The Taensa (also Taënsas, Tensas, Tensaw, and Grands Taensas in French [1]) were a Native American people whose settlements at the time of European contact in the late 17th century were located in present-day Tensas Parish, Louisiana. [2]

Jun 1, 2024 · The indigenous Taensa were a mobile and adaptable people who lived in villages in the areas now known as Louisiana, Alabama, and possibly Texas, where they remained a discrete cultural entity into the 1930s.

Jul 21, 2022 · The Taensa Tribe was a smaller Southeast Indian Tribe that was located in modern-day Louisiana. They would fade away due to disease.

The Taensa had, at one time, formed an alliance with the Koroa, then on Yazoo River, and another with the Arkansas Indians. The Taensa grammar speaks of a northern and of a southern, more polished dialect, but does not locate them topographically.

Jul 1, 1995 · The Taensa (Taenso, Tahensa, Takensa, Tenisaw, Tenza, Tinza) Indians were Muskhogean-speaking Indians who originally lived near the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. In the early nineteenth century, after they had moved to southwestern Louisiana, the Taensas petitioned the Spanish government for lands in southeastern Texas.

There is reason to think that part of the Taensa were encountered by De Soto in 1540, but the first mention of them under their proper name is by La Salle and his companions, who visited them in 1682 on their way to the mouth of the Mississippi.

The Taensa language was spoken by the Taensa people originally of northeastern Louisiana, and later with historical importance in Alabama. Though poorly documented, it was probably a dialect of the Natchez language.

The Taensa were sedentary and agricultural and expert canoe men, living in large houses described as having walls of earth, but more probably of logs plastered with clay, and roofed with mats of woven cane splits.

Taensa Indians, a tribe of Muskhogean stock and somewhat superior culture, living when first known on the west bank of the Mississippi, within the present limits of Tensas parish, Louisiana, and numbering perhaps 1200 souls, in several villages. The meaning of the name is unknown.

The Taensa Indians were a small tribe of northeastern Louisiana, closely related to the Natchez tribe. The Taensas have not existed as a tribe since the late 1700's, but there are some people of Taensa descent still living among the neighboring Chitimacha tribe today.