The Taensa were sun worshipers, and had a temple with idols and a perpetual fire. When d'Iberville sojourned among them, lightning struck their temple and destroyed it, upon which the mothers sacrificed their infants, to appease the wrath of the incensed deity, by throwing them into the burning edifice (Margry IV, 414, etc.; V, 398). The people then rubbed their faces and bodies with _earth_. Nothing definite is known about their gentes, phratries and totems. Several French authors represent them as speaking the Naktche language (which is untrue) and as being of the same nation.[22] D'Iberville states that their language differed from that of the Huma tribe.