Mosopelea

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The Mosopelea, or Ofo (also Ofogoula), were a Siouan-speaking Native American people who historically lived near the upper Ohio River. In reaction to Iroquois Confederacy invasions to take control of hunting grounds in the late 17th century, they moved south to the lower Mississippi River. They finally settled in central Louisiana, where they assimilated with the Tunica and the Siouan-speaking Biloxi. They spoke the Ofo language, generally classified as a Siouan language.^[1]

According to the 1684 French map of Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin, 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 country.^[3] (The Miami-Illinois name Mosopeleacipi ("river of the Mosopelea") referred to what is now called the Ohio River. Shortened in the Shawnee language, the name evolved to "Pelisipi" or "Pellissippi" and was also later applied to what is now called the Clinch River in Virginia and Tennessee.)^[4]

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 Iroquois Confederacy in the early 1670s, during the later Beaver Wars.^[5] In 1673, Marquette, Joliet, and other early French explorers found that the Mosopelea likely abandoned Ohio and moved south along the Mississippi River.^[1] They briefly lived with the Quapaw before joining the Tunica, who were allied with the French colonists.^[1]

In 1699, the Ofo/Mosopelea were referred by French Jesuits as the Houspé, and were encountered living among the Tunica.^[6][7]

Around 1700, French travelers reported Ofo villages in Mississippi on the Yazoo River. 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.

The U.S. Department of the Interior determined that: "The contemporary Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe is the successor of the historical Tunica, Ofo, and Avoyel tribes, and part of the Biloxi tribe. These have a documented existence back to 1698. The component tribes were allied in the 18th century and became amalgamated into one in the 19th century through common interests and outside pressures from non-Indian cultures."^[2]

The Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe has a reservation in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana.

• Hanna, Charles. The Wilderness Trail, Vol 2, pp. 94–105.
• Swanton, John Reed (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 74. ISBN 9780806317304.

• Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe, official website