Muskogean Language Family

Culture area: Southeast

Tribes affected: Alabama, Creek (Muskogee), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Coushatta, Hitchiti, Mikasuki

Although the available knowledge of the Southeast tribes is somewhat limited, it is certain that the Southeast cultural area was a place of great linguistic diversity. Many of the smaller tribes in this area have disappeared, and a number of tribes are identifiable by name only. Often names of lakes, counties, and towns in the southeastern part of the United States suggest that tribes bearing those obviously Indian names must have once inhabited the area.

The Muskogean language family, the only linguistic family lying exclusively in the Southeast, is divided into eastern and western branches. The eastern branch includes Alabama and Coushatta (Koasati), Hitchiti-Miccosukee, and Creek-Seminole. The western branch consists of Choctaw-Chickasaw.

Extant Languages

The Muskogean languages that were extant as of the early 1990’s are Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama and Coushatta, Hitchiti and Miccosukee, and Creek (Muskogee). The extent to which the languages have developed writing systems is somewhat problematic. As Thomas Barthel points out in an essay on North American Indian writing systems in Native Languages of the Americas, volume 2 (1976), native writing systems in the New World have not developed into systems complete enough to reflect all the oral language, so there is a real limitation in this field of research. Nevertheless, there is a relatively extensive body of literature on the known languages, based chiefly on languages of the larger and more powerful tribes such as the Creek and the Choctaw.

The Choctaw Indians trace their national origin to a sacred mound, Nanih Waiya, in what became Winston County, Mississippi. In the 1830’s, however, the Choctaw were forced to cede their lands to the United States government and move to what would become the state of Oklahoma in 1907. As of the mid-1970’s, there were about seven thousand speakers of Choctaw. Choctaw is most closely related to Chickasaw.

During the early part of the nineteenth century, Cyrus A. Byington, a missionary to the Choctaw, recorded and translated Choctaw extensively. His work included translations of parts of the Bible, as well as a grammar, edited in 1870 by Daniel G. Brinton, and a dictionary, edited by John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halvert in 1915. These works provide the most extensive body of materials available on Choctaw. David I. Bushnell produced a monograph on another Choctaw dialect in 1909.

While Chickasaw is usually listed as a language rather than a dialect, some consider it to be a subvariety of Choctaw. In the mid-1970’s, some twenty-five hundred speakers of the language were identifiable, most living in the area of Ardmore, Oklahoma.

William Pulte wrote an essay entitled “The Position of Chickasaw in Western Muskogean” that focused on differences in words and sounds. By the late 1970’s, the Chickasaw Council had completed work on a small dictionary of Chickasaw, emphasizing its distinctness from Choctaw.

Coushatta (and possibly Alabama), unlike other Muskogean languages, has three conjugational classes of verbs. The language also makes clear distinctions between men’s and women’s speech, as does Hitchiti (Creek also did at one time, as noted by Mary Haas in 1941).

Hitchiti is only dialectally different from Koasati. During the late nineteenth century, Albert S. Gatschet and Buckingham Smith, in particular, published some materials on words and grammar of Hitchiti. William C. Sturtevant and David West have done more recent work.

Creek, also known as Muskogee, has received the most attention of all the Muskogean languages. Since it was the main language of members of the once powerful Creek Confederacy, this is not surprising. The Creek Nation was an alliance of separate and independent tribes that, over a long period of time, gradually became a single political organization. These Indians lived originally in Georgia and Alabama; their forced move in 1870 led to most of them living near the town of Okmulgee, south of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been estimated that not more than half still speak the Creek language.

Missionaries to the Creek helped them to develop an alphabet for their language, so that many Creeks were able to read and write not only religious material, but also newspaper articles and their own constitution. In Florida, the Creek dialect is called Seminole, from the Creek word simaló-ni or simanó-li, a loan word from the Spanish cimarrón.

Extinct Languages

At least two-thirds of known Muskogean languages had become extinct by the 1900’s. Some of these include Apalachee, which had only fifty speakers in Louisiana in 1814; Pensacola, extinct some time after 1764; Chakchiuma, spoken in Mississippi until extinction around 1722; Chatat, which became extinct during the nineteenth century; Eufaula, a Muskogee division in Alabama; Guale, which is said to have had a grammar written by Domingo Augustin sometime after 1569; Ipitoupa; Napochi, which probably became extinct after they joined the Chickasaw about 1699; Oconee, no longer spoken after about 1761; Okelousa, also extinct during the eighteenth century; Okmulgee, an Eastern Muskogean language that had no speakers by the end of the seventeenth century; and Pascagoula, with two speakers in 1912. Quinipissa, along with Tangipahoa, became extinct during the seventeenth century. Sawokli and Tamathli had fewer than five hundred speakers in the early nineteenth century. Taposa, Tekesta, and Tohome had fewer than two hundred speakers by the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Tuskegee and Yamasee became extinct during the nineteenth century. In scanning the list, names familiar to areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee are evident.

Bibliography

Bright, William, et al., eds. Linguistics in North America. Vol. 10 in Current Trends in Linguistics, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.

Buckner, Henry F., and Goliah Herrod. A Grammar of the Masjwke, or Creek Language. Marion, Ala.: Domestic and Indian Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1860.

Byington, Cyrus A. A Grammar of the Choctaw Language. Edited by Daniel G. Brinton. Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely, 1870.

Haas, Mary R. “The Classification of the Muskogean Languages.” In Language, Culture, and Personality, edited by Leslie Spier, et al. Menasha, Wisc.: Sapir Memorial Publication Fund, 1941.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “A Proto-Muskogean Paradigm.” Language 22 (1946): 326-332.

Katzner, Kenneth. The Languages of the World. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1975.

Rand, Earl. “The Structural Phonology of Alabama, a Muskogean Language.” International Journal of American Linguistics 34 (1968): 94-103.

West, John David. “The Phonology of Mikasuki.” Studies in Linguistics 16 (1962): 77-91.