The Mosopelea, or Ofo, were a

Siouan Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east. Name Authors who call the enti ...

-speaking Native American people who historically inhabited the upper Ohio River. In reaction to

Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

invasions to take control of hunting grounds in the late 17th century, they moved south to the lower

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it ...

. They finally settled in central Louisiana, where they assimilated with the Tunica and the Siouan-speaking

Biloxi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated pop ...

. They are generally classified with the speakers of the Siouan Ofo language.

History

According to the 1684 French map of

Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin (1650-c.1712) was a French trader who was appointed in the early 1670s as the first cartographer in ''Nouvelle France'' (Canada) by the colony's governor. He was appointed in 1688 as royal hydrographer by Louis XIV. ...

, the Mosopelea had eight villages just north of the Ohio River, between the Muskingum and Scioto rivers, within the present-day state of Ohio, corresponding with the heart of

Ohio Hopewell The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from ...

country. (The

Miami-Illinois Miami-Illinois (endonym: , ) also known as Irenwa, or Irenwe is an indigenous Algonquian language spoken in the United States, primarily in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, western Ohio and adjacent areas along the Mississippi River by the Miami ...

name ("river of the Mosopelea") referred to what is now called the Ohio River. Shortened in the

Shawnee language The Shawnee language is a Central Algonquian language spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by the Shawnee people. It was originally spoken by these people in a broad territory throughout the Eastern United States, mostly north ...

, the name evolved to "Pelisipi" or "Pellissippi" and was also later applied to what is now called the

Clinch River The Clinch River is a river that flows southwest for more than through the Great Appalachian Valley in the U.S. states of Virginia and Tennessee, gathering various tributaries, including the Powell River, before joining the Tennessee River in K ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...

and

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

.) Tribal territory of Ofo during the 17th century highlighted Franquelin noted the villages on the map as "destroyed". La Salle recorded that the Mosopelea were among the tribes conquered by the Seneca and other nations of the

in the early 1670s, during the later

Beaver Wars The Beaver Wars ( moh, Tsianì kayonkwere), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (french: Guerres franco-iroquoises) were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout t ...

. In 1673, Marquette, Joliet, and other early French explorers found that the Mosopelea had fled to the lower Mississippi River. They lived for a time near the Natchez. In 1699, the Ofo/Mosopelea were referred by French Jesuits as the ''Houspé'', and were encountered living among the Tunica. Around 1700, French travelers reported Ofo villages in Mississippi on the

Yazoo River The Yazoo River is a river in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi. It is considered by some to mark the southern boundary of what is called the Mississippi Delta, a broad floodplain that was cultivated for cotton plantations before th ...

. Refusing to join the Natchez in their war against the French in the 1710s and 1720s, the Ofo moved further south. They and other remnant peoples became assimilated into the Biloxi and Tunica. Their language became extinct. Today their descendants are enrolled in the federally recognized Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe and have a reservation in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. They speak English or French as their first language.

Notes

References

* Hanna, Charles. ''The Wilderness Trail'', Vol 2, pp. 94–105. {{authority control Siouan peoples Native American tribes in Ohio Native American tribes in Mississippi Native American tribes in Louisiana Extinct ethnic groups