Calusa | |
---|---|
Native to | United States |
Region | Florida |
Ethnicity | Calusa |
Extinct | ca. 1800 |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | None (mis ) |
Glottolog | calu1239 |
The Calusa language is an unclassified language of southern Florida, United States that was spoken by the Calusa people. [2]
Little is known of the language of the Calusa. A dozen words for which translations were recorded and 50 or 60 place names form the entire known corpus of the language. Circumstantial evidence, primarily from Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, suggests that all of the peoples of southern Florida and the Tampa Bay area, including the Tequesta, Mayaimi, and Tocobaga, as well as the Calusa, spoke dialects of a common language. This language was distinct from the languages of the Apalachee, Timucua, Mayaca, and Ais people in central and northern Florida. [3]
Julian Granberry (1994) has suggested that the Calusa language was related to the Tunica language of the lower Mississippi River Valley, with Calusa possibly being relatively a recent arrival from the lower Mississippi region. Another possibility was that similarities between the languages were derived from long-term mutual contact. [1]
Granberry (2011) provides the following inventory of Calusa phonemes. [4] [1]
Labial | Apical | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | p | t | tʃ | k | ʔ |
Fricative | s | h | |||
Rhotic | r | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||
Lateral | l | ||||
Approximant | w | j |
A Calusa /s/ [s̠] sound is said to range between a /s/ to a /ʃ/ sound.
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Close-mid | e | o | |
Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
Open | a |
A few vocabulary examples from Granberry (2011) are listed below: [4]
(*) denotes earlier century Calusa language records.
Some Calusa words, proper nouns, and phrases from Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda's writings (including his 1575 memoir Memoria de las cosas y costa y indios de la Florida) that are cited in Zamponi (2024) include: [2]
Calusa | English gloss (Zamponi 2024) | Spanish gloss (original) | notes |
---|---|---|---|
carlos | ferocious people | quiere desir en su lenguaje pueblo feros | Spanish corruption of caalus |
Certepe | chief king and great lord | Rey mayor y gran señor | |
ño | beloved town | quiere dezir pueblo querido | |
seletega | Run, see if people are coming! | Corre mira si biene jente | |
tejiEue | lookout, vantage point | miradero quiere dezir | |
cañogacola | wicked people without respect | gente bellaca sin Respeto | from regions above Tampa on the Gulf Coast |
cuchiaga | place where there has been torture | quiere dezir lugar Amartirisado | from the Keys |
guarugunbe | town of weeping | quiere desir en rromanse pueblo de llanto | from the Keys |
guasaca Esgui | river of reeds | quiere desir Rio de cañas | from regions above Tampa on the Gulf Coast |
mayaimi | (very) large | llamase laguna de mayaimi porqués muy grande | from the Lake Okeechobee region |
tocobaga chile | principal chief of the Tocobaga | el Rei casique mayor (...) llamase tocobaga chile | from the area around Tampa Bay |
Sipi is the name of a main idol in a Calusa temple, according to a 1743 report (Informe) by Fr. Joseph Xavier de Alaña that was sent to his superiors. [5]
Mobilian Jargon was a pidgin used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico around the time of European settlement of the region. It was the main language among Native tribes in this area, mainly Louisiana. There is evidence indicating its existence as early as the late 17th to early 18th century. The Native groups that are said to have used it were the Alabama, Apalachee, Biloxi, Chacato, Pakana, Pascagoula, Taensa, Tunica, Caddo, Chickasaw, Houma, Choctaw, Chitimacha, Natchez, and Ofo. The name is thought to refer to the Mobile Indians of the central Gulf Coast, but did not originate from this group; Mobilian Jargon is linguistically and grammatically different from the language traditionally spoken by the Mobile Indians.
The Calusa were a Native American people of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region. Previous indigenous cultures had lived in the area for thousands of years.
The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers of the Tunica language, but there were 32 second-language speakers in 2017, and as of 2023, there are 60 second-language speakers.
Tocobaga was the name of a chiefdom of Native Americans, its chief, and its principal town during the 16th century. The chiefdom was centered around the northern end of Old Tampa Bay, the arm of Tampa Bay that extends between the present-day city of Tampa and northern Pinellas County. The exact location of the principal town is believed to be the archeological Safety Harbor site. This is the namesake for the Safety Harbor culture, of which the Tocobaga are the most well-known group.
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda was a Spanish shipwreck survivor who lived among the Native Americans of Florida for 17 years. His c. 1575 memoir, Memoria de las cosas y costa y indios de la Florida, is one of the most valuable contemporary accounts of American Indian life from that period. The manuscript can be found in the General Archive of the Indies. In all, he produced five documents describing the peoples of native Florida.
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The Mayaimi were Native American people who lived around Lake Mayaimi in the Belle Glade area of Florida from the beginning of the Common Era until the 17th or 18th century. In the languages of the Mayaimi, Calusa, and Tequesta tribes, Mayaimi meant "big water." The origin of the language has not been determined, as the meanings of only ten words were recorded before extinction. The current name, Okeechobee, is derived from the Hitchiti word meaning "big water". The Mayaimis have no linguistic or cultural relationship with the Miami people of the Great Lakes region. The city of Miami is named after the Miami River, which derived its name from Lake Mayaimi.
Timucua is a language isolate formerly spoken in northern and central Florida and southern Georgia by the Timucua peoples. Timucua was the primary language used in the area at the time of Spanish colonization in Florida. Differences among the nine or ten Timucua dialects were slight, and appeared to serve mostly to delineate band or tribal boundaries. Some linguists suggest that the Tawasa of what is now northern Alabama may have spoken Timucua, but this is disputed.
The Tequesta, also Tekesta, Tegesta, Chequesta, Vizcaynos, were a Native American tribe on the Southeastern Atlantic coast of Florida. They had infrequent contact with Europeans and had largely migrated by the middle of the 18th century.
The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago.
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Mocoso was the name of a 16th-century chiefdom located on the east side of Tampa Bay, Florida near the mouth of the Alafia River, of its chief town and of its chief. Mocoso was also the name of a 17th-century village in the province of Acuera, a branch of the Timucua. The people of both villages are believed to have been speakers of the Timucua language.
Carlos, also known as Calos or King Calusa, was king or paramount chief of the Calusa people of Southwest Florida from about 1556 until his death. As his father, the preceding king, was also known as Carlos, he is sometimes called Carlos II. Carlos ruled over one of the most powerful and prosperous chiefdoms in the region at the time, controlling the coastal areas of southwest Florida and wielding influence throughout the southern peninsula. Contemporary Europeans recognized him as the most powerful chief in Florida.
Muspa was the name of a town and a group of indigenous people in southwestern Florida in the early historic period, from first contact with the Spanish until indigenous peoples were gone from Florida, late in the 18th century.
Aranama (Araname), also known as Tamique, is an extinct unclassified language of Texas, USA. It was spoken by the Aranama and Tamique peoples at the Franciscan mission of Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga. It is only known from a two-word phrase from a non-native speaker: himiána tsáyi 'give me water!'. Variations on the name are Taranames, Jaranames ~ Xaranames ~ Charinames, Chaimamé, Hanáma ~ Hanáme.
The Bayogoula were a Native American tribe from Louisiana in the southern United States.
Bidai is an unclassified extinct language formerly spoken by the Bidai people of eastern Texas. Zamponi (2024) notes that the numerals do not appear to be related to those of any other languages and hence proposes that Bidai may be a language isolate.
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