Iroquoian Language Family
The Iroquoian Language Family is a group of Native American languages primarily spoken by the Iroquois and Cherokee people. This language family is divided into two main branches: the Northern Iroquoian languages, which include Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Huron (Wyandot), and Tuscarora, and the Southern Iroquoian branch, represented exclusively by Cherokee. The Northern languages have maintained a vibrant presence, with six still being spoken as of the mid-1970s, though some, like Tuscarora, are critically endangered, while Cherokee had around ten thousand speakers at that time. Historically, the Iroquois organized into a confederation known as the Five Nations, later joined by the Tuscarora, forming the Six Nations.
The Iroquoian languages have rich cultural histories and unique linguistic structures, with Cherokee being notably distinct from its Northern counterparts. Additionally, a writing system for Cherokee, created by Sequoyah in the early 19th century, facilitated literacy and cultural expression among the Cherokee people. The documentation and study of these languages have been enhanced by various researchers and missionaries throughout the years, contributing to the preservation of Iroquoian languages and their cultural heritage. Understanding the Iroquoian Language Family offers insights into the complex social and linguistic legacy of Indigenous peoples in North America.
Iroquoian Language Family
Culture area: Northeast
Tribes affected: Cayuga, Cherokee, Huron, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora
The Iroquoian Indians probably organized as the Five Nations some time between 1400 and 1600. About 1722, the Tuscarora joined the league, making it the Six Nations. The term “Iroquois” derived from a nickname used by the French, who supposedly heard the Indians end their speeches with the words hiro, “I have spoken” and koué, “with joy” or “with sorrow.”
The two divisions of the Iroquoian languages are the Northern Iroquoian group, consisting of Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Huron (Wyandot), Tuscarora, and possibly Laurentian, and the Southern division, containing only Cherokee. Cherokee is quite different from the Northern languages, perhaps as different as are Russian and English. The Cherokee may have split from the main line of Iroquoian languages significantly more than three thousand years ago.
Six Northern Iroquoian languages were still spoken as of the mid-1970’s: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. Cherokee had about ten thousand speakers at that time as well. Tuscarora is the nearest to extinction, but Onondaga and Cayuga have fewer than one thousand speakers each.
Culture Area
The Mohawk inhabited a number of villages extending roughly from Schenectady to Utica, New York. After the American Revolution, when they sided with the British, many resettled in Canada in two major areas, the Grand River Reserve in Ontario and at Caughnawaga, near Montreal. Since then, smaller groups have lived in Brooklyn and in the extreme northern part of New York, while others live off the reserve in Ontario and at Oka in Quebec.
Some Oneida speakers live on Green Bay, in Wisconsin, and a few live in New York. Others moved to Grand River Reserve in Ontario or settled on the Thamas River in Canada. The Cayuga once lived in central New York, near Cayuga Lake. As of 1990, most lived on the Six Nations Indian Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. Others in Ohio eventually resettled in Oklahoma; they speak a dialect somewhat different from that of the Canadian Cayuga.
A 1990 estimate reports that about seven thousand Seneca-speaking Indians live on one of three reservations in western New York; others are in Oklahoma and Ontario. During the seventeenth century, when two of the Seneca’s neighboring tribes were defeated, many Seneca relocated in the area of Lake Erie. A small group living in Pennsylvania on the Cornplanter Grant was displaced in the 1970’s when the Kinzua Dam project obliterated the land. A majority of the approximately ten thousand Cherokee speakers are near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, although some still occupy the original land near Cherokee, North Carolina.
The Onondaga group originally lived near Syracuse, New York. Following the American Revolution, some of the Onondaga resettled on the Grand River Reserve in Ontario. Although early New World colonists found Tuscarora living in eastern North Carolina, they later migrated to New York and became the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy. As of the mid-1970’s, most of the Tuscarora lived near Niagara Falls, in Pennsylvania, and in North Carolina.
Huron (Wyandot) had a few speakers in northeastern Oklahoma until the mid-1970’s. This tribe had originally lived in Ontario until they were defeated by the Iroquois; at that time they scattered in various directions.
Writing System
A writing system for the Cherokee language was developed by the Cherokee Indian George Guess, better known as Sequoyah. His unique system was adopted in 1821 and used widely until the early part of the twentieth century. Its indigenous origin as well as the relatively large number of users of the Cherokee language has attracted special interest.
Sequoyah’s system had an eighty-six-character syllabary representing every sound in the Cherokee language. Large numbers of Cherokees mastered the system, and within a few years a newspaper was printed in Cherokee, as was a constitution for the Cherokee Nation.
Other Language Research
Laurentian was the first North American language to be recorded by a European. When the explorer Jacques Cartier returned to France with two Indian captives, the “Cartier vocabularies” were elicited. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a number of missionaries focused on the language, hoping to be able to preach in it and to translate religious materials.
Jesuit missionaries did intensive work among the Huron. Gabriel Sagard compiled an early dictionary, as did Pierre Potier. Potier’s work represents a culmination of the Jesuit work among this group. The first important work in Mohawk was that of Jacques Bruyas in 1863, followed by the work of missionary Jean André Cuoq, who compiled a dictionary. Intensive work has been done more recently by Paul M. Postal.
Possibly the earliest record of the Onondaga language is a dictionary, probably prepared by a Jesuit missionary and published by John G. Shea in 1860. Since then, a number of other scholars, such as David Zeisberger, Albert Gallatin, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Wiliam M. Beauchamp, and Wallace Chafe, have studied various aspects of Onondaga.
Little has been published on Cayuga, but several scholars have studied Seneca, beginning with Asher Wright in the seventeenth century and continuing into the mid-twentieth century with C. F. Voegelin, Nils M. Holmer, and Wallace Chafe.
Cherokee had little systematic study prior to the nineteenth century, when Samuel A. Worcester became to the Cherokee what Asher Wright was to the Seneca. In the twentieth century, William D. Reyburn’s work has perhaps been the most significant.
Bibliography
Chafe, Wallace L. Handbook of the Seneca Language. Albany: University of the State of New York, State Education Dept., 1963.
Katzner, Kenneth. The Languages of the World. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1975.
Powell, John W. Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1891.
Sebeok, Thomas A., ed. Native Languages of the Americas. New York: Plenum Press, 1976.
Wright, Asher. A Spelling-Book in the Seneca Language. Buffalo-Creek Reservation: Mission Press, 1842.