sny--oops!

[Tim Frazer]

Earlier I said that the roadmaps had the "Sny" on the Illinois side of the
Mississippi opposite Hannible MO or just below.  I must have misremembered.
It's not on the Rand McNally roadmap.  It IS on the DeLorme "Illinois Atlas
and Gazeteer" maps 57 & 66 (2nd ed. 1996), but it is not a bayou.  It looks
like a creek that runs parallel to the big river, meandering through the
bottoms between the river and the bluffs, in both Pike and Calhoun counties.
Victoria's and other notes indicate it is likely a voyageur place name,
since it seems to be Canadian.
----- Original Message -----
From: Victoria Neufeldt <vneufeldt at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2000 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: sny


> 'Snye' or 'sny' is a Canadianism meaning a side channel of a stream (Gage
> Canadian Dict., 1983).  Etym: "From Canadian French chenail; cf French
> chenal channel"  I don't have my Dict of Canadianisms (1967) on hand so
> can't check the dates or cites, but I seem to associate it with the
> Maritimes, for some reason (?)
>
> Victoria
>
> Victoria Neufeldt
> 1533 Early Drive
> Saskatoon, Sask.
> S7H 3K1
> Canada
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> > Of Grant Barrett
> > Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 2:22 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: sny
> >
> >
> > >To this very day there is a stretch of bayou along the Miss. near
> > >Hannibal
> > >called "The Sny."  It is I think even on road maps.
> >
> > and
> >
> > > Sni Island is a separate occurrence and is identified as "A
> > >portion of the former river bottom on the Mississippi River that
> > today is exposed
> > because
> > >of a change of course in the river."
> >
> > Sni Island in Marion County Missouri, of which Hannibal is the
> > largest town, may be
> > the same thing Tim Frazer refers to, as per this extract from the
> > book"Lighting Out
> > for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American
> > Culture" by Shelley Fisher
> > Fishkin.
> > http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/lighti
> > ngoutfortheterritor
> > y.htm
> >
> > "In 1847, when Twain was eleven, a runaway slave who belonged to
> > a man named Neriam
> > Todd swam across the river and hid in the swampy thickets of Sny
> > Island, on the
> > Illinois side of the Mississippi... Some woodchoppers chased the
> > slave into a part of the
> > swamp called Bird Slough..."
> >
> > On the other hand, Tim Frazer is talking about *swampy land on
> > the Missouri side*,
> > not a real island on the Illinois side (although with the
> > Mississippi River farms,
> > islands, swamps and river bottom change roles often enough to
> > make the county clerk's
> > job difficult).
> >
> > In looking further at the USGS site, I see that there is also The
> > Sny Basin (the The
> > appears always capitalized) which refers to a rather large
> > drainage area (watershed)
> > in eastern Missouri including five counties and 13 water drainage
> > measurement
> > stations. This, I gather, is an extension of the Tim's Sny bayou.
> > The map below shows,
> > finally, that The Sny, in fact, spans the Mississippi.
> >
> http://www.epa.gov/surf2/hucs/07110004/
>
> I didn't turn up The Sny in my first search at the USGS and this had me a
> bit
> confused. The capital T on The should have been a clue. A search at
> http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis/gnisform.html under "The Sny" turns up:
>
> Feature Name: The Sny
> Feature Type: channel
> State:  Illinois
> County:         Adams
> USGS 7.5' x 7.5' Map: Marblehead
> Latitude:       394714N
> Longitude:      0912108W
>
> Feature Name: The Sny Cutoff
> Feature Type: canal
> State:  Illinois
> County:         Pike
> USGS 7.5' x 7.5' Map: Summer Hill
> Latitude:       393011N
> Longitude:      0905918W
>
> More Sny:
>
> Missouri NWIS-W Data Retrieval page
> http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis-w/MO/
>
> The Sny Levee District
> http://www.geo.mtu.edu/department/classes/ge404/flood/day3/sny/
>
> Newspaper Extracts from 1880 that mention The Sny Levee
> http://www.outfitters.com/~melissa/genealogy/beadles/leonind2.html