When the town of Houma was named, it was chosen with intention.
An early local account records that when R. H. Grinage was asked to name the new town after himself, he refused. Instead, he turned to an aged Indian man passing through the area and asked him what the town should be called.
That man was Couteau, known to our people as Joseph Houma Abbe, Tou-La-Bay, the Houma chief. He lived at Little Caillou, where the writer had previously visited him at his wigwam. When given the opportunity to name the town, he did not choose a settler’s name or his own.
He asked that it be named Houma, after his people.
What matters here is not how outsiders tried to classify him on paper, but how he identified himself and how he was recognized in place. When authority was deferred to him, he chose Houma identity clearly, deliberately, and without hesitation.
This was not a symbolic gesture. It was an assertion of who belonged to the land and whose name it carried.
The writer later described him as the “last chief” and predicted the disappearance of his people. History has proven otherwise.
The town still bears the name Houma.
The people are still here.
Houma was not named for us. It was named by us.
📰 The Thibodaux Sentinel. May 23rd, 1891
