- As a group, the four tribes of the Chitimacha may have numbered as many as 20, 000 in 1492. While their direct contact with Europeans during the next two centuries was virtually nil, Old World epidemics spread west from the Spanish mission system of northern Florida and devastated native populations in the lower Mississippi Valley. Most Chitimacha today still live on or near their reservation at ...www.dickshovel.com/chi.html