Bayou

Bayou is a common in the southern United States, especially in Louisiana term for slow-moving or standing water. To date, the term is mainly associated with the Cajun culture that developed especially in the hard to reach marshes of the Mississippi estuary, where bayous often constitute the only roads.

Etymology and definition

The word " bayou " is probably an Indian word back (about Choctaw " Bayuk " for " small stream " ) and was then taken over by the French settlers of the colony of Louisiana. 1699, the term first appeared in the report of a French expedition to the north coast of Lake Pontchartrain, located immediately north of the present-day New Orleans. With the further advance of the French settlers, the Cajun, new waters along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and upstream in the Mississippi Valley were always occupied with the suffix Bayou. At the latest after Louisiana in 1803 fell to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, the word has also been adopted by the English-speaking inhabitants of the region and used for about swampy waters in the coastal plain of Texas.

Particularly shape the landscape are bayous in the delta of Mississippi and the western coastal plain of the State of Louisiana, often referred to as " Bayou Country ". Here the word is mostly used for backwater tributaries or lakes, but also generally slow-flowing rivers or streams with mostly marshy shores. The center of distribution of local and waters name with the addition Bayou is located in Louisiana, southern Arkansas and in southeast Texas (here about the Buffalo Bayou ); further examples are found east to Florida and north to Illinois.

Reception

As a literary adaptations about Kate Chopin's works such as Bayou Folk ( 1894) and Beyond the Bayou be mentioned. In music the term appeared, for example, in Hank Williams' song Jambalaya ( on the Bayou ) or BB King Blues on the Bayou album on the 1998; are also known Born on the Bayou by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blue Bayou by Roy Orbison.