Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico: Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 1-142Powell, John Wesley
History
Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico: Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 1-142
Powell, John Wesley
Indians of North America -- Languages; Indians of North America -- Languages -- Bibliography
> Taensa, Gatschet in The Nation, 383, May 4, 1882. Gatschet in Am.
Antiq., IV, 238, 1882. Gatschet, Creek Mig. Legend, I, 33, 1884.
Gatschet in Science, 414, April 29, 1887 (Taensas only).
The Na’htchi, according to Gallatin, a residue of the well-known nation
of that name, came from the banks of the Mississippi, and joined the
Creek less than one hundred years ago.[71] The seashore from Mobile to
the Mississippi was then inhabited by several small tribes, of which the
Na’htchi was the principal.
[Footnote 71: Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc., 1836, vol. 2, p. 95.]
Before 1730 the tribe lived in the vicinity of Natchez, Miss., along St.
Catherine Creek. After their dispersion by the French in 1730 most of
the remainder joined the Chicasa and afterwards the Upper Creek. They
are now in Creek and Cherokee Nations, Indian Territory.
The linguistic relations of the language spoken by the Taensa tribe have
long been in doubt, and it is probable that they will ever remain so. As
no vocabulary or text of this language was known to be in existence, the
“Grammaire et vocabulaire de la langue Taensa, avec textes traduits et
commentés par J.-D. Haumonté, Parisot, L. Adam,” published in Paris in
1882, was received by American linguistic students with peculiar
interest. Upon the strength of the linguistic material embodied in the
above Mr. Gatschet (loc. cit.) was led to affirm the complete linguistic
isolation of the language.
Grave doubts of the authenticity of the grammar and vocabulary have,
however, more recently been brought forward.[72] The text contains
internal evidences of the fraudulent character, if not of the whole, at
least of a large part of the material. So palpable and gross are these
that until the character of the whole can better be understood by the
inspection of the original manuscript, alleged to be in Spanish, by a
competent expert it will be far safer to reject both the vocabulary and
grammar. By so doing we are left without any linguistic evidence
whatever of the relations of the Taensa language.
[Footnote 72: D. G. Brinton in Am. Antiquarian, March, 1885,
pp. 109-114.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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