Avoyel

The Avoyel or Avoyelles were a small Native American tribe who at the time of European contact inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the Atchafalaya River near present-day Marksville, Louisiana. Also called variously Shi'xkaltī'ni (Stone-Arrow-Point people) in Tunican and Tassenocogoula, Tassenogoula, Toux Enongogoula, and Tasånåk Okla in the Mobilian trade language; all names (including the autonym Avoyel) are said by early French chroniclers to mean either "Flint People" or "People of the Rocks". This is thought to either reflect their active trading of flint for tools from local sources on their land in the eponymously named modern Avoyelles Parish or more likely as their status as middlemen in trading flint from Caddoan peoples to their north to the stone deficit Atakapa and Chitimacha peoples of the Gulf Coast.

The Avoyel were also known by the French as the petits Taensas (English: Little Taensa), who were mentioned in writings by explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699. However, they are a different group than the Natchezan speaking Taensa or grand Taensas.