River Cooter

The name "cooter" is thought to have derived from the African word for turtle in the Bambara and Malinke languages which is "kuta."  It is thought that early Africans brought to the Southeast as Plantation labor used the name to describe various turtles in the swamps, ponds and rivers near where they labored.

Growing up in an area far from that of the Plantations but influenced through the westward migration after the Civil War, I heard the term "drunker than Cooter Brown" more than once in my most impressionable years.  I never questioned where the term might have originated but in researching the name of a turtle found on our place I learned.

One version of the legend states that in Southern Louisiana at the start of the Civil War lived a half-Cherokee, half-African man on a small plot of land given to him by an old Cajun fur trapper.  He lived as a free man in the cabin left on the land by the old trapper.  When war broke out Cooter didn't want to choose sides because he didn't know who might win and besides, he didn't much like people at all.  He was a heavy drinker and the situation caused him to drink even more heavily.

Cooter always dressed in native American clothing to further establish that part of his heritage and add protection against being taken as an escaped slave.  When soldiers of either side came across him during their forays through the country, they would find him drunk and he would usually share a drink with them.  He became known as that crazy drunk Cooter Brown.

By the end of the war Cooter couldn't have stopped drinking had he wanted to.  It is believed that he died one night when his cabin caught fire and the amount of alcohol in his blood caused his body to be completely consumed.  Since that time, being "drunker than Cooter Brown" was considered an appropriate description for anyone who was highly inebriated.

I guess Cooter was named after a turtle.  We have River Cooters (Pseudemys concinna) living on our small piece of Texas.  Most of the time they remain in the pond but occasionally one will wander.