Chunky: The Town Named for a Choctaw Game

The name sounds like a joke, but Chunky, Mississippi carries a genuine Choctaw heritage. The town sits on the site of an old Choctaw village called Chanki Chitto, named for the game of Tchungkee, played with polished stone discs and long spears thrown to intercept them. It was one of the most popular games across the entire Southeast before European contact.

In eighteen eleven, Shawnee leader Tecumseh passed through this village while building his confederacy of Native nations. The settlement formally became Chunkyville in eighteen forty-eight. When railroad builders arrived in the eighteen sixties, the town moved a short distance to meet the tracks and was reincorporated simply as Chunky.

Today it is a quiet community of a few hundred people in Newton County, but its name preserves the long Choctaw presence in the Mississippi hill country.