Possible New Origin for the Name 'Appaloosa'

This is from the Answers.com website. I've never heard of this before and it's very interesting.

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from ChoctawThis word originated in United States
This one is a fish story. True, appaloosa is best known as a favorite kind of horse--sturdy, quick, and quick-witted--developed by the Nez Percé Indians living near the Palouse River in what is now Idaho. The river, therefore, has been suspected as the source of the name. Yet the first mention of "Opelousa" horses is from an 1849 book on Texas, and there is a source of the name closer to Texas in neighboring Louisiana, the Indian tribe known as Opelousa. Neither of these tribes speaks Choctaw.
Let us rein in speculation about the horse, however, and go fishing for a moment. The earliest record of something like appaloosa noted in the Dictionary of American Regional English is for 1845, and it is for a fish in Alabama: "Right round that was whar I'd ketch the monstrousest, most oudaciousest Appaloosas cat, the week before, that ever come outen the Tallapoosy." This "Appaloosas cat" is a spotted catfish otherwise known as a flathead catfish, Mississippi bullhead, morgan cat, pied cat, and yellow cat, among other names. A century after the first mention, a 1948 newspaper in Oklahoma mentioned "tackle-busting river cats, or Appaluchians."
The fish name appaloosa very likely comes from Choctaw apolusa, meaning "to be daubed" or "spotted." It is tempting to take the Choctaw word as the source for the horse name too, perhaps reinforced by the name of the Louisiana tribe, since the appaloosa horse is also spotted in the back. But Idahoans and Nez Percé might disagree, because the latter are unquestionably the source of the horse, and they were a long way from Louisiana.
Choctaw is the language spoken by Indians who lived in present-day Mississippi and Louisiana when the first Europeans arrived. It is a member of the Muskogean language family. Most Choctaw now live in Oklahoma; there are said to be about 10,000 speakers of Choctaw in a total population of 25,000. One other English word from Choctaw, transmitted to us by the French in Louisiana, is bayou (1763).

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Who woulda thought, huh? I'm going to further investigate this. My curiousity won't sit still for this!