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��UNCLASSIFIED LANGUAGES OF THE SOUTHEAST

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��UNCLASSIFIED [LANGUAGES OF THE SOUTHEAST By JOHN R. SWANTON

��IN Bulletin 43 of the Bureau of American Ethnology I undertook a classification of the Indian tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and the adjacent coast of the Gulf of Mexico, based on known or indicated similarities in their languages; and in another paper, now practically completed, I have attempted the same work for those between the area first covered and the Atlantic Ocean. Here I intend merely to indicate a few of the more important results, and to list the languages which I have so far been unable to classify with certainty, in order to put the present status of the subject on record.

So far, my work reveals no new stock language; nor does it indicate the likelihood of finding any, except in one region, southern Florida. Some years ago Mooney called attention to the fact that there was not sufficient evidence on which to extend the Timuquanan family over the southern part of the peninsula. In the first place, the tribes called "Timucua" by the Spaniards never included those south of Tampa Bay and Cape Canaveral; and, secondly, although we have scarcely any linguistic material from the South Florida tribes, a comparison of the place-names in the two areas shows striking differences. At the same time, they seem to indicate that South Floridians the Caloosa, Ais, Tekesta, and their neighbors were related to each other, the differences between them being probably only dialectic. Other evidence points toward a connection between all of these and the tribes of the Muskhogean family; but definite classification must wait upon further discoveries, which can hardly be outside of manuscripts, since there is small ground for hope that any speakers of the old Florida languages have survived to the present day. If a Muskhogean connection were

��actually established, an interesting question would at once arise as to how it came about that the Muskhogean stock was cut in two by a people entirely distinct from it, or only very remotely related.

All of the other tribes which history reveals to us as living in the Southeast probably belonged to the stocks already recognized. In the majority of cases we can prove this, or at least show its extreme likelihood; but there are a few tribes whose position is uncer- tain. I will review them briefly.

Beginning at the northeast, the first problematical tribe is the Coree, which lived about Cape Lookout and Core Sound, on the coast of North Carolina. In this neighbor- hood three stocks met. Northward began that fringe of Algonquian peoples which extended unbrokenly to the St. Lawrence, south were Siouan tribes on Cape Fear River, and inland the Iroquoian Tuscarora. So far, I am aware of but one fragment of evidence bearing on the affinities of the Coree. This is dropped incidentally by Lawson, who says: "I once met with a young Indian woman that had been brought from beyond the mountains, and was sold a slave into Virginia. She spoke the same language as the Coramine [Coree], that dwell near Cape Lookout, allowing for some few words, which were different, yet no otherwise than that they might understand one another very well." 1

If any theory may be based upon this, it seems to exclude the Siouan connection and to point to Iroquoian relationship, the Iroquois having been the principal enemies of the tribes of this area.

The Pascagoula of the river which now bears their name cannot be placed with

1 Lawson, History of North Carolina, 280.

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