Emile Stouff

author

Emile Stouff

d. 1978

A Chitimacha chief from Charenton, Louisiana, he preserved tribal history, beliefs, and stories in handwritten notebooks that were published after his death. His writings offer a rare firsthand account shaped by oral tradition and community memory.

1 Audiobook

Chitimacha Notebook: Writings of Emile Stouff—A Chitimacha Chief

by Emile Stouff

About the author

Emile Stouff served as Chief of the Chitimachas of Charenton, Louisiana, from 1948 to 1968. After his death in 1978, his widow, Faye Roger Stouff, found notebooks in which he had written down Chitimacha stories, beliefs, and historical traditions.

Those notebooks became Chitimacha Notebook: Writings of Emile Stouff—A Chitimacha Chief, published in 1986 and edited by Marcia Gaudet. The introduction notes that Stouff had no formal education; according to his widow, she taught him to read and write after their marriage, and he recorded traditions he had learned through oral teaching within the community.

His work matters because it preserves Chitimacha history from a Chitimacha point of view. Rather than a distant outside description, his writing carries the voice of someone entrusted with the tribe’s stories and determined to keep them alive.