What’s it all About?
“Tom Bigbee Waltz” is a waltz named after the Tombigbee River that flows from northeast Mississippi into the Alabama River. “Tombigbee” is a word that has its roots in the Choctaw word for “box maker”, referring to the wooden boxes that Choctaws built to send fur pelts to trade with French traders during the eighteenth century. (The Choctaw called the river “Itte-ombee-eye ika-abee”, which the French heard as “Tombecbe”, which evolved in English into “Tombeckby”, “Tombigby”, and in the present, “Tombigbee” or “Tom Bigbee”.)
References:
Tombigbee Waltz – Fiddle