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The Avoyel or Avoyelles was a small Natchez-speaking tribe who inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the Atchafalaya River, in the area of present-day Marksville, Louisiana. The indigenous name for this tribe is Tamoucougoula. The word Avoyel is of French derivation and means either "Flint People" or "the people of the rocks."
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History
The Avoyel were neighbors of the Tunica people. French colonists named Avoyelles Parish for the local tribe. The traditional homeland for the Avoyel was near the mouth of the Red River at the Atchafalaya River. It includes extensive lakes and bayous in a large wetlands area.
Numbering 280 in 1698, as recorded by the French, the tribe declined markedly after that. They were likely affected by the same drastic decimation as were other tribes, primarily due to new infectious diseases unwittingly carried by Europeans, to which the natives had no acquired immunity. By 1805 the Avoyel were said to number only two or three women. The Avoyel survivors were believed to have been absorbed by marriage into the neighboring Tunica people.