Biloxi, Mississippi: The Tribe That Called Itself Taneks

Biloxi, Mississippi, carries the name of a tribe whose people, a Mississippi historian reported, called themselves Taneks and refused to be called Biloxis. So the city’s name is what other people called them.

Named for the Biloxi nation

On the basic question, the old books agree. Dunbar Rowland’s 1907 encyclopedia of Mississippi says “both the city and bay of the same name were named for the Biloxi nation of Indians, which originally inhabited those parts.”

The historian Rowland leans on for the tribes is H. S. Halbert, and Halbert’s account holds the surprise. The Biloxis, he wrote, were living near Biloxi Bay when Iberville met them in 1699, then moved northwest to the Pearl River, and in 1764 crossed the Mississippi into Louisiana. “In their native tongue, they call themselves Taneks, and refuse to be known as Biloxis. Taneks haya, ‘the first people.’”

How Taneks became Biloxi

The fullest explanation comes from the federal government’s own linguists. In 1912 the Bureau of American Ethnology published A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages, built on the work of James Owen Dorsey, with a history of the tribe by John R. Swanton. Swanton says the name Biloxi “is evidently a corruption of that by which they call themselves, ‘Ta’neks an’ya,’” an idea he credits to James Mooney. He thinks the name took its present shape “in being taken over into the Mobilian trade language.”

You can almost watch it happen in the French records. Swanton points to Iberville, who wrote about “the Annocchy, whom the Bayogoula called ‘Bilocchy,’” and says that “perhaps” shows the change. Iberville met the Biloxi before any other tribe, and Swanton notes he’s the only writer who uses the form Annocchy. Bilocchy, the neighbors’ version, is the one that stuck.

The language turned out to be a surprise too. Halbert says a study of it showed the Biloxis belonged to the Siouan family. Swanton calls them “the only known relatives of our familiar Dakota, Crows, and Osage on the entire Gulf coast.”

Worthless, turtle, or first people?

The meaning depends on who you ask, and some of the answers are hard to square.

• Henry Gannett’s 1902 place-name book for the U.S. Geological Survey says Mooney gave the meaning “trifling or worthless,” “while other authorities give the meaning, ‘turtle,’ the B referring to the catch of turtles.”
• Gannett’s 1905 edition changed the entry. It calls the name “of Choctaw origin” and says it’s been taken to refer to “worthless” or “terrapin.”
• Dorsey, quoted by Swanton, says Taneks “is apparently related” to Biloxi words for “to be in advance of another” and “first,” and concludes: “The whole name, therefore, may be translated, First People.” Halbert gives the same idea: “the first people.”

Those don’t fit together neatly. Gannett’s 1905 book calls the name Choctaw, while Halbert and Swanton put the Biloxi language in a different family altogether, and Swanton credits Mooney with tying the name to Taneks, not to “worthless.” “First People” is a translation of the tribe’s own name, Taneks, and Dorsey hedged it with “may be.”

Old Biloxi and the city on the peninsula

The French made their first settlement in 1699, Rowland says, on the northeast shore of the Bay of Biloxi, “about a league east of the present city, near the present town of Ocean Springs.” About 1717, Rowland writes, they decided to build a new fort on the mainland across from Ship Island, and the chronicler Penicaut says the spot, “one league west of Old Biloxi,” was “afterwards called New Biloxi.” Swanton notes that the Biloxi people “gave their name to the first capitals of Louisiana, old and new Biloxi.”

Swanton adds a wrinkle of his own. He says the Biloxi village wasn’t on Biloxi Bay at all, “as has been erroneously stated,” but on the Pascagoula River several miles east. So the bay, the old fort and the city all took the name of a people who, if Swanton’s right, lived a little way off, and who didn’t use that name for themselves.

Sources & further reading

• Dunbar Rowland, ed., Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions, and Persons, vol. 1 (1907). The entry “Biloxi” (pp. 240–242): city and bay “named for the Biloxi nation of Indians,” the 1699 settlement “about a league east of the present city,” and Penicaut’s “New Biloxi.” The entry “Indians” (pp. 921–924): H. S. Halbert on the Biloxis’ moves, their Siouan language, and “they call themselves Taneks, and refuse to be known as Biloxis. Taneks haya, ‘the first people’” (p. 924).
• James Owen Dorsey and John R. Swanton, A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages (Bureau of American Ethnology, 1912), pp. 5–6. Swanton’s historical sketch: the name as “a corruption” of “Ta’neks an’ya,” first suggested by Mooney; the Mobilian trade language; Iberville’s “Annocchy, whom the Bayogoula called ‘Bilocchy’”; Dorsey’s “First People”; the Siouan relatives; “old and new Biloxi”; the village on the Pascagoula River.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 1st ed. (U.S. Geological Survey, 1902), p. 43. Mooney’s “trifling or worthless” and the other authorities’ “turtle.”
• Henry Gannett, same title, 2nd ed. (U.S. Geological Survey, 1905), p. 47. “Of Choctaw origin,” “worthless” or “terrapin.”
• GNIS feature 667173 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Biloxi, in Harrison County. It has no note on the name.