Note 51 — Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs.
Reading edition
A Creole friend assures me that in Louisiana patois, the word for coon, is chaoui. This bears so singular a resemblance in sound to a French word of very different meaning—chat-huant (screech-owl) that it seems possible the negroes have in this, as in other cases, given the name of one creature to another.