Native Views of Native Languages: Communication and Kinship in Eastern North America, ca. 1800–1830

Abstract

Although language families (such as Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean) have become familiar to early Americanists, scholars have yet to examine Native ideas about linguistic relationships as historically constructed categories. Sitting at the crossroads of work on Native identities and affiliations, indigenous communication networks, and Native traditions and histories, this article draws upon evidence from indigenous lexicons, descriptions of spoken language, and commentary on the origins of linguistic differences found in Native-authored texts and white-recorded ethnographies (such as those of Charles Trowbridge). Early nineteenth-century Delaware, Haudenosaunee, Cherokee, Creek, and diverse Central Algonquian accounts show that sometimes Native speakers pointed to language as indicative of shared ancestry; at other moments, however, they perceived it as merely a medium of communication subject to present relationships. Ultimately, groups and individuals could use shared speech, varying intelligibility, or utter difference to draw inclusive or exclusive kinship lines for strategic purposes that included either ethnic demarcation or alliance building among peoples. The striking diversity of these views in eastern North America in the space of thirty years should prod scholars to move beyond the use of linguistic categories as transhistorical ethnic labels and attend to how Native people experienced and expressed linguistic relationships in specific contexts.