Return to First Page---ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume XLVIII, Summer 1989 p. 140
Dr. Branner mistakenly assumed that the names, Arkansas and Kansas, were not related, and therefore he deduced that was the reason "the kansas part of Arkansas was not pronounced like the name of the state of Kansas." He did not know that Kansas Indians also were a Dhegigha Siouan tribe, and that their name meant "Wind People" or "South Wind People."' The difference in pronunciation of the state names is due to our retaining the French custom of not pronouncing the final "s" while in Kansas the French rule is ignored.
It is true that Father Marquette called the village he visited Akamsea. This name, nevertheless, included the entire tribe, and it consistently thereafter was used in a plural sense, with or without the final "s". It passed into English from the French and appeared in English as early as 1701 (8).
BARRAQUE.---"Featherstonhaugh, who traveled in the state in 1834-5, has much about M. Barraque, who then lived on the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff. Township in Jefferson county." A street in Pine Bluff also bears his name which locally is pronounced "Barr-a-queue." It is not a colonial name, for Antoine Barraque, a native of Gascony, France, and a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, came to Arkansas some years after the Louisiana Purchase and settled at New Gascony (9). He conducted the Quapaws to Red River in 1826 (10).
BAYOU.---This word is in common use in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. It is thus defined by Du Pratz: 'Bayouc, a stream of dead water, with little or no observable current.' The name has been extended in many cases to swift mountain streams in spite of the protests of the people; for example, Polk Bayou in Batesville. The word is a corruption of the French boyau, a gut, and by extension a long narrow passage."
The French adopted the Choctaw bayuk that often was contracted to boik or boig (11).
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- 8. Herman Moll, A system of geography or a new and accurate description of the earth in all
- its empires, kingdoms and states, illustrated with history, and topography, and maps of country (London, 1701),152..
- 9. George W. Featherstonhaugh, Excursions Through the Slave States (2 vols., New York, 1884,
- II, 230.
- 10. Samuel D. Dickinson, "The Quapaw Journey to Red River," Pulaski County Historical
