice, but chiefly rice. The children were taught to weave baskets, and the boys, to make blow guns. Shy with strangers, the Indians were, nonetheless, quite social among themselves. They enjoyed games, festivals, dancing, and singing. In fact wedding feasts and dancers could last for days.
Obviously, news of world events didn’t move so swiftly in the 1800’s as it does today with the internet and other modern media so those Native Americans who lived in Hancock County didn’t hear of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Signed in 1830 this pact allotted lands in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in exchange for Indian lands and homes in Mississippi. What these Native Americans were aware of is that white settlers were homesteading lands which belonged to the Indians and had belonged to them for generations. Some of the Indians took what the U. S. government offered them and moved west to Indian Territory. A few even became rich when oil was discovered on their newly acquired land. Those who didn’t leave moved deeper into the marshes and bayous of Devil’s Swamp, hiding out to continue their inherited traditions and culture.
Some of the Indians moved to Choctaw lands near Philadelphia, MS, in Neshoba County. A few intermarried with local blacks and whites and became a part of the rich cultural mix of people whose descendents live in the area today. There are arrowheads and other relics to be found in the fertile earth of Hancock County which tell of a noble race found by the European settlers who first came here in the late Seventeenth Century.
SOURCES:
“Devil’s Swamp Was 1830 Indian Hideout.” Sea Coast Echo. 28 May 1978, Heritage Edition.: 7B.
“Choctaw Tribe Really First Settlers Here.” Hancock County Eagle. August 1958, Souvenir Centennial Edition. 25.