After doing that last post, I started poking around the Clarke County Chamber of Commerce's Web site. They give the following capsule description of my home town:
SHUBUTA , located 12 miles south of Quitman, has an interesting past dating back to early Indian settlements. Shubuta, a Choctaw Indian word (SHOBOTI) meaning smoky, was given by the Indians to a nearby creek which is an arm of the Chickasawhay River and still has smoky waters. Until the late 1800's, Shubuta was commonly known as the largest town between Meridian, Mississippi and Mobile, Alabama. Shubuta claims two churches and three homes on the National Register of Historic Places.
Actually, it's 14 miles south of Quitman. And two churches? Let's get real. They may have only 650 people or so these days. But they have two churches just on the main highway through town. There are four functioning churches within two blocks of the house where I grew up. Shubuta has at least six churches, maybe more. (Two churches, ha!) This Web site lists seven Baptist churches alone in Shubuta. But one or two of those might be down in Hiwannee or somewhere outside of town.
The interpretation of "shoboti" as "smoky" may have some validity. I'm not sure anyone really knows exactly what "shubuta" means, although it is a Choctaw name. The Choctaws in what's now Clarke County spoke some off-beat dialect, and I don't know that there are exact translations.
The preferred story among people in the town - for some strange reason - is that the name means "sour meal." A local, self-published history (Shubuta Mississippi) by an amateur historian named Jerry Mason cites a 1941 paper by Mary Frances Bass, "A Study of Place-Names of Clarke County, MS," and notes: "Shubuta would be spelled Shobota in the Choctaw language. A Choctaw would have siad [sic] 'bota shua' if he were speaking of bad smelling meal, for the adjective in Choctaw invariably follows the noun, while never preceding it as in English." So maybe there's something to the favorite local legend.
2 comments:
as a person who can claim Wm. Faulkner and Eudora Welty as two of her all-time favorite authors, i love these MS tidbits you throw out from time to time. i especially like this one, and the kid with her 4-H hogs.
Yeah, those are both great authors. I usually refer to Faulkner's works as "Scripture," though. :) - Bruce
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