RIVER

Is a river its water? Its course? Its flow? Its banks and bottoms? The beings who call it home? Where does a river begin and end?

Choctaw descendants might call a river a bok, and that syllable — bok — begins other words, often verbs. Bokafa is to burst. Bokanli is to bud. Bokko is to be a hill. Bokonoli is to rise up, as a seed presses up within the earth and cracks it open. One could also call a river chuli, which is also a verb and means to split, to make riven in two. Or one could call a river an okhina, a word which sounds almost like okhisa, or door. Thus in Choctaw the words for river all evoke ideas and sounds of active change, sometimes destructive and sometimes creative. Where there is a river, something breaks open, comes to new life, arises; something is split in two, emerges; something passes through.