What’s in a Name? Bulbancha and Mobilian Jargon (2024)

March 2023

Louisiana’s tri-millennial Native history and culture is reflected in this name, part of a common indigenous language used for trading throughout the lower Mississippi region.

— by Frank Perez

It’s almost five years now since New Orleans celebrated its tricentennial. Throughout 2018, the huge “300” sign that adorned the steps leading up to what was then called Washington Artillery Park facing Jackson Square was a source of great civic pride. But for some, it was a reminder of just how pervasive the colonial erasure of local history has been.

My friend, Dr. Jeffrey Darensbourg, a member of the Ishak nation, observes, “Many people still don’t know that ‘New Orleans’ was already a place, a place with a name, before the first Europeans set sail for the area.”

300 years? More like 3,000, the Native thinking went.

The images below are from “The History of Louisiana,” first published in 1758. The three-volume work was written and illustrated by Antoine Simone Le Page du Pratz, a Dutch writer who lived for years among the Natchez.

No one can deny New Orleans is in love with its history, and that’s great. But when does that history begin? How you answer that question depends on how colonized—or de-colonized—your thinking is.

Long before La Salle sailed down the Mississippi in 1682 and claimed all the land the river drained for the king of France (Louis XIV; hence, Louis-iana), the seasonal trading post on the banks of the river where the French Market now stands served dozens of indigenous people groups throughout the Gulf South.

Anthropologists have dated the Native habitation of North America to the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 25,000 years ago, when Asiatic peoples crossed the Bering Strait and migrated southward. Those who settled in the Mississippi River Valley were called the Mississippians. Mississippian culture was dominant throughout the region by 1,200 C.E.

The natives were smart enough not to build permanent settlements on the banks of the mighty river, which overflowed its banks each Spring, but they did realize the river’s strategic value in facilitating trade.

The area we now call Louisiana was home to several indigenous groups, including the Ishak / Atakapa, Chitimacha, Coushatta, Natchez, Caddo, Tunica-Biloxi, Houma, and Choctaw. Others from the surrounding region included the Creek, Chickasaw, Coasati, Alabama, Mikasuki, Apalachi, Biloxi, Chacato, Pakana, Pascagoula, Taensa, and others.

And while all of these Native groups had their own languages, they all had a common word—a name—for the area where New Orleans now sits. That name was Bulbancha—a word of Choctaw / Chickasaw origin meaning “place of many tongues.”

In pre-colonial times, the linguistic diversity of the Gulf South was surpassed only by the Pacific Northwest. This diversity necessitated a common trade language. Gradually, in order to facilitate commerce, such a language developed, and it was called Mobilian Jargon.

Mobilian Jargon was used for not only trade, but also for cultural, political, and religious purposes. These included inter-tribal dances, games, religious ceremonies, extended negotiations (inter-tribal and with Europeans). Christian missionaries also used it in their proselytizing efforts.

The pidgin language was spoken along the Gulf coast and 500 miles up the Mississippi River. With a vocabulary of about 1,250 words, its grammar and syntax suggest a Choctaw / Chickasaw origin. Eventually, Mobilian Jargon was adopted by the French, Spanish, and British, a fact which protected the Natives’ tribal identity, but also complicated linguistic preservation.

The Europeans did not realize that Mobilian Jargon was a sort of lingua franca for the Gulf South. Because many tribes spoke Mobilian Jargon, and because Mobilian Jargon is based on Choctaw, many early European explorers erroneously assumed that any native who spoke Mobilian Jargon was Choctaw.

This linguistic confusion is also found in early accounts of Bienville, the “Father of Louisiana.” Bienville is said to have learned “Bayogoula” in less than six weeks from a native guide, but it was probably Mobilian Jargon.

This “beautiful crescent” was home to cultures established centuries before the first Europeans arrived. The area’s history was already long and noble. The irony of it all is that Bienville and the other colonizers of his day knew that. They had to know it because they had to displace it. Subsequent generations would go further and erase it, both literally and figuratively.

But we can, and should, do better.