The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only attested in a handful of lexical items that bear clear dialectal variation after thorough linguistic review of Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America and place names, but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents.[1]
Within what is usually regarded as Massachusett, there were certainly dialects as it was spoken by several different peoples across a broad region, and widely adopted as a second language over most of New England and Long Island.[2] The use of the dialect of the Massachusett—specifically the speech of the Praying town of Natick, with some Nipmuc influences—in the Bible led to it assuming the role of a de facto standard and prestige variant, especially in regards to writing. The spoken language was also highly influenced by the speech of Natick since a large number of the Indian missionaries, teachers and clerks included many men from prestigious, chiefly families from or with kinship connections there or had spent several years there in training before going on to serve other Indian communities. The Indians adopted literacy with the orthography of Eliot's Bible, and even began to adjust their speech, leading to dialect leveling across the region.[3] By 1722, only fifty-nine years after the publication Eliot's Bible translation, Experience Mayhew remarked on the leveling effects on Martha's Vineyard, where the local speech was quite distinct, '... most of the little differences betwixt them have been happily Lost, and our Indians Speak, but especially write much as the Natick do.[4][5]
Some vestiges of dialects continued even with leveling, and Martha's Vineyard islanders continued to use variant forms such as ohkuh instead of ohke (ahkee) /ahkiː/[6] 'earth' or 'land,' and ummenaweankanut, 'in his posterity,' instead of uppommetuwonkkanit (upumeetyuwôkanut) /əpəmiːtʲəwãkanət/[7][8] Occasional variation in spelling seems to indicate some dialectal interference. Syncopation, relatively rare in Natick speech, was a spreading feature and seems to have been an obligatory feature of late-stage SNEA languages, possibly an influence from the Abenakian languages. Thus, kuts, 'cormorant,' and ꝏsqheonk, 'his blood,' but more generally these words are found as non-syncopated kuttis (kutuhs) /kətəhs/[9] and wusqueheonk (wusqeeheôk) /wəskʷiːhiːjᵊãk/, respectively, that appeared in the Bible.[10] Nevertheless, most of the surviving manuscripts and documents that do demonstrate dialectal variation are often of uncertain geographical and ethnic origin.
Daniel Gookin, who had traveled with John Eliot on his missions, brought the Indians under the jurisdiction of the colonial government and was responsible for bringing the Indians under English laws and governance. He noted that the Pawtucket, Massachusett and Pokanoket (Wampanoag) all spoke the same language, and may have considered the separate peoples to have spoken distinct dialects. Ives Goddard proposed the dialects of Natick, North Shore (Pawtucket), Wampanoag, Nauset and Coweset, produced somewhat similarly below, and is mostly grouped according to the various peoples known in history that are believed to have spoken the language.[11]
The Church of South Natick built over the original church in 1828. Services were conducted by Indian congregants in Massachusee unnontꝏwaonk well into the mid-18th century.
The dialect specific to the Massachusett people was likely a prestigious dialect. Elderly converts in Natick informed Eliot and Gookin that the Massachusett leaders were able to exert political influence and exact tribute over most of the other Massachusett-speaking peoples and all the tribes as far west as the Pioneer Valley, such as the Nipmuc, Nashaway and Pocomtuc, before weakened by epidemics that greatly reduced the population, warfare with enemy tribes and competition with English settlers.[13] As a practical feature, the Massachusett were centrally located between other Massachusett speakers, thus it was understood over a broader region of the dialect continuum.
The dialect was likely the basis of Massachusett Pidgin, adopted as a regional language of commerce and intertribal communication over most of New England and Long Island.[2] The Natick variety was used by Eliot as the basis of the written language used in his translations of the Bible and other works, thus making it an unofficial standard language of writing, and also prestigious variety because of the pronounced role of Natick and its people in the mission to the Indians. The influence caused significant dialect leveling as speakers adjusted their speech, thus the Natick variety greatly influenced dialects enough to erase many of the differences.
From place name and document evidence, Massachusett seems to prefer the locative suffix -et/-it/-ut/ət/ over the older form /ək/ form that generally appears elsewhere, and many place names were 'standardized' to Massachusett spellings and norms across the region. Although the latter form still appears in Massachusett written sources of Natick until a late period, in place names, it is not found in traditional Massachusett or Narragansett place names and had varying mixtures of usage elsewhere. The dialect of the Massachusett also seems to have resisted syncope, which is obligatory in many late-stage SNEA languages, which may have been prevented in Massachusett due to fossilization as a written language.
Massachusett people historically ranged over much of the Greater Boston region, lining the shores of Boston Harbor and extending west towards the fall line, corresponding roughly to the 128 beltway, and much of the South Shore almost as far south as Plymouth. They were later confined to the Praying towns of Natick and Ponkapoag, in Natick and Canton, and Titicut and Mattakeesett, corresponding to Bridgewater and Pembroke, Massachusetts.
As the Massachusett were mainly confined to the Praying towns and adjusted to the written language, it is uncertain if there was any internal diversity. Natick was originally settled by Massachusett people from Nonantum, later joined by the Nipmuc that lived west of Natick. Although the community remained a Massachusett-speaking one, it is quite possible that Nipmuc influenced it to some extent. Titicut and Mattakeesett were near Wampanoag areas, and many of the Praying Indians in those communities were close to and had kinship relations with Wampanoag just to the south. The language survived until the 1740s when the Indians were reduced to colonial wards under appointed guardians and large portions of the town were either sold or rented to English settlers. Only one speaker could be found in 1798, and the language likely went extinct in the dawning years of the nineteenth century.[14] Although no speakers remain today, the two state-recognized Massachusett tribes of Natick and of Ponkapoag continue to use the language in its colonial orthography for cultural, sacred and liturgical purposes.[15][16][17] Both of these tribes have state recognition under the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs.[18]
The written language survives in the records of Natick until 1721, when administrative control of the town passed into the hands of English settlers. In addition, it is essentially the language of all of Eliot's translations of the Bible and several other religious works by other Christian missionaries and some personal letters from Natick.
Customary Wampanoag clothing at the Cape Cod Museum. The Wampanoag were able to preserve much of their culture and identity, and as of 1993, are reviving their language.
The Wampanoag language (Wôpanâôt8âôk) /wãpanaːãtuːaːãk/, spoken by Wampanoag people also called Pokanoket, had historical variation due to the insular regions. The Wampanoag mainly lived in southeastern Massachusetts, with more historical communities on Cape Cod, the Elizabeth Islands, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. Wampanoag also historically inhabited much of southeastern Rhode Island. The name of the people refers to the "east" or "dawn," from Massachusett wompan- (wôpan-) /wãpan/. Contemporary speakers of the Massachusett language speak a revived Wampanoag dialect of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.
The isolation of islanders from the mainland led to dialectal diversity. John Cotton Sr. (1639–1699), a missionary from Martha's Vineyard, told his son, a missionary to the Wampanoag just south of Plymouth, on the mainland, the following to describe mutual intelligibility:
Mat woh nummissohhamꝏ͝un asuh matta newahĭteo webe yeu noowahteauun yeug Indiansog mat wahtanooog uag Indiansog ut nishnoh kuttooonganit.
I can't tell or don't know, only this I know, that these Indians don't understand every word of them Indians.'[19]
The island regions of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands all shared some common features that kept them distinct from the mainland but were distinct from each other. Martha's Vineyard was the most divergent speech, difficult for off-islanders from the mainland or other islands. Despite dialect leveling that helped erase these features, the written documents continue to have a small set of divergent vocabulary that persists in Native documents produced by Martha's Vineyard islanders. For example, nehpuk, "my blood," continues in use despite the standard form nusqeheonk (nusqeeheôk) /nəskʷiːhjãk/.[8] The continued variant forms in writing probably was a legacy of the separate network of missionaries and missionary schools. The Wampanoag on the mainland often accepted ministers and literate Indians from or who had trained in Natick, whereas the Martha's Vineyard Wampanoag were administered by the Mayhew family, with several generations of bilingual ministers working the mission and providing instruction and establishment of Indian schools which may have reinforced local features.
The Wampanoag on Cape Cod and the Islands were fortunate to have been isolated from the ravages of King Philip's War and for having the trust of neighboring English settlers, and these Wampanoag tribes emerged from the war relatively unscathed. The population of Wampanoag increased after the war as many Indians joined the larger settlements, where the English settlers were more tolerant, land was still ample, proximity to seaports where men could find work on whaling vessels and ability to find Indian spouses, and by the early 18th century, it is estimated that 70 percent of the Indians in Massachusetts were Wampanoag or had assimilated into the Wampanoag community. As a result, the spoken language was able to cling on as the dominant language until the 1770s, but the fluent first-language speakers died in Martha's Vineyard sometime in the late 19th century. Those that knew bits of the language were recorded by Frank Speck and Gladys Tantaquidgeon in the 1920s, but Gordon Day was able to record some vocabulary from a Wampanoag as late as the 1960s.
The documents from the Wampanoag make up the majority of surviving written records, such as the marriage, baptism, and death records of Indian churches; deeds and land sales; petitions to the court; personal letters; marginalia on the edges of books, letters, and other records. In addition, the Wampanoag dialect influenced the second publication of the Massachusett-language Bible, edited with the help of John Cotton Sr. and the five contributions of Experience Mayhew to Indian missionary literature, including the most widespread primer for teaching Indians to read and write in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Both John Cotton Sr. and Experience Mayhew spoke the Martha's Vineyard dialect fluently.
With the current success of the language by the WLRP, there is a growing L2 community of 15 (Wôpanâôt8âôk) Wampanoag speakers and students from the participating Mashpee, Aquinnah, Herring Pond and Assonet tribes and new records in the revived orthography such as complete teaching materials for pre-school through high school, a dictionary, a grammar and numerous other didactic publications.[20][21] There are just under 3,000 Wampanoag people split between the federally recognized tribes of Mashpee and Aquinnah (Gay Head), as well as the Assonet, Pocasset, Herring Pond, Chappaquiddick and Seaconke tribes. A total of 6,427 people claimed Wampanoag ancestry in the 2010 U.S. census.[16]
The Pawtucket Falls. This is close to the site of the former Praying Town of Wamesit, but the Pawtucket fled north to join the Pennacook and Abenaki after Metacomet's Rebellion.
The Pawtucket were a collection of tribes living north of the Massachusett, corresponding to the regions of the North Shore, Cape Ann, the northern third of Central Massachusetts and the lower Merrimack Valley and its tributaries. It includes the Naumkeag, Agawam and Aberginian peoples listed in early colonial sources. Prior to English settlement, the Pawtucket were likely part of the Massachusett Confederacy, but as the Massachusett were weakened by disease, loss of land, attacks from enemy tribes and competition from English settlers, most of the tribes fell under the influence of the Pennacook, an Abenakian people that traditionally inhabited the Merrimack Valley of southern and central New Hampshire, extending into northern areas of Central Massachusetts. The name derives from pawtucket, a common place name in New England which seems to be a contraction of pentucket (punuhtukut) /pənəhtəkət/[22][23] and signifies 'at the waterfall,' specifically Pawtucket Falls, a major waterfall on the Merrimack in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts.
The dialect of the Pawtucket is mainly known from a vocabulary of roughly three hundred words in William Wood's 1634 New-Englands Prospect as well as place names. The vocabulary is too small to provide clear information about the Pawtucket dialect, but it does demonstrate that the Pawtucket, at least along the coast, essentially spoke the same language as the Massachusett. What might appear as dialectal differences are often because many words seem to be suffixed with the obviative or diminutive endings, but some might vocabulary might have Abenakian influence, as the Pawtucket occupied the SNEA frontier with Abenakian languages, but even Gookin and Eliot considered the Pawtucket to have spoken essentially the same language as the Massachusett.[11]
The dialect was likely extinct by the early eighteenth century if not earlier. Most of the Pawtucket had fled north and joined the Pennacook due to usurpation of their lands, but some came under the influence of Eliot's mission to the Indians, settling with Pennacook and Nipmuc in the Praying town of Wamesit and the Nipmuc and Massachusett in the Praying town of Okommakamesitt (Marlborough, Massachusetts) where these Indians may have fallen under the influence of the Massachusett dialect of Natick as used in writing. After King Philip's War, those that returned to Wamesit and Okommakamesitt faced harassment, vandalized property, retaliatory attacks and continuous challenges to their land. Under threats and pressure, Wamesit was sold by 1685, with its people following the Merrimack north with other peoples to seek shelter with the Pennacook, who in turn, later merged into the Abenaki of northern New England and Canada.[24] Okommakamesitt was sold in 1686 by the General Court with a false deed produced by the English settlers on the edges of the Praying town. All but a handful of Indians retained their lands in Marlborough until they too were dispossessed in 1716, with most resettling in Natick, joining relatives up north or quietly assimilating into the surrounding community.[25] The Pawtucket are extinct as a tribe today, but a handful of people in the Greater Lowell region and southern New Hampshire trace their ancestry back to the Pawtucket associated with Wamesit.[26]
The Nauset dialect was supposed to have been spoken by the Nauset people, traditionally inhabiting all the lands of 'Mid Cape' and 'Outer' or 'Lower Cape' regions of the Cape Cod Peninsula, roughly coinciding with all the portions of the peninsula east of the Bass River, including the sharp bend north from Chatham to Provincetown, and associated islands such as Monomoy Island. The Nauset may have also had outposts or settled parts of Nantucket.[27] The name may derive from nashw- (nuhshw-) /nəhʃw/,[28] 'three' but also used in the sense of 'between' as in 'third between two others,' due to the location of their principal settlement between two harbors, but probably derives from nôset[29] (nôw[ee]sut) /nãw[iː]sət/,[30] referring to a 'place of small distance' probably referring to the narrowness of the Cape Cod peninsula.
There is little known about the dialect of the Nauset, as it only exists in place names. It is uncertain if the Nauset were a separate entity. Despite a somewhat difference of culture, due to salty and sandy soils that forced a heavier reliance on exploitation of resources from the sea, the Nauset were likely a tribe of Wampanoag and therefore consideration of their speech as a separate dialect is probably because of their listing in historical, and many current, sources that list the Nauset as a separate people. However, the Nauset could have been a separate entity, given their isolation on the edge of the narrows of the Outer Cape and their resistance to joining the Pokanoket Confederacy, which governed all the Wampanoag tribes, at various points in history.
The Nauset are extinct as a people today. The Nauset were able to survive the ravages of King Philip's War unscathed due to their isolation, trust of the local English settlers and neutrality. Most of the Nauset relocated to Mashpee where they joined the local Wampanoag when it was established as a Praying town of the Plymouth Colony, and thus, many Mashpee Wampanoag likely have significant Nauset ancestry in their Native bloodlines.[31] The unique features of the speech of the Wampanoag remembers from Mashpee recorded by Speck may be due to Nauset features but could just as easily be considered dialectal variation, late-stage language usage and incorrect 'remembering' of the language as it was recorded from elders that did not speak the language.[27]
Coweset dialect (Narragansett?)
Engraving of Roger Williams meeting with members of the Narragansett. In addition to many words of Narragansett and Massachusett origin, Williams recorded some terms of Coweset in his 1643 A Key into the Language of America.
The Coweset people inhabited much of what is now central and northern Rhode Island, wedged between the Nipmuc to the north and north-west and the Narragansett (Nanhigganeuck), with the town of Woonsocket, Rhode Island purchased by Roger Williams from local Nipmuc and Coweset peoples. The Coweset were sometimes considered a tribe of Nipmuc, but they seem to have spoken an N-dialect, akin to Massachusett, and came under the political control of the Narragansett until they were able to shake off Narragansett domination in the late seventeenth century.[32] The name derives from Massachusett kꝏwaset (*k8wasut) /kuːwasət/, 'small pine place.'[33][34]
Very little is known about the dialect of the Coweset. From place names, the language was an N-dialect, like Massachusett, but was wedged in a transitional area Massachusett to the north and north-east, L-dialect Nipmuc to the north-west and the Narragansett Y-dialect to the south. It is only attested in dialectal variation that appear in doublets and triplets in Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America. By Williams' own accounts, most of his time in Rhode Island was spent with the Coweset, and the Narragansett were Y-dialect speakers, yet most of the vocabulary of the Key features N-dialect vocabulary.
The majority of vocabulary in the Key is essentially Massachusett with the idiosyncratic system Williams used to write Algonquian words, followed by Y-dialect words. A small subset include N-dialect words with pronounced features of Y-dialects. For instance, the word to refer to the animal 'deer' is listed by Williams as attuck, cognate to Massachusett attuck (ahtuq') /ahtək/ and nóonatch, which seems to be related to Mohegan-Pequot Y-dialect noyuhc/nuːjəhtʃ/.[35][36] In another instance, the PSNEA verb *ərāyəw, 'it is so,' appears in a cognate Massachusett form nni, related to Massachusett unnai (unây) /ənaːj/, Y-dialect eîu*/əjaːjəw/ and transitional N-dialect nnîu*/[ə]naːjəw/, which preserves the final /-əw/ that was seldom used in Massachusett.[37]
As Narragansett is a Y-dialect, as seen in the short word list recorded by Ezra Stiles in 1769 from an elderly Narragansett women near Aquidneck (Newport, Rhode Island) and twenty words extracted by Alfred Gatschet from a Narragansett-language 'rememberer' in Pôcasset (Providence, Rhode Island), it is clear that the language spoken near the end was unambiguously a Y-dialect.[38] However, this may be because the Narragansett were greatly reduced by King Philip's War and survivors joined the Eastern Niantic, who also spoke a Y-dialect, so that most Narragansett after the war have significant Eastern Niantic ancestry and this may have re-enforced Y-dialect features. It is the position of Ives Goddard and David Costa that the N-dialect vocabulary identical to Massachusett is Massachusett, since Williams spent his formative years in the New World bouncing between the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies; the N-dialect with Y-dialect features represents a transitional dialect that Coweset would likely have been due to its location and Y-dialect vocabulary that represents Narragansett or possibly Eastern Niantic.[39]
The Coweset are extinct as a people today. It is likely that many Coweset joined the Narragansett in seeking refuge with the Eastern Niantic and have distant descendants in current members of the Narragansett. Many Coweset likely fled and joined the Stockbridge-Munsee, Schaghticoke in northwestern Connecticut, the Abenaki in Canada or the Brothertown tribe, which together with the Stockbridge-Munsee, were removed to Wisconsin.[40]
Other dialects and dialect comparison
The Aquidneck Indian Council, a Rhode Island-recognized educational and cultural institution for Native Americans, re-translated the Algonquian content of Roger Williams' Key into the Language of America, in an effort to better document and revive the Narragansett language, using comparisons with the Massachusett-language corpus as well as reconstructions based on evolutionary patterns of linguistic change from PA to SNEA. This, however, would be considered by other specialists, such as Goddard and Costa, as conflation of the mixed dialects found in the Key. However, even if only using Y-dialect material to reconstruct Narragansett would still produce a language similar still similar to other SNEA languages, which were most likely as related to each other as the dialects of the Nordic languages whose speakers can communicate, using their respective languages, and still understand and be understood by other parties, with difficulties increasing with distance and certain aberrant dialects.
The Massachusett language also spread, with the majority of Eliot's Praying towns established in Nipmuc country as well as a few located near the confluence of Nipmuc, Pawtucket, Massachusett and Pennacook influence, such as Wamesit, but possibly also possibly Nashoba (Littleton, Massachusetts) as well as other missionary communities such as Washacum (Sterling, Massachusetts) and Nashaway (Lancaster, Massachusetts).[41] The Nipmuc also came to settle Natick, with James Printer said to be the most prolific translator as well as printer of Eliot's Indian Bible.[42] The Indians that chose to stay away likely preserved their languages. For instance, a French missionary priest near Montreal, Quebec recorded a language sometime in the mid-eighteenth century that was most similar to Massachusett, complete with numerous loan words from English but was clearly an L-dialect, so may represent the original Nipmuc language removed from the standardizing effects of the prestigious Massachusett used by the literate Indians or a related but unknown language of New England's central interior.[43]
^1 Seems to have the diminutive suffix -ees appended.
^2 Seems to have the obviative suffix -oh (-ah) appended.
Related Research Articles
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacomet, the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Plymouth Colony. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their territory historically includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
The Pokanoket was the village governed by Massasoit. The term broadened to refer to all peoples and lands governed by Massasoit and his successors, which were part of the Wampanoag people in what is now Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four communities of Wampanoag people. The language is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.
The Massachusett were a Native American tribe from the region in and around present-day Greater Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name comes from the Massachusett language term for "At the Great Hill," referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor from the south.
Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario, and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by the term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. The villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as the Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries who established the St. Regis and Kahnawake and the missions among the Huron in western Ontario.
The Nipmuc or Nipmuck people are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who historically spoke an Eastern Algonquian language. Their historic territory Nippenet, "the freshwater pond place," is in central Massachusetts and nearby parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.
The Pawtucket tribe were a confederation of Eastern Algonquian-speaking Native Americans in present-day northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire. They are mostly known in the historical record for their dealings with the early English colonists in the 17th century. Confusion exists about the proper endonym for this group who are variously referred to in European documents as Pawtucket, Naumkeag, Wamesit, or Mystic Indians, or by the name of their current sachem or sagamore.
The Nashaway were a tribe of Algonquian Indians inhabiting the upstream portions of the Nashua River valley in what is now the northern half of Worcester County, Massachusetts, mainly in the vicinity of Sterling, Lancaster and other towns near Mount Wachusett, as well as southern New Hampshire. The meaning of Nashaway is "river with a pebbled bottom".
Experience Mayhew (1673–1758) was a New England missionary to the Wampanoag Indians on Martha's Vineyard and adjacent islands. He is the author of Massachusett Psalter.
Native American tribes in Massachusetts are the Native American tribes and their reservations that existed historically and those that still exist today in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A Narragansett term for this region is Ninnimissinuok.
The Eliot Indian Bible was the first translation of the Christian Bible into an indigenous American language, as well as the first Bible published in British North America. It was prepared by English Puritan missionary John Eliot by translating the Geneva Bible into the Massachusett language. Printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the work first appeared in 1661 with only the New Testament. An edition including all 66 books of both the Old and New Testaments was printed in 1663.
The phonology of the Massachusett language was re-introduced to the Mashpee, Aquinnah, Herring Pond and Assonet tribes that participate in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, co-founded by Jessie Little Doe Baird in 1993. The phonology is based regular sound changes that took place in the development of Proto-Eastern Algonquian from Proto-Algonquian, as well as cues in the colonial orthography regarding pronunciation, as the writing system was based on English pronunciation and spelling conventions in use at the time, keeping in mind differences in late seventeenth century English versus today. Other resources included information from extant Algonquian languages with native speakers.
Massachusett is an indigenous Algonquian language of the Algic language family. It was the primary language of several peoples of New England, including the Massachusett in the area roughly corresponding to Boston, Massachusetts, including much of the Metrowest and South Shore areas just to the west and south of the city; the Wampanoag, who still inhabit Cape Cod and the Islands, most of Plymouth and Bristol counties and south-eastern Rhode Island, including some of the small islands in Narragansett Bay; the Nauset, who may have rather been an isolated Wampanoag sub-group, inhabited the extreme ends of Cape Cod; the Coweset of northern Rhode Island; and the Pawtucket which covered most of north-eastern Massachusetts and the lower tributaries of the Merrimack River and coast of New Hampshire, and the extreme southernmost point of Maine. Massachusett was also used as a common second language of peoples throughout New England and Long Island, particularly in a simplified pidgin form.
The Indian College was an institution established in the 1640s in order to educate Native American students at Harvard College, an institution of higher learning located in the town of Cambridge, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, during the colonial era. The Indian College's building, located in Harvard Yard, was completed in 1656. It housed a printing press used to publish the first Bible translated into a Native American language, the Eliot Indian Bible of 1663, which was also the first Bible in any language printed in British America.
Massachusett Pidgin or Massachusett Jargon was a contact pidgin or auxiliary language derived from the Massachusett language attested in the earliest colonial records up until the mid-eighteenth century. Little is known about the language, but it shared a much simplified grammatical system, with many features similar to the better attested Delaware Jargon spoken in the nearby Hudson and Delaware watersheds. It was mutually intelligible with the other Southern New England Algonquian languages.
The Praying Indians of Natick were a community of Indigenous Christian converts, known as Praying Indians, in the town of Natick, Massachusetts, one of many Praying Towns. They were also known as Natick Indians.
1 2 Goddard, I. (2000). 'The Use of Pidgins and Jargons on the East Coast of North America' in Gray, E. G. and Fiering, N. (eds.) The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800: A Collection of Essays. (pp. 61-80).
↑ Cotton, J. (1830). Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. John Davis (ed.) Vol II(3). pp. 242-243. Cambridge, MA: E. W. Metcalf Company.
↑ Mandell, D. R. (1996). Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts. (p. 59). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
↑ Baird, J. L. D. (c. 1993). Wôpanâak-language Dictionary. Sample entry for pumeetyuwôk(an), with third-person prefix (-[w]u) and locative suffix (-ut).
1 2 Goddard, I. (1990). 'Unhistorical features of massachusett.' J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Linguistics and Philology: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TILSM] (Vol. 46, pp. 227–244). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter
↑ Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, Commission on Indian Affairs. (n.d.). Tuition waiver guidelines. Retrieved from Commonwealth of Massachusetts website: www.mass.gov/hed/docs/dhcd/ia/tuitionwaiver.doc.
↑ Hudson, C. (1862). History of the Town of Marlborough, Middlesex County, Massachusetts from First Settlement in 1657 to 1861. (pp. 70-99). Boston, MA: T. Marvin and Son.
↑ Robert, F. and Strobel, C. (2011). Ethnicity in Lowell. Northeast Region Ethnography Program. Boston, MA: National Park Service.
1 2 Speck, F. G. (1928). Territorial Subdivisions and Boundaries of the Wampanoag, Massachusett and Nauset Indians. Frank Hodge (ed). Lancaster, PA: Lancaster Press. p. 46.
1 2 Gustuffson, H. S. (2000). A grammar of the nipmuc language. (Master's thesis) University of Manitoba. The Nipmuck are currently reviving the Nipmuc-influenced Natick dialect. See White, D. T. P. (Performer/Language Consultant). (2009. April, 13). We shall remain: after the mayflower [Television series episode]. In (Executive producer), The American Experience. Boston: PBS-WGBH.
↑ Trumbull, J. H. (1903). Natick Dictionary. (pp. 5–347). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
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