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| The Pascagoula - Mississippi's "Singing River" |
When French settlers arrived in the region in 1699, they heard a remarkable sound rising from the waters of the Pascagoula. The river takes its name from the Pascagoula Indians, a tribe with with a name that translates literally to "bread eaters."
The people of this tribe told the French that an earlier people had lived on the modern site of Pascagoula. These Native Americans, they said, had worshiped a mermaid who lived in the river. In their temple was a beautifully carved idol of the mermaid, around which the villagers gathered each night to sing and chant.
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| A strange, repetitive humming sound rises from the river. |
...One night, when the moon at her zenith poured on heaven and earth, with more profusion than usual, a flood of light angelic, at the solemn hour of twelve, when all in nature was in repose and silence, there came, on a sudden, a rushing on the surface of the river, as if the still air had been flapped into a whirlwind by myriads of invisible wings sweeping onward. - Charles Gayerre, History of Louisiana, 1867.
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| The Pascagoula River. |
It is a tragic and unusual story but appears to be the oldest version of a legend still repeated in Mississippi about the American Indians who once lived along the banks of the Pascagoula. Other versions hold that the villagers walked into the river to avoid losing their freedom at the hands of a neighboring tribe or the Spanish conquistadors.
The story was the Pascagoula's way of explaining the strange music that came from the river that bore their name.
Does the river really sing? Find out by visiting our new page: The Pascagoula - Mississippi's Singing River.
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