A Snake, a Worm, and a Dead End: In Search of the Meaning of "Teche"
Note: This is a draft. . . .
I recently read about astronomer Johannes Kepler, who spent years forging a theory about the operation of the Solar System — only to admit to himself eventually that the data simply did not support his theory.
Keppler had to throw out his beloved theory.
So I suppose I should not feel too bad about spending the past five days fleshing out a theory about the origin of the word Teche, only to have to toss it after realizing it just didn't stand up to scrutiny.
I ought to explain that in my forthcoming book about the history of Bayou Teche, I grapple with the alleged origins of the word Teche. One of these etymologies — indeed, the one cited most commonly in popular and academic literature — holds that Teche derives from the Chitimacha word for “snake.” The problem with this claim, I observed, is that there is no known Chitimacha word for “snake” that even remotely resembles Teche.
In short, I found this etymology dubious and searched for other explanations. And for the past five days I thought I’d found one — a good one.
Last week I drove to Louisiana State University to visit its Museum of Natural Science. I made the two-hour drive to examine Chitimacha Indian baskets, some of them a century old. All came ultimately from the Chitimachas’ ancestral lands at Charenton, Louisiana (now the Sovereign Nation of the Chitimacha), located about 25 miles southeast of my home.
While scrutinizing the baskets, the museum staff showed me a booklet of handwritten notes by Mrs. Sidney Bradford, née Mary Avery McIlhenny, daughter of Tabasco sauce inventor E. McIlhenny. An avid basket collector, Bradford used the booklet around 1900 to record traditional basket pattern names.
Glancing through the booklet, I noticed under one drawing of a basket pattern she (or a member of the tribe) had written in pencil, “Tesh mich.”
Tesh?
This, of course, is the exact pronunciation of the name of the bayou.
Beneath “Tesh mich” someone had translated the phrase into English: “worm tracks.”
Previously I had been unable to find a Chitimacha word that sounded like Teche. I had consulted Daniel W. Hieber’s Chitimacha-English dictionary (a work in progress accessible here via the Internet), Morris Swadesh’s 1950 Chitimacha-English dictionary, and the published research of noted anthropologist John R. Swanton. But I did so all without success. This confused me, because according to any number of present-day sources, Teche is supposed to mean “snake,” and according to legend the bayou bears this purportedly Chitimacha name because long ago a giant snake created the bayou’s meandering course. As tribal legend maintains:
Yet Bradford had translated Tesh as “worm.” Perhaps, I thought, the word Teche didn’t come from the Chitimacha for “snake”; perhaps it came instead from the Chitimacha for “worm.” A snake and a worm are similar in shape: both are writhing, legless, elongated creatures. Perhaps someone long ago garbled the original story and in translation the worm became a snake?
Swanton’s published writings seemed to support my budding hypothesis. Aware of Bradford’s interest in Chitimacha basketry, Swanton in 1911 wrote of a few specimens she had collected, “All of the designs are tci'cmic, or ‘worm-track’ designs. . . .”
Here, Swanton rendered the Chitimacha word for “worm” not as “tesh,” as Bradford did, but as “tci’c,” and elsewhere “tciic”.
Well, I thought, tci’c and tciic vaguely remind me of Teche.
I further sensed I was on the right track when I read Swanton’s note that “[the letter] c in Chitimacha words used in these [basket] descriptions is pronounced the same as English sh.” In other words, tci’c and tciic were pronounced “tshesh” and “tsheesh”— extremely close to the modern pronunciation of Teche!
I believed I had just about nailed down the origin of Bayou Teche’s name. I had strong evidence, I felt, that the name came from tci’c and tciic, the Chitimacha words for “worm,” which Bradford had rendered as Tesh. Moreover, tradition held that a giant snake had formed the Teche, and does not a worm twist and turn like snake? Could not someone have confused the two creatures when translating the myth into English? And, finally, was not the winding shape of the bayou reflected in the very “worm track” pattern of the Chitimacha baskets?
Then my hypothesis unraveled. Consulting a noted linguist who specializes in Native American languages in the South, I learned that Swanton had used “Americanist phonetic notation” when writing out Chitimacha words. This phonetic system did not correspond to the phonetics learned in elementary schools or used in standard dictionaries. In fact, when Swanton wrote tci’c and tciic, I learned, he meant for them to be pronounced not “tsheesh,” as I thought, but “cheesh”. This, I had to admit, didn’t sound so much like Teche anymore.
Still, I countered, why would Mrs. Bradford (or one of her Chitimacha contacts) have written Tesh in her booklet as the tribal word for “worm”?
I double checked the booklet: Yes, it definitely read Tesh. But as I leafed through the booklet’s other handwritten notes, I saw that the same person who penciled Tesh as Chitimacha for “worm” rendered the word on other pages as chi, chie, chis, and chish. These sounded little like Teche, but very close to “cheesh,” the correct pronunciation.
Indeed, Swadesh, using a different phonetic system when he compiled his Chitimacha dictionary in 1950, wrote the word for “worm” as ǯiːš. When translated into easy-to-read phonetics (for non-linguists like me), ǯiːš would similarly be pronounced “cheesh.”
Moreover, the linguist told me that in the early twentieth century Swanton noted in an unpublished work that the Chitimacha name for the Teche was qukx — a word that sounded nothing like Teche.
In fact, the Chitimacha phrase for “Bayou Teche” was qukx caad.
I already knew the phrase qukx caad. Indeed, it was the very fact that qukx sounded nothing like Teche that caused me to question the popular etymology in the first place. Frankly, I had suspected that qukx caad was a recent folk etymology — that is, I thought perhaps someone, hearing that the Chitimacha had traditionally called the bayou (albeit in their own language) “Snake Bayou,” had consulted a Chitimacha dictionary (perhaps one of those I myself was using), looked up the tribal words for “snake” and “bayou,” and assumed that Chitimachas in earlier times must have used the same words, qukx caad, to indicate Bayou Teche.
Now, however, I knew my hunch was wrong: Swanton’s unpublished work from the early twentieth century proved that the Chitimacha had indeed traditionally called the bayou qukx caad — Snake Bayou.
But — and this is important — if the traditional Chitimacha name for Bayou Teche was qukx caad . . . then where did the word Teche fit into the story?
I was back where I started: qukx and Teche bore no resemblance to each other, either in pronunciation or appearance. So where did the word Teche come from? And if the Chitimacha had not used the term, had it come from the early French or Spanish pioneers and cartographers? And if from them, where did they get it? Perhaps from the Attakapas, or the Houma, or the Choctaw? The latter seemed possible, for other nearby place names derive their names from Choctaw — for example, Atchafalaya and Catahoula.
What if Teche came to the region from the Afro-Caribbean world, I wondered, perhaps even from West Africa itself? Certainly there is precedent in words like yamand gumbo. (See my previous articles about the Afro-Caribbean origin of the word gumbo here and here.)
As I’ve stated previously, I enjoy historical detection. It’s what drew me to my career in history. And while the detective work sometimes pays off, other times it leads nowhere — such as in this instance. But I have another hypothesis, one I won’t discuss here, that remains feasible. And so I fall back on that idea, but will keep looking for alternate explanations for the name of the bayou.
I recently read about astronomer Johannes Kepler, who spent years forging a theory about the operation of the Solar System — only to admit to himself eventually that the data simply did not support his theory.
Keppler had to throw out his beloved theory.
So I suppose I should not feel too bad about spending the past five days fleshing out a theory about the origin of the word Teche, only to have to toss it after realizing it just didn't stand up to scrutiny.
I ought to explain that in my forthcoming book about the history of Bayou Teche, I grapple with the alleged origins of the word Teche. One of these etymologies — indeed, the one cited most commonly in popular and academic literature — holds that Teche derives from the Chitimacha word for “snake.” The problem with this claim, I observed, is that there is no known Chitimacha word for “snake” that even remotely resembles Teche.
In short, I found this etymology dubious and searched for other explanations. And for the past five days I thought I’d found one — a good one.
Last week I drove to Louisiana State University to visit its Museum of Natural Science. I made the two-hour drive to examine Chitimacha Indian baskets, some of them a century old. All came ultimately from the Chitimachas’ ancestral lands at Charenton, Louisiana (now the Sovereign Nation of the Chitimacha), located about 25 miles southeast of my home.
While scrutinizing the baskets, the museum staff showed me a booklet of handwritten notes by Mrs. Sidney Bradford, née Mary Avery McIlhenny, daughter of Tabasco sauce inventor E. McIlhenny. An avid basket collector, Bradford used the booklet around 1900 to record traditional basket pattern names.
Glancing through the booklet, I noticed under one drawing of a basket pattern she (or a member of the tribe) had written in pencil, “Tesh mich.”
Tesh?
This, of course, is the exact pronunciation of the name of the bayou.
Beneath “Tesh mich” someone had translated the phrase into English: “worm tracks.”
Previously I had been unable to find a Chitimacha word that sounded like Teche. I had consulted Daniel W. Hieber’s Chitimacha-English dictionary (a work in progress accessible here via the Internet), Morris Swadesh’s 1950 Chitimacha-English dictionary, and the published research of noted anthropologist John R. Swanton. But I did so all without success. This confused me, because according to any number of present-day sources, Teche is supposed to mean “snake,” and according to legend the bayou bears this purportedly Chitimacha name because long ago a giant snake created the bayou’s meandering course. As tribal legend maintains:
Many years ago . . . there was a huge and venomous snake. This snake was so large, and so long, that its size was not measured in feet, but in miles. This enormous snake had been an enemy of the Chitimacha for many years, because of its destruction to many of their ways of life. One day, the Chitimacha chief called together his warriors, and had them prepare themselves for a battle with their enemy. In those days, there were no guns that could be used to kill this snake. All they had were clubs and bows and arrows, with arrowheads made of large bones from the garfish. . . . The warriors fought courageously to kill the enemy, but the snake fought just as hard to survive. As the beast turned and twisted in the last few days of a slow death, it broadened, curved and deepened the place wherein his huge body lay. The Bayou Teche is proof of the exact position into which this enemy placed himself when overcome by the Chitimacha warriors. (Source: Chitimacha.gov)
Yet Bradford had translated Tesh as “worm.” Perhaps, I thought, the word Teche didn’t come from the Chitimacha for “snake”; perhaps it came instead from the Chitimacha for “worm.” A snake and a worm are similar in shape: both are writhing, legless, elongated creatures. Perhaps someone long ago garbled the original story and in translation the worm became a snake?
Swanton’s published writings seemed to support my budding hypothesis. Aware of Bradford’s interest in Chitimacha basketry, Swanton in 1911 wrote of a few specimens she had collected, “All of the designs are tci'cmic, or ‘worm-track’ designs. . . .”
Here, Swanton rendered the Chitimacha word for “worm” not as “tesh,” as Bradford did, but as “tci’c,” and elsewhere “tciic”.
Well, I thought, tci’c and tciic vaguely remind me of Teche.
I further sensed I was on the right track when I read Swanton’s note that “[the letter] c in Chitimacha words used in these [basket] descriptions is pronounced the same as English sh.” In other words, tci’c and tciic were pronounced “tshesh” and “tsheesh”— extremely close to the modern pronunciation of Teche!
I believed I had just about nailed down the origin of Bayou Teche’s name. I had strong evidence, I felt, that the name came from tci’c and tciic, the Chitimacha words for “worm,” which Bradford had rendered as Tesh. Moreover, tradition held that a giant snake had formed the Teche, and does not a worm twist and turn like snake? Could not someone have confused the two creatures when translating the myth into English? And, finally, was not the winding shape of the bayou reflected in the very “worm track” pattern of the Chitimacha baskets?
Then my hypothesis unraveled. Consulting a noted linguist who specializes in Native American languages in the South, I learned that Swanton had used “Americanist phonetic notation” when writing out Chitimacha words. This phonetic system did not correspond to the phonetics learned in elementary schools or used in standard dictionaries. In fact, when Swanton wrote tci’c and tciic, I learned, he meant for them to be pronounced not “tsheesh,” as I thought, but “cheesh”. This, I had to admit, didn’t sound so much like Teche anymore.
Still, I countered, why would Mrs. Bradford (or one of her Chitimacha contacts) have written Tesh in her booklet as the tribal word for “worm”?
I double checked the booklet: Yes, it definitely read Tesh. But as I leafed through the booklet’s other handwritten notes, I saw that the same person who penciled Tesh as Chitimacha for “worm” rendered the word on other pages as chi, chie, chis, and chish. These sounded little like Teche, but very close to “cheesh,” the correct pronunciation.
Indeed, Swadesh, using a different phonetic system when he compiled his Chitimacha dictionary in 1950, wrote the word for “worm” as ǯiːš. When translated into easy-to-read phonetics (for non-linguists like me), ǯiːš would similarly be pronounced “cheesh.”
Moreover, the linguist told me that in the early twentieth century Swanton noted in an unpublished work that the Chitimacha name for the Teche was qukx — a word that sounded nothing like Teche.
In fact, the Chitimacha phrase for “Bayou Teche” was qukx caad.
I already knew the phrase qukx caad. Indeed, it was the very fact that qukx sounded nothing like Teche that caused me to question the popular etymology in the first place. Frankly, I had suspected that qukx caad was a recent folk etymology — that is, I thought perhaps someone, hearing that the Chitimacha had traditionally called the bayou (albeit in their own language) “Snake Bayou,” had consulted a Chitimacha dictionary (perhaps one of those I myself was using), looked up the tribal words for “snake” and “bayou,” and assumed that Chitimachas in earlier times must have used the same words, qukx caad, to indicate Bayou Teche.
Now, however, I knew my hunch was wrong: Swanton’s unpublished work from the early twentieth century proved that the Chitimacha had indeed traditionally called the bayou qukx caad — Snake Bayou.
But — and this is important — if the traditional Chitimacha name for Bayou Teche was qukx caad . . . then where did the word Teche fit into the story?
I was back where I started: qukx and Teche bore no resemblance to each other, either in pronunciation or appearance. So where did the word Teche come from? And if the Chitimacha had not used the term, had it come from the early French or Spanish pioneers and cartographers? And if from them, where did they get it? Perhaps from the Attakapas, or the Houma, or the Choctaw? The latter seemed possible, for other nearby place names derive their names from Choctaw — for example, Atchafalaya and Catahoula.
What if Teche came to the region from the Afro-Caribbean world, I wondered, perhaps even from West Africa itself? Certainly there is precedent in words like yamand gumbo. (See my previous articles about the Afro-Caribbean origin of the word gumbo here and here.)
As I’ve stated previously, I enjoy historical detection. It’s what drew me to my career in history. And while the detective work sometimes pays off, other times it leads nowhere — such as in this instance. But I have another hypothesis, one I won’t discuss here, that remains feasible. And so I fall back on that idea, but will keep looking for alternate explanations for the name of the bayou.
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