"Kiamichi Country" was the Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department's long-time official tourism designation for Southeastern Oklahoma, until the name was changed to Choctaw Country in honor of the Choctaw Nation headquartered there. The Department created the term as one of six designated travel regions within the state. The name of Kiamichi was actually applied by early French explorers who came to the area in the early 18th Century. They discovered, among other things, a very large, noisy woodpecker that they called Kiamichi, their word for "raucous bird." The area also contains the Kiamichi Mountains, a subset of the Ouachita Mountains.