8 When Words Were Spoken

What individual words do you know from another language?  Why do you know these words?  Do you use them?  What idioms and metaphors do you actually know from your own language?  Why do you think you know these different words, idioms or metaphors?  What significance do they have in your life?  Reflect on these questions as you begin to read this chapter that examines spoken words–utterances and expressions–and their importance in interactions between the French and Native peoples over time.

No known dictionaries were compiled on Native languages below the Illinois region during the colonial period.  Consequently, when we read historical records of the 17th and 18th century, we are lucky if missionaries or explorers documented any spoken Native words at all. Nonetheless, words were important–words mattered when spoken!  Thankfully, a few utterances can be teased out of the historical records of this period and region through careful reading.

Let’s begin with the Illinois word for friend.  While traveling south from the Illinois territory, Sieur de LaSalle, Henri de Tonti and their accompanying Frenchmen arrived near the Quapaw village on a foggy March morning in 1682.  Sasacoüest (war cries) as Father Zénobe Membré described them, could be heard from the village.^[1]  The men were certain that the Arkansas felt threatened, for the Quapaws consequently “sent away their women and children” from the village.^[2]  Alarmed by this reaction, the Frenchmen quickly moved to the other side of the river to build a small fortress.  During the brief construction effort, de Tonti “walked out to a point, and the fog lifting, I discovered the village and asked who they were.  But because the river was so large, they could not hear me.  They pushed from shore in a pirogue and when within voice distance, I asked them, in Illinois, who they were.  An Illinois among them cried out Akansa, and he asked me who I was.  I responded to him Miskigouchia which is the name that the southern Native peoples give us.”  Some within La Salle’s party further cried out Nicana, the Illinois word for friend.^[3]  Unsatisfied by this verbal exchange, the Quapaws shot an arrow towards de Tonti.  “If one had shot back, this would have been a sign that one demanded war, but seeing that we did not shoot back, they went to their village to announce that we were peaceful.”  Shortly afterward, “Kapaha, chief of the burg…along with six of his principal people” arrived with the calumet.  The Quapaws “entered our fortress and presented the calumet to M. de la Salle and all the others to smoke, also making the sign that one go to their village.”  The Frenchmen accepted their invitation and “were received with all possible demonstrations of joy and affection.”^[4]

Merely pronouncing Nicana or friend helped to quash any fears present.  The word had powerful meaning understood by both cultures.  But this same word Nicana or friend was soon complemented throughout the region by the French word frère (brother).  As Henri Joutel and his men made their way from the Caddo region to the Arkansas River in 1687, the further east they went, the more they noticed “that they constantly spoke the word frère in all the nations along the upper river.”  Hearing frère was a strong sign that “we were near the grand rivière [Mississippi] du dit Sieur [de LaSalle],” and that this term was understood as a sign of friendship among the Native peoples, much like Nicana.^[5]

Of course, friend and brother were understood by Joutel and others, but not all words were so easily interpreted.  Before these wandering Frenchmen traveled towards the Mississippi in hopes of finding the Illinois territory, they spent some time among the Cenis, a part of the greater Caddo nation, where they used the word Coussica–“I do not understand you”–quite often.  Otherwise, communication through signs left Joutel “nodding my Head, tho’ very often” simply because “I knew not what they meant.”^[6]  Some forty years later, Father du Poisson quickly embraced a more inquisitive phrase to help him expand his linguistic knowledge.  Pronouncing the words Talon jajai? or “What do you call that,” du Poisson felt he “knew already enough of their [Quapaw] language to make myself understood in the commonest things.”  Indeed, du Poisson’s use of this phrase led some Quapaws to believe that the Jesuit priest had “a great mind, that he knows everything.”  But du Poisson was far from fluent.  In one recorded exchange, a Quapaw “made me a long harangue, I understood only these words:  indatai, “my father,” uyginguai, “my son.”  I answered him at random, when I saw that he was questioning me:  ai, “yes,” igalon, “that is good.”  Then he passed his hand over my face and shoulders, and afterward did the same to himself.  After all these agios, he went away with a contented air.”  Later, du Poisson learned the true gist of the conversation:  the Quapaws were asking him to become their adopted father, a point clarified by a Frenchman in the days that followed.  Du Poisson, from his own lips, uttered the word ai, “yes,” complementing it with igaton thé, cela est très-bon, je l’approuve, j’y consens” or “That is very good; I approve it, and consent to it.”^[7]  Call it blind arrogance, but by answering yes to seemingly everything asked of him, du Poisson became adopted Quapaw kin.

Though du Poisson, Joutel and de Tonti provide us with a sense of what particular terms meant, and a hint at how well communication did or did not flow between themselves and Native peoples, many words in the historical record still remain somewhat elusive to us.  A word as simple as ho caught du Poisson’s attention.  As one received food in the Quapaw village, “ho” was pronounced “when his [or her] portion was given.”^[8]  Though du Poisson does not give us a French equivalent, a modern Quapaw dictionary tells us the word means “fish,” ironically the French translation of du Poisson’s own name.  But “ho” could also be an expression like “ah” or a whoop to express arrival or acceptance of the meal.  Otherwise, fish could have been served during the feast and “ho” may have simply exclaimed what the individuals were eating.

Other words have proven to be far more elusive.  Case in point, nihahani (or ninahani), a term used by the Quapaws and the Omahas.  Father Marquette first wrote of this expression in his recitation of an Omaha song.   As he wrote:  “Here is one of their songs that they customarily sing.  They give it a certain tone that one can not so easily notate….Ninahani, ninahani ninahani nani ongo.”^[9]  No known translation of this song exists.  However, during an epidemic among the Quapaws, the village appeared “a landscape of sacredness and grief.”  The French Jesuit Father Pierre de Charlevoix wrote:  “The burial-place appeared like a wood of stakes and posts newly erected, on which was suspended almost everything in use amongst these [people]…and all night I heard nothing but weeping, in which the men joined as well as the women, incessantly repeating the word nihahani, as I have heard among the Illinois, and pretty much to the same tone.”^[10]  This emotional period of time led to constant repetition of a word that may have expressed deep mourning, or remembrance of ancestors.  Nonetheless, its precise meaning  is lost.

Native peoples also applied terms of veneration to Frenchmen.  The Quapaws called the Jesuit Father Paul du Poisson Panianga sa, “a man of great power,” or “Black Chief.”  As Joseph Key describes it, “Chiefs, like shamans, earned respect through the exhibition of strong spiritual power but were also expected to share their power–and goods–with others.”  Within the Quapaw society, “the chief’s authority rested on his power of persuasion not coercion. The stronger he was spiritually the more he acquired materially and so the more he had to share.  The chief’s generosity–the physical manifestation of his power–gained him respect.”  Indeed, not long after du Poisson arrived in the Quapaw village, he displayed his generosity by offering the Quapaws a feast.  This “further persuaded the Quapaws that he was a man who should be ‘listened to,’” a Panianga sa.^[11] Even du Poisson’s display of a picture of St. Regis enhanced assumptions of this saint’s power.  The Quapaws equated du Poisson’s “St. Regis” to their own great spirit:

“They put the hand over the mouth, which is a sign of admiration among them. Ouakantaque [Wa KonTah], they exclaim, it is the Great spirit! I tell them that they are wrong; that he was a chief with a black robe like me; that while he was alive he faithfully heard and obeyed the word of the Great Spirit, and that after death he went to him in Heaven. Some of them pass the hand several times over the face of the Saint, and then place it on their own face; this is a ceremony that they perform when they wish to show anyone a mark of veneration.  Then they place themselves in different parts of my room and say, each time smiling: He is looking at me; he almost speaks, he needs only a voice.”^[12]

For the most part, individual words had direct one-to-one correspondence.  But Father Gravier and the Jesuits often wrote of the Illinois’ highly subtle, metaphorical language, remarking:  “Such is their way of speaking” or “such is the expression that they use,” that the Illinois “reflected a great cleverness in the Indian mind.”  As the Jesuit priest Sebastien Rale wrote, “It cannot be denied that the language of the [Indians] has real beauties; and there is an indescribable force in their style and manner of expression.”^[13]  Indeed, metaphors often emerged, particularly when Native orators spoke.  In 1748, for example, the Miamis petitioned to be admitted into an Iroquois-British chain of alliance.  These “Twightwees” as the British called them, exclaimed their desires “to enter into the chain of Friendship with the English…we entreat You to signify this our desire to the other Indians, and that You and they will open a council Road to the English Governments.  Make it clear and open for us that neither we nor our Wives or Children may hurt their feet against any Log or Stump; and when once you have cleared a Road for us we assure you we will keep it so, and it shall not be in the power of Onontio [the French father] to block up or obstruct the path.”^[14]

Metaphors like path, impediments to travel, the clearing of the road showed how the Miamis viewed efforts to develop alliances and connections with others.  And as we saw in chapter four, Chief Kondiaronk used similar metaphors–the environment and nature–to communicate peace:  “’The sun today dissipated the clouds to reveal this beautiful Tree of Peace which was already planted on the highest mountain of the Earth.’”  This tree, prominent within the Great Peace of Montreal was “to be ‘planted’ or ‘raised’ on the ‘highest mountain of the Earth’ and provided with ‘deep roots so that it [could] never be uprooted.’  Its branches and foliage rose ‘to the heavens,’ providing ‘dense shade,’ so that ‘those who [sat] under it [were] …refreshed…sheltered from any storms that might threaten them,’ and able to ‘do good business.’”^[15]  But even general preparation for the Montreal peace accord had a metaphorically expressed preparatory period whereby  “the wiping of tears, the clearing of the ears, and the opening of the throat” were all meant to prepare participants for the upcoming discussions, all meant to prepare people to clear their thoughts, listen attentively, and speak with great consideration.^[16]  For that matter, the French even found themselves crafting their own speeches for their official interpreters in the “style” of the Native orators so to better impart their desires to the Native peoples.^[17]  As Galloway describes it, French officials “were expected to respond to the ‘harangues,’ and at length.”  It wasn’t unusual for the interpreter to take on this role since he had more experience in speaking the language in question. But what is intriguing is that that the French  would cast their speeches in “‘Indian speech’ phraseology.”  Such a style was familiar to the Native peoples and allowed for greater connection and familiarity to the words given than if the French had simply exhorted a given Native nation in its usual official and less familiar style, be it governmental, military or otherwise.^[18]

Pronunciation and Grammar

Though we have little in the form of recorded words from the Lower Mississippi Valley, language was nonetheless spoken though pronunciation woes abounded both for French and Native cultures.  The Jesuit priest Father Sebastien Rale spoke of his own challenges in pronouncing the Illinois language:  “I spent part of the day in their cabins, hearing them talk. I was obliged to give the utmost attention, in order to connect what they said, and to conjecture its meaning; sometimes I caught it exactly, but more often I was deceived, because, not being accustomed to the trick of their guttural sounds, I repeated only half the word, and thereby gave them cause for laughter.”  Rale worked hard to master pronunciation, noting the various Illinois phonetic sounds that were difficult for French speakers. As Rale wrote, “My chief occupation was the study of their language. It is very difficult to learn. . . . They have several sounds which are uttered only by the throat, without making any motion of the lips.”^[19]

Marquette had his own concerns with Quapaw pronunciation.  The Jesuit priest attempted to speak their language, but found it “exceedingly difficult, and I could succeed in pronouncing only a few words notwithstanding all my efforts.”^[20]  And as for the Jesuit Father Paul Du Ru, he too had no previous experience with Native peoples or their languages, and once in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, faced the enormous challenge of learning multiple languages not previously known to any Frenchman.  Bayougoula was one such language:  “I have been the pupil of the old Bayagoula in order to learn his language,” wrote du Ru. “I know already fifty of the most necessary words. I think this language is rather poor. . . . There are no R’s, and I think the D’s are not common either, for the Bayagoula cannot pronounce these letters in our words.” The Jesuit historian Jean Delanglez quipped: “These Indians must have massacred Father du Ru’s own name.”^[21]  Du Ru may have actually encountered Mobilian Trade Language (MTL) rather than the pure Bayougoula language, a point we will further explore momentarily.

The Jesuits stayed up late at night to practice pronunciation and language skills.  These Catholic priests realized that to master a Native language they had to immerse themselves with the Native community to learn not just vocabulary but also metaphors and idioms characteristic of the language.  As Father Rale wrote, learning an Indian language like Illinois was “very difficult; for it is not sufficient to study its terms and their signification, and to acquire a supply of words and phrases—it is further necessary to know the turn and arrangement that the [Native peoples] give them, which can hardly ever be caught except by familiar and frequent intercourse.” And as he concluded, “there are no books to teach these languages, and even though we had them, they would be quite useless; practice is the only master that is able to teach us.”  Consequently, the Jesuits put themselves on Native ground, going “door to door, speaking always in the Illinois language.”^[22]

The Jesuit Father Charlevoix had his own opinions of the numerous language families and the varied styles of enunciation he encountered in the eighteenth century.  He commented that the Sioux “hisses rather than speaks.  The Huron knows none of the labial letters, speaks thro’ the throat, and aspirates almost all the syllables;  the Algonquin pronounces with a softer tone, and speaks more naturally.”^[23] And as late as 1818, the botanist Thomas Nuttall observed that many Quapaw language sounds “were dental and guttural, and that they could not pronounce the th.”^[24] But Native peoples certainly struggled with European pronunciation as well.  For example, as livestock increased in the New World, likely the difference between cow and caow caught their attention!^[25]

Pronunciation of individual words was one thing, but Frenchmen still had to combine words to express sensical ideas.  While taking words and placing them into an assumed, eurocentric grammatical construction may have seemed appropriate to the French, these phrases likely “sounded very curious indeed to Native speakers.”  Part of this issue of using language stemmed from how Europeans saw language.  For knowledgeable Frenchmen, language was made of nouns, verbs and adjectives presented in a particular pattern.  For example, the typical order of French words in a phrase was (and still is) Subject + Verb + Direct Object with each item separately written.  The missionaries assumed, therefore, that language was universal, that all languages worked in the same manner.  But such was not the case.  Father Brébeuf discovered the “clef du secret” of many Native languages–a polysynthetic structure.^[26]  Brébeuf noted “how they merged into single words what were separately expressed parts of speech in European languages.”  Native languages used roots and lexical elements, otherwise referred to as pronouns and adverbs in French or English, in single verb phrases.  Instead of trying to force a Native language into French grammar style or according to the principles of Greek or Latin, the “key to the secret” was construction of compound words that literally expressed an entire sentence.^[27]  Ultimately, simply forcing words together into phrases that were hardly Native in design made meaning that much more problematic if not precarious.

Discovering the polysynthetic structure of Native languages was a significant breakthrough, but missionaries and others who strove to speak with Native peoples still needed patient teachers to “learn the knot or syntax that joins them together.”  One needed “instructors cognizant of and sympathetic toward European students’ shortcomings.”^[28] As Laudonnière wrote, I “tried to learn some of the Indian terms, showing them things that I wished to name in their language.  They were very happy to instruct me; and knowing of the desire that I had to learn their language, they invited me to ask them anything.  So by putting in writing the terms and locations of Indian things, I came to understand the greater part of their conversations.”^[29]  Alternatively Father Saint-Cosme attempted to learn the Illinois language via a Pimétoui woman and her French husband.  To reciprocate their services, Saint-Cosme offered to have a house built for them and to provide the husband with powder and lead.  Though the woman taught him “with great affection,” she was forced to stop teaching the Seminary priest by the local Jesuits who disapproved of his presence in the village.^[30]  Among the Tamarois, Father Bergier learned from those he could and attempted to create his own dictionary, something that would remove him from total dependence upon the Native peoples after a while.  But as the Jesuit Sébastien Rale correctly surmised, “Practice is the only master that is able to teach us.”^[31]  Father Gabriel Marest was one such individual who was diligent in his studies and ultimately became quite linguistically talented. Fellow Jesuits spoke of his exceptional work ethic: “Dear Father Marest is somewhat too zealous; he works excessively during the day, and sits up at night to improve himself in the language; he would like to learn the whole vocabulary in five or six months. May God pre­serve so worthy a missionary to us.”^[32]

Though beauty was found in these languages, so too lingered the unfortunate feeling that these languages were not possibly created by the Native peoples but through divine intervention.  Francesco Bressani, a Jesuit missionary among the Hurons, remarked that the Hurons possessed “inflections altogether unknown to the most learned of Europe.”  To Bressani, Native languages were quite different, “but most beautiful,” a divine gift, he believed since, “it being impossible that so excellent a System, which surpasses that of all European languages that we know, is the product of minds rude and unversed in every science.”^[33] Despite his and others’ extremely short-sighted perspective, these languages were and are beautiful, but learning any Native language would take years of constant study.

Language Families

When words were spoken, one sometimes assumed regional similarity, as in the case of the Miami of Chicago and the Illinois.  But even these two closely related Algonquian languages differed, though more so from other Algonquian languages than between themselves (Table 1).

Table 1  – Algonquian Language Family^[34]

The French certainly heard differences.  Upon first meeting the Illinois in 1666, Allouez wrote: “The Ilimouec [Illinois] speak Algonquin, but a very different dialect from those of all the other tribes. I understand them only slightly because I have talked with them only a very little.”  Marquette further noted that Illinois was substantially different from the other Algonquian languages he had already mastered.   “I can scarcely understand it,” he wrote in 1670, “although it is somewhat like the Algonquin.”  Consequently, to prepare for his work among the Illinois, Marquette interacted with an Illinois slave about three years before his 1673 expedition, and from him learned at least “the rudiments of their language.”  Over time, his skills strengthened enough to incorporate linguistically accurate transcriptions of Miami/Illinois terms on his 1673 map of the Mississippi River Valley.  Allouez also claimed to have gained a good foundation in the Illinois language by the time a number of Peorias visited his mission in the early 1670s.  But Allouez’s early encounters with the Illinois lasted for mere weeks or days, which gave him little opportunity to more fully master the language.^[35]

Miami-Illinois certainly had different expressions, a different accent, and some different vocabulary from other Algonquian languages.  But other language families in the Mississippi River Valley as seen in Table 2 also had similar variations from their related linguistic kin.  Muskogean, Siouan and Caddoan languages as well as isolate languages spoken by the Taensas, Natchez, Tunicas and Chitimachas could all be heard throughout the Mississippi Valley.

Table 2 – Language Families and Related Nations

These languages, for the most part, were polysynthetic whereby “prefixes and suffixes are added primarily to verb roots in order to convey a large number of distinct ideas within a single word.”^[37]  The Natchez language, for example, was considered heavily polysynthetic as compared to the other languages, and followed a subject-object-verb pattern or SOV.  Here is an example provided by Kaufman:

Tama-Lnisica hikaL to?awipsik – Wife, Corn, Pound

My wife will pound corn drink for you.^[38]

Aside from structure, not all vowels or even consonants appear in each language.  Within the Caddoan and Muskogean languages, for example, only three vowels exist–Caddoan (e, a, o) and Muskogean (i, a, o), though not necessarily pronounced as in English.  Alternatively, languages such as Natchezan, Tunican, Chitimachan, and Dhegiha Siouan each have five vowels (a, e, i, o, u).  But consonants vary as well.  While Chitimachan contains the five vowel sounds, there are no R’s or D’s within the language itself, much like what Father Du Ru experienced among the Bayougoulas.  And too, languages possessed and still do retain some onomatopoeic words.  Take the term for owl in Cherokee.  The word Oogugu quite literally sounds like an owl when spoken.  Or pakpakhayi, the Biloxi term for woodpecker.^[39]

Although each language family had numerous Native nations under its umbrella, this did not always mean that the related nations understood each other.  The Quapaws, Omahas and Osages, for example, were a part of the Dhegihan Siouan language family.  As tradition has it, when these groups separated, the Quapaws went down stream, the Omahas went upstream, and the Osages went to the middle waters. But over the years of separation, words diverged.  As seen in Table 3, there are many similarities, but subtle differences as well partly due to the individuals who recorded words, but also due to changes in the languages over decades of separation among the groups.  Watch this video to learn more about migration and language among the Dheghia Sioux.

Table 3 – Dhegiha Siouan Language Family^[40]

The Muskogean language family (Table 4) has similarities and differences across its language kin as well.  Like the Osages, Omahas and Quapaws, the Chickasaws and Choctaws physically separated from each other at one point which explains why their languages are quite similar, yet different.  You can review their traditional migration story  through this link from Chickasaw.tv.

Table 4 – Muskogean Language Family^[41]

Caddo and the Iroquoian language families were both spoken over a wide landscape.  As we saw in Chapter 1, such a vast dispersion of these related languages within their respective families led to even greater differences in pronunciation and word use.  Table 5 provides examples for several diverse Caddoan words.

Table 5 – Caddoan Language Family^[42]

In terms of Iroquoian dispersal, the Cherokees lived in the Smoky Mountains when de Soto arrived in the mid 16th century, while the Hurons, Senecas and Mohawks lived in the Northeast and Canada much farther north.  These nations, though linguistically connected, had wide variation in their language (Table 6).   More recently, the split of the Cherokee nation in the early 19th century led to the creation of the Eastern Band of the Cherokees, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Keetoowah Band of the Cherokees.  A mere 200 years after this split, their spoken language within these regions has subtle differences as well.

Table 6  – Iroquoian Language Family^[43]

Pidgins and Jargons

It was difficult to speak another’s language no matter if you were a Native person or a Frenchman.  And if there were terms to agree upon, contracts to make, decisions to be had, in whose language were they made?  French or a Native language?  To by-pass communication difficulties, alternative forms of language sometimes emerged–pidgins and jargons.  Pidgins were Native languages that were reduced to their most simplest of elements and thus made it easier for Native peoples, Frenchmen or other Europeans to learn the altered language.  Jargons were languages made up of elements of various Native languages intertwined sometimes with French, English or even African languages.  A jargon proved useful for trading purposes and, when needed, treaties and affirmations.  In either instance, these language forms treated others “not as capable adults but as young children just learning to wrap their tongues around polysyllabic words and to tease out of usage the imperfect regularities of grammar and syntax.”  Both pidgins and jargons were meant for “neophytes in the difficult art of speaking a new language.”^[44]

Important features emerged with these varied modes of communication.  First, pidgins could become more sophisticated and complex “until they either closely approximated the mature language from which they were chipped or were totally superseded by a rival tongue.”  Second, jargons and pidgins had a “normative neutrality.”  Not being one’s proper language, “they lent a measure of verbal impartiality and social stability to fragile frontiers where ethnic pride was easily bruised and often inflamed.”  Third, and perhaps most important, those who used pidgins and jargons could protect their full language and culture from others.^[45]  That is, “though Europeans were frequently oblivious to this fact…pidgins and jargons provided what linguists call a ‘sociolinguistic buffer’ against surveillance and interference.”^[46]  Because Native people often spoke a pidgin or jargon with Europeans, and later spoke their pure language with their own people, some speculated that they often changed their language, and in some ways they did.  Native individuals often had other forms of language besides pidgins and jargons that they used in certain situations–spirituality, for example.  Father Saint-Cosme noticed a difference between the Natchez spoken language and their own spiritual language, remarking:  “When they speak of the Great Spirit, this is another way of speaking.”^[47]

Native peoples and Europeans relied on trade communication to exchange goods–furs, horses, salt, knives, beads, ironworks, and so on.  Though one could certainly trade using signs, the ability to speak a language of interaction and negotiation greatly influenced if not enhanced the trading process.  The French needed to understand transactions for economic gains.  Native peoples needed to understand the same transactions to establish an alliance, to develop a relationship, to receive and give gifts to meet their own needs.  In short, “limited comprehension increased tensions,” while “linguistic skill simply made for good business.”  When a language could be spoken, even in the form of a pidgin or jargon, this ultimately “built good will and eventually even trust” between the two parties.^[48]

Perhaps the oldest, most durable North American jargon stemmed from late 15th and early 16th century interactions between Basque fishermen and the regional Mi’kmaqs and Montagnais of the northeast.  This combination of European and Native languages led to a “lingua franca,” a common language that was understood well by both cultures present.  Words and phrases that took hold included the Basque phrase Nola Zaude? which meant “How are You?”  Even nouns fell under the influence of one another’s language.  Friend evolved from the Basque word Adiskide to the Mi’kmaq word Adesquidex.^[49]  Cod became referred to as bacaillos, a Basque term, rather than the Mi’Kmaq word, apegé.  Consequently, when French colonists arrived in the Québec region in the early 17th century, the language of the coastal nations was quite literally “half Basque,” with phrases such as Endia chave normandia or “The French know many things” or Maloes mercateria or “Those from Saint-Malo are unfair traders” the norm.  Many other words and phrases appeared as well and by the seventeenth century, this region’s Native peoples “traded with the French only in Basque.”^[50]  Despite this prolific regional trade jargon, the Mi’Kmaqs maintained their pure language amongst themselves and simply relegated the Mi’kmaq/Basque jargon to interactions with Europeans.

Throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley, French and Native peoples alike used Mobilian Trade Language (MTL) to communicate with those who did not speak the other’s Native tongue.  To quickly dispel any confusion, there was a language of the Mobilian people, a Native group near what would become Mobile in the early 18th century.  But Mobilian Trade Language was different, often referred to as langue vulgaire by Antoine le Page du Pratz, or Anõpa Ela (different language), or even yoka anõpa (slave/servant language) by others.^[51]  More officially, it was called the Mobilian Trade Language (MTL) or Mobilian Trade Jargon by those who used it.  This jargon served the region perfectly well throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and was even heard in snippets within southern parts of the Mississippi River Valley as late as the 1950s.  Though assumptions are that this language emerged sometime around the late 17th century, evidence suggests that it existed earlier since some suggest that the Bayougoulas addressed Iberville and his men in this language when the latter first arrived at the base of the Mississippi River, near the mouth of Bayou Lafourche where the Bayougoulas lived.^[52]  Ignorant of the region’s people, Iberville referred to their language as Bayougoula.  Not long after, Father Paul du Ru attempted to establish a mission among these same people.  He tried to learn their language and managed to grasp a few terms:  “I know already fifty of the most necessary words. I think this language is rather poor.”^[53]  Du Ru clearly described the “less sophisticated” trade jargon, not Bayougoula.  Years later, le Page du Pratz himself commented that Indians possessed “barren” languages and the “same manner of speaking and thinking.”^[54]  In truth, du Pratz was also describing MTL and its more simple structure compared to the polysenthetic languages otherwise spoken in the Mississippi River Valley.  Thus, when Europeans came into the region for the first time, they did not always recognize that they were learning a language that had already been “watered down” for use in trading activities.  This strategy of simplified language benefited both parties but also helped Native peoples to preserve their true language and culture from prying ears.  Unfortunately, utilizing MTL led many to dismiss the pure languages’ worth.  By the mid-eighteenth century, “Notions of linguistic, and perhaps intellectual poverty were further elaborated in missions, where other ideas about Indian languages, based on deeper linguistic knowledge, also took shape.”^[55]

To learn anything about MTL, one has to peruse hundreds of pages to find any evidence of the language.  Thankfully, le Page du Pratz’s writings serve as a first-hand source for understanding some MTL usage between the French and Native peoples.  Le Page du Pratz learned MTL from his Chitimacha slave so that he could communicate with the Native peoples, particularly the Chitimachas and the Natchez.  But knowing the Natchez language as he did, du Pratz could see the different nature of MTL, which “led him to suggest that it could be better learned by using it than by learning formal rules.”^[56] As the early Louisiana explorer and settler saw it, “‘there is not a village…in any nation of Louisiana, where there are not some who can speak…the vulgar [common] tongue.’”^[57]  As experienced throughout the region, MTL was simply a vital form of communication for all who engaged in trade and interaction.^[58]

When one naively suggested that Native communities all spoke the same language, more than likely the similar language was actually MTL, not the Native nation’s true language.^[59]  Iberville, for example, clearly referred to MTL when he reported that Natchez, Tunican, and Muskogean peoples, as well as the Chitimachas, Houmas and Bayogoulas all “speak the same language,” adding that they and the Biloxi and Pascagoula “understand each other.’”^[60]  Indeed, the Bayougoulas were prominent speakers of MTL, but their own pure language is unknown except for some words that were preserved such as the word Affero which expressed feelings of surprise or astonishment.  This single word has allowed researchers to determine that Bayougoula was neither Muskogean nor Natchezan.  Otherwise, its true language family remains elusive.^[61]  And too, though larger Native groups were known by their proper names, smaller nations were often known by what other nations actually called them.  As for Bayougoula, its very ending–“ougoula”–means “people” in Mobilian Trade Jargon.  This applies as well to the Pascagoulas who lived on the Pascagoula River in the Lower Mississippi Valley in 1699. They were known by their MTL name which actually meant “bread people.”  They too were known to speak MTL but like the Bayougoulas, their own native language remains unknown.^[62]

Thankfully, du Pratz recorded some Mobilian usage in his texts, particularly in relation to greetings.  Here are two examples, the first–an encounter between Native peoples and the French along a road. The second–a Frenchman’s visit to a Native person’s home:

“When the Indians meet Frenchmen whom they know, they hold out their hands to them and shake their hands a little, while inclining their heads a bit and saying to them always in their language: [ichla mongoula or te voilà, mon ami] “Here you are, my friend;”…When one enters their home, they say the word of greeting, ichla mongoula, which means what I have just said, Here you are, my friend; they shake hands, and tell one to sit down [chpenele] by pointing to a bed that serves for this purpose. They let somebody who has just arrived rest, and wait for him to speak first, because they assume that one must be breathless after a walk, and nobody dares to interrupt the silence that thus rules the hut. As soon as the one who just arrived begins to talk, the woman brings food that they happen to have ready. The master says: “Apas-Ich, eat! One must take of what they offer, as little as one may indeed wish to do so; because otherwise they would imagine that one despises them; after these little ceremonies, one talks about what one wants to trade with them or what one wishes them to do.”^[63]

Aside from du Pratz’s example, there are other historical examples of MTL in use.  Bienville, one states, was fluent in it and used it when Henri de Tonti brought various Choctaw and Chickasaw Chiefs to Mobile in an effort to broker peace.  “With great ceremony the Indians were received in the fort’s plaza and invited to inspect gifts that included guns, powder and shot, knives, cooking wares, glass beads, and other attractive knick-knacks. Speaking through Bienville, who was fluent in the Mobilian trade jargon, Iberville instructed the chiefs.”^[64]  Alternatively, though French missionaries at times used MTL out of necessity, they preferred to learn and use a Nation’s pure language so as to more fully teach and share Christianity with the Native community.  They believed that learning the language proper demonstrated commitment to the people with whom they worked.  Unlike traders who worked with “scattered words,” missionaries needed to know the full language so “to preach and convert (they hoped) and perhaps to translate portions of liturgies, scripture or other books.”  As a general rule, missionaries did not often rely on interpreters, particularly since they might “‘on Purpose give things a different and wrong Turn.’”  Instead, missionaries strove to learn the proper language so to provide a “crucial means to convey and shape new religious knowledge.”^[65]

Mobilian Trade Language functioned as a true mediating language among Native peoples who spoke mutually unintelligible languages, but also between Native peoples and Europeans or even African slaves.  The language itself contained elements of Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, French and Spanish and perhaps even African languages, and was used for diplomacy and trade.  As one Frenchman described it, MTL was “‘a kind of mother tongue which is general for all, and which is understood everywhere…When one knows it, one can travel through all this province [Louisiana] without needing an interpreter.’”^[66]  Indeed, one spoke MTL in East Texas, along the Red River, up to the Ohio, Illinois and Missouri Rivers, down through the Mississippi River Valley to the Gulf of Mexico.  Regardless of its proliferation, it was only spoken as a second language, never a first.

Mobilian Trade Language followed an object-subject-verb order and was not polysynthetic.  Spoken as a second language, or even a third or fourth, it had grammatical structures and vocabulary consisting of words necessary for such vocations as trade or travel but perhaps not for abstract concepts such as religion.  Unlike polysynthetic languages, Mobilian Trade Language used independent words.  Kaufman provides a simple example with the expression “I cut you” in the polysynthetic Choctaw language and then MTL.

Choctaw – chibashlilitok
MTL – esno eno basle taha or You I Cut Finish.^[67]

To further highlight the differences, compare the Chickasaw language, a polysynthetic language, and that of the Mobilian Trade Language again as provided by Kaufman:

Notice the polysenthetic nature of the words throughout this brief story, the variety of rich, descriptive words throughout the text.  Now examine MTL and its less complex, indeed, more simplified language.

Mobilian Jargon long-survived in the Lower Mississippi Valley.  Though its usage did decline throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, primarily due to the intrusion of English, it remained a useful language among the Coushatta (Koasati) Indians and neighboring groups in southwestern Louisiana into the 1940s, if not the early 1950s. Yet MTL was never learned as a first language.  It always remained a second language for its speakers.  As of 1979, there were a few, mostly older individuals who remembered a number of words and sentences in the contact language.^[70]

African Slaves and MTL

As the infiltration of African slaves into the Lower Mississippi Valley began in 1719, these individuals also learned to speak MTL and, like others, continued their use of it into the late 18th and early 19th centuries.^[71]  The Frenchman Jean Baptiste Filhiol, who served the Spanish colony of Louisiana in southern Arkansas and northeast Louisiana, commented in 1784 that he had a black slave who interpreted for him.  This individual, by “speaking Mobilian, is my only interpreter,” said Filhoil.  “Ten times a day the [Indians] come to tear him away from my tasks in order to have him interpret what they have to tell me.”^[72]  In another example, two runaway slave advertisements in the New Orleans newspaper Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, nos. 308 (September 11, 1802) and 309 (September 18, 1802), announced the search for one Pierre-Marc, a thirty-year-old carpenter from Senegal who spoke Mobilian as well as Spanish and French.

Nicolas Mongoula, a free black man whose last name meant “my friend” in MTL, stands out as a speaker of his traditional African language but also MTL.  Moungoula lived in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during much of the 18th century.^[73]  Though we know little about him, records show that he was born sometime around 1720, perhaps in the Caribbean or in Africa, but lived out his adult life in French Louisiana residing in one or more of the region’s Native villages.^[74]  Living within such communities, and likely in communication with Native slaves, this would have given Mongoula direct access to Mobilian Jargon particularly since this language, also referred to as yoka anõpa  or “slave/servant language,” served as a manner of communication among those in bondage.  Most assuredly, beginning in the 1760s, Mongoula lived in Mobile and continued to use this language in this locale.^[75]  But why, one wonders, did he draw on Mobilian Jargon rather than Spanish or French, Wolof, or Yoruba?  Over the years, Mongoula likely placed himself in direct relationship with African slaves and Native peoples.  As such, “these constructive interactions, fusions, and confusions of racial and cultural boundaries, perhaps were empowering for both groups…”  With time, as Mongoula interacted with these individuals, his “use of Mobilian Jargon—and perhaps more important, his self-identification expressed in terms of Mobilian Jargon—may be seen as one cultural manifestation of this historical process.”^[76]

Whistling and Whooping

Aside from pure words, oral utterances also played a communicative role.  Some Native communities, for example, communicated information through the use of sounds.  Among the Iroquois, one Jesuit priest remarked that it was their custom “to call out to each other using owl calls at night, and the chirping of some other birds by day.”^[77]  Another oral utterance, the Native oral expression of “whooping” often frightened Europeans and later Americans who actually outlawed its use.  The James Colbert attack on Arkansas Post in the late 18th century was thwarted, for example, when out of the poorly secured fortress came 10 men, a mixture of Quapaws, French and Spanish, who “whooped” to strike fear in Colbert and his men and end the violence that the latter had put on the post.  But once Americans came into the region in the nineteenth century, whooping was outlawed:

 “Any person or persons who shall, under the influence of intoxicating drink, through malice or under any other circumstances in any manner disturb any religious meeting, social gathering, school or family, by whooping, shooting fire arms, talking in a loud or boisterous manner, using vulgar, obscene or profane language, or in any manner frightening said meeting, gathering, school or family, shall be guilty of disturbing the peace of the Choctaw nation and shall be indicted by the grand jury, and on conviction shall be fined not less than twenty-five dollars nor more than one hundred dollars, and in the event of his failure or inability to pay the fine imposed, he shall receive in lieu thereof not less than twenty-five nor more than one hundred lashes on the bare back, one-fourth of said fine to be paid to the complainant and the remainder to the county wherein the offense was committed.”^[78]

 The challenge herein is that whooping itself had multiple diverse uses within Choctaw tradition.  A Choctaw might whoop as a part of war, when dancing or greeting others, within varied sporting competitions or even when in mourning.  For the Choctaws, whooping was a cultural tradition.  But the Americans saw whooping as a threat and tasaha, a whoop that might be associated with brawls, was criminalized.