It’s a natural tendency for people from outside of the area to pronounce the “lox” part of Biloxi like it rhymes with “box.” But…for whatever reason, the correct pronunciation is actually not what first meets the eye. The “lox” part of the name sounds like the word “luxe” as in deluxe. “Buh-luhk-see.”
Hear the pronuciation: CLICK HERE
The quick answer as to where the City got its name is that the City was named after the tribe of Indians who inhabited the area when Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur Iberville discovered it in 1699.
Biloxi’s Discovery and More About the Biloxi Tribe - Source:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biloxi_people
In 1697, the Comte de Pontchartrain, French Minister of Marine, gave Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur Iberville orders to find the mouth of the Mississippi River. On September 5, 1698, Iberville’s expedition left La Rochelle, France. Iberville arrived at Ship Island on February 10, 1699. On February 13, Iberville and 14 men landed on the mainland at present-day Biloxi. After several days the French became friends with the Biloxi Indians that had already inhabited the land.
The Biloxi tribe consisted of Native Americans of the Siouan language family. “They call themselves by the autonomyTanêks(a)in Siouan Biloxi language. The Biloxi language --Tanêksąyaa ade--has been extinct since the 1930s, when the last known native semi-speaker, Emma Jackson, died.”
Biloxis "were descendants of the mound-building Mississippian culture people…” (Brain 1990: 80). Although they were of the Siouan-language origin, ancestors of the Biloxi shared similar cultural features with other peoples in the Southeast, what anthropologists call the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). “They were an agricultural society, in which women cultivated varieties of maize, beans and squash. The men supplemented the agrarian diet by hunting deer, bear, and bison (Kniffen et al. 1987). They fished year-round. (Brain 1990).”
Today, what remains of the Biloxi tribe has joined with the Tunica tribe. The group was federally recognized in 1981 and are now called the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe and share a small reservation in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. “Descendants of several other small tribes are enrolled with them. The two main tribes were from different language groups: the Biloxi were Siouan-speaking and the Tunica had an isolate language. Today the tribe members speak English or French.”
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