            
|
YAZOO
RIVER
|
Facts
-
The River was given its name by the French Explorer,
La Salle, in 1682 when the found a small Indian
tribe with that name living near its mouth.
-
It
is the second longest tributary of the Mississippi
flowing into it from the east. Only the Ohio is
lengthier.
-
The
first underwater mine was invented and used by Confederates
on the Yazoo River in 1862 near Vicksburg to sink
the Federal ironclad USS Cairo. A second, non-electrical
mine, sank its sister ship, the USS Baron DeKalb
near Yazoo City in 1863. Its hull is still visible
during low water.
-
There
are 29 sunken ships from the War Between the States
beneath the Yazoo River.
-
Mississippi
has 15 river ports, Yazoo City being one of them.
-
The
River was the cause of Yazoo City’s founding,
and was its lifeline to the outside world for its
first 50 years.
|
 |
The
Name
-
Yazoo
(a strange, exotic sound)…Yachou…Yakou…
Yasoux…Yason… Yasoons… Illasus.
Then there was Oalsees…Yahaas, Yassa, Yasoves,
Yasus. The word became slightly distorted with the
“S” sound becoming a “Z”.
-
What
does it mean?: River of Death, Leaf, Hunting Ground,
To Blow on an Instrument? The meaning is actually
unknown. Attempts to give it meaning all evolved
when European settlers tried to fit the strange
sounding word into the patterns of the language
of the Choctaws. The Choctaws had a village in eastern
Mississippi named Yazoo. According to linguists
who have studied the language patterns of the Choctaws,
it was a word remaining from the Yazoo Indians’
language, which like the tribe itself, was entirely
separate from the Choctaws.
-
Another
surmise is that it is from the Choctaw for “hunting
ground”. Yashu means “to go”,
and owa meaning “hunt”, but no one really
knows.
|
|
Other
Stories
|
|
|
|
|
