The Place of Many Tongues
Long before this bend in the river was called New Orleans, it was a gathering ground, a place where many peoples met, traded, and spoke to one another in many languages.
Concept illustration — a bridge from the past to the present.
The Name
A Choctaw Word for a Crowded Crossroads
Bulbancha comes from Choctaw and is commonly translated as “the place of many tongues” or “the place of other languages.” It described the land at the mouth of the Mississippi — a portage, a trade route, and a meeting ground used for centuries by many Indigenous nations, among them the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Houma, Biloxi, Atakapa, Tunica, and Natchez.
So many peoples passed through that a shared trade language grew up to carry business between them. That is the condition the name records: not one people in one place, but many, working out how to understand each other.
A city has been multilingual here for a very long time. The name is older than the one on the map.
In recent years the name has been carried forward by Indigenous writers, artists, and organizers in New Orleans as a reminder that this was — and remains — Indigenous ground, and that the people who gave it that name are still here.
Go Deeper
Read the Full History
64 Parishes, the encyclopedia of Louisiana published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, has a thorough entry on Bulbancha — its languages, its people, and its long life before and after 1718.
Read “Bulbancha” on 64 Parishes ↗
Opens 64parishes.org in a new tab.
Why We Carry It
Many Voices, One Spirit
We took this name because it describes the krewe we want to be. Carnival at its best is the whole city in one place — every neighborhood, every language, every tradition, moving down the same street on the same day.
The Krewe of Bulbancha brings together people of all backgrounds in the spirit of fellowship and celebration. We carry the name with respect for the people it belongs to, and with the intention of living up to what it means.