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46-468: Massachusett Pidgin is recorded as early as 1624, when references to it appear in the colonial records. With exception of Mobilian Jargon , most of the auxiliary languages that developed in North America are thought to have been brought about by contact with Europeans. There are several factors in place that make it very likely that the language pre-dated European arrival. The Massachusett people were once

92-600: A peace treaty negotiated on March 22, 1621. The alliance ensured that the Pokanokets remained neutral during the Pequot War in 1636. According to English sources, Massasoit prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony and the starvation that the Pilgrims faced during its earliest years. Some tension continued between Massasoit and the colonists when they refused to give up Squanto , whom Massasoit believed to have betrayed him. This

138-406: A functional language. There is documentary evidence of it in numerous historical records such as journals, diaries, reports and scholarly treatments. What was recorded, though, was very little, and it is safe to assume that Europeans did not have a full understanding of Mobilian. They believed that Mobilian was the mother of all other Indian languages, failing to notice that it was actually a hybrid of

184-573: A historian of the Muskogean nation , to make a recording titled Thirteen Moons , which features "the soulful chants of ancient folk tales and more modern stories told in Mobilian." Mobilian was used from the Florida northwest coast and area of the current Alabama - Georgia border westward as far as eastern Texas and in the north from the lower Mississippi Valley (currently south and central Illinois ) to

230-650: A numerically dominant people of the region, with a large population supported by the fertile lands of the coastal plain and ample access to riparian and ocean food resources. With a strong population, the Massachusett sachem s were head of a loose alliance of peoples, covering all the Massachusett-speaking peoples, the Nipmuc and even the unclassified peoples of the Pioneer Valley before their numbers were felled by

276-798: A series of epidemics and were vulnerable to attacks by the Narragansetts , and he formed an alliance with the colonists at Plymouth Colony for defense against them. It was through his assistance that the Plymouth Colony avoided starvation during the early years. At the time of the pilgrims' arrival in Plymouth, the realm of the Wampanoag, also known as the Pokanokets , included parts of Rhode Island and much of southeastern Massachusetts . Massasoit lived in Sowams,

322-400: A simpler structure where verbs are not required to have subject or object affixes and the subject-object-verb ordering in the sentence is variable. It also requires a separate word after the verb to indicate tense, whereas Muskogean languages use a suffix. It has a simplified syllable and sound structure and a simplified grammar as compared to Choctaw, its primary parent language. Mobilian Jargon

368-527: A village at Pokanoket in Warren, Rhode Island . He held the allegiance of lesser Pokanoket sachems. In 1621, he sent Squanto to live among the colonists at Plymouth. Outbreaks of an unidentified disease had devastated the Pokanokets, and Massasoit sought an alliance with the colonies of New England against the neighboring Narragansetts who controlled an area west of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Samoset

414-633: Is also found in the Massachusett-language documents, it was likely a Massachusett Pidgin borrowing from an Abenakian language, and appears as zan8mba in Western Abenaki. As Massachusett Pidgin was often used to communicate with the English settlers, it naturally incorporated numerous English terms. Hundreds of words were adopted into Massachusett from English, mainly for the new crops, domesticated animals, tools, material culture and religion of

460-548: 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

506-431: Is linguistically and grammatically different from the language traditionally spoken by the Mobile Indians. Mobilian Jargon facilitated trade between tribes speaking different languages and European settlers. There is continuing debate as to when Mobilian Jargon first began to be spoken. Some scholars, such as James Crawford, have argued that Mobilian Jargon has its origins in the linguistically diverse environment following

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552-572: Is now the Mid-Atlantic States and the traditional homeland of the Lenape peoples. Like Winslow, the Dutch and Swedish settlers thought they were speaking the local language, but were actually speaking pidgin varieties thereof. Massachusett Pidgin spread with the fur trade , allowing Indians to communicate with northern and interior tribes and exchange items for beaver pelts, which were highly prized by

598-556: Is only inferred from colonial sources. Edward Winslow , who served as governor of the Plymouth Colony, had developed a close relationship with the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and other local Wampanoag leaders and was one of a handful of the Pilgrims that had any command of the local 'Indian language.' In Winslow's 1624 publication Good News from New England , he describes a situation where his party of Pilgrim men came across some Wampanoag men they knew and were able to communicate, but when

644-643: Is the major contributing language (not both Choctaw and Chickasaw) although this has been challenged by Emanuel Drechsel. He has concluded that the presence of certain Algonquian words in Mobilian Jargon are the result of direct contact between the Mobilians of the Mississippi valley and Algonquians moving southward. For the most part, these "loanwords" differ by only one or two letters. Mobilian has not survived as

690-636: The Satucket River in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts . The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . Massasoit had five children: son Wamsutta , who was born between 1621 and 1625; son Pometecomet, Metacomet , or Metacom; son Sonkanuchoo; and daughters Amie and Sarah. Soon after his death, Wamsutta and Metacomet went to Plymouth and asked the Pilgrims to give them English names. The court named them Alexander and Philip. Wamsutta,

736-625: The Seekonk River the following spring. Governor Winslow advised Williams to move his settlement to the other side of the river because his current location was within the bounds of Plymouth Colony. Williams did so and founded Providence Plantations , which later became part of the Colony of Rhode Island . The half century of peace that Massasoit so assiduously maintained collapsed soon after his death. Wamsutta broke away from his father's diplomacy and began an alliance with Connecticut Colony . Massasoit

782-469: The Wessagusset and Plymouth colonies, and he warned the Pilgrims in time. The alliance came under other tension in later years, as the colonists expanded into new lands in order to support their growing colony. Massasoit sold a tract of land 14 miles square to Myles Standish and others of Duxbury in 1649 to alleviate tension and maintain the peace. The sale took place atop Sachem Rock , an outcropping on

828-585: The leptospirosis outbreak circa 1619 and subsequent virgin soil epidemics and the large numbers of English colonists that usurped their land and competed with them for resources. Massachusett was spoken by several peoples, including not only the Massachusett, but also the Pawtucket, Wampanoag, Nauset and Coweset peoples. It was mutually intelligible with the other Southern New England Algonquian languages (SNEA), spoken in southern New England and parts of Long Island, and related to but not mutually intelligible with

874-588: The Abenakian languages spoken to the north and the Delawaran languages to the west and southwest of the SNEA region. Massachusett Pidgin and Massachusett Pidgin English are of interest to scholars of the English language and language contact, as most of the Algonquian loan words adopted from the peoples of New England were adopted through these languages and not directly from Massachusett. The existence of Massachusett Pidgin

920-611: The Algonquian language at the time. Other Europeans also learned the language, but not in a way where they understood the cultural aspects of it; just enough for them to be able to trade with the Indians. In its syntax, Mobilian Jargon was fundamentally Muskogean and compared to other southeastern Indian tribes it showed a reduced morphology. Its lexicon shares major similarities to other Muskogean languages, in particular to Chickasaw and to Alabama. Though it evolved from more complex and polysynthetic Native American languages, Mobilian Jargon has

966-573: The Choctaw and Chickasaw languages. When it was no longer needed as a spoken trade language, Mobilian was lost and eventually became extinct. It was first written about in the 1700s and was spoken until the 1950s, In the 1980s elders in the Louisiana region could still recall a few words and phrases. In 2012, the Mezcal Jazz Unit of Montpellier , France, collaborated by Internet with Grayhawk Perkins,

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1012-774: The English settlers. As beaver became scarce in southern New England, the Indian traders and hunters had to trek further to obtain the desired pelts, likely taking the easy to learn and somewhat intelligible Massachusett Pidgin. As the English settlers were not interested in learning the local language, and the Indians, outnumbered by English settlers, needed English to trade and participate in wider society, switched over to Massachusett Pidgin English, essentially Massachusett Pidgin with heavy English relexification. The Native peoples of New England continued to use their local dialect or language such as Massachusett, Massachusett Pidgin and Massachusett Pidgin English to communicate. Dual use of these by

1058-754: The English settlers. Many items of the English quickly became prized items of trade. Although it is uncertain to what extant these words were used in Massachusett Pidgin, the words listed below were known to have been absorbed into the Massachusett language. Due to the reduced phonemic inventory of Massachusett, most words were approximated to their closest Massachusett equivalent sounds. English /r/ and /l/ were often replaced by /n/ due to interference from N-SNEA dialect pronunciation, as Massachusett speakers were familiar with neighboring languages where cognate words with /r/ and /l/ became /n/ in Massachusett. As consonant clusters were limited, an epenthetic vowel

1104-538: The Massachusett language declined in Massachusett communities in the 1750s and the 1770s in the Wampanoag communities as Massachusett Pidgin English, and later English, began to overtake the Native languages. This was part due to assimilation pressures, increased rates of intermarriage with Blacks and Whites outside the speech community and This co-existed with the usage of Massachusett Pidgin, but as English became more and more necessary to trade and participate in society, and

1150-765: The Native peoples is recorded as early as 1651 in Connecticut, where trade was conducted on English colonial merchantmen with Indian interpreters possibly code-switching between Massachusett Pidgin and Massachusett Pidgin. Similarly, a court trial involving an Indian accused of stealing a hog was shown a hog's head and told tatapa you ( tâtapaw y8 ) /taːtapaːw juː/ , 'similar to this,' and in Massachusett Pidgin ' all one this ' in Massachusett Pidgin English in 1704. The Massachusett speaking peoples also adopted English, albeit imperfectly with heavy influences of Massachusett grammar and some vocabulary. The use of

1196-653: The Pokanokets and chief sachem of the Greater Wampanoag Confederacy. He believed that Wamsutta had been murdered at the hands of the Colonists, and this was one of the factors that led to King Philip's War , one of the bloodiest wars in Colonial American history. A statue of Massasoit by sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin stands near Plymouth Rock , with others outside the Utah State Capitol building, on

1242-457: The Wampanoag spoke to each other, it was incomprehensible. Winslow later on recalls the visit of the Massachusett sachem Chickatawbut . After exchanging pleasantries with the Winslow and the other representatives of the Plymouth Colony, the conversation between the sachem s was not understood by Winslow save a few words. Similar accounts are recorded by the Dutch and Swedish colonists of what

1288-508: The eldest, became sachem of the Pokanokets on the death of his father. He died within a year, and his brother Metacom succeeded him in 1662. Amie married Tispaquin and was the only one of Massasoit's five children to survive King Philip's War in 1676. Roger Williams fled the Massachusetts Bay Colony to avoid arrest and deportation for religious reasons and stayed the winter of 1635–36 with Massasoit, who gave him land along

1334-411: The end of the nineteenth century, with the death of the last native speakers of Aquinnah, but the language had already declined as the primary language of the Indian communities in the 1770s. Most of the vocabulary is drawn from the Massachusett language, although Massachusett Pidgin does feature some shortened expressions and word compounds that would not be permissible in the normal spoken language. As

1380-513: The establishment of the French colony of Louisiana . Others, however, suggest that the already linguistically diverse environment of the lower Mississippi basin drove the need for a common method of communication prior to regular contact with Europeans. The Native Americans of the Gulf coast and Mississippi valley have always spoken multiple languages, mainly the languages of the other tribes that inhabited

1426-433: The expected verb would be nunau ( nunâw ) /nənaːw/ , a transitive animate verb, 'I see (someone)' or more direct ( kunâwush ) /kənaːwəʃ/ , 'I see you,' as opposed to nâmun ( nâmun ) /naːmən/ , the transitive inanimate 'see it.' The simplification of all the verbs to inanimate forms necessitated the need of pronouns to clarify meaning as opposed to the standard Algonquian languages which are pro-drop due to

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1472-677: The language was used or somehow came in contact with groups using the Algonquian languages of the Northeast to Midwest, with which Mobilian Jargon shares a number of words, such as papo(s) or papoš, meaning 'baby, child', which undeniably resembles the Narragansett word with the same meaning, pápūs. It is unknown how the crossover between the languages occurred; some possibilities include direct contact with Algonquian-speaking peoples in Virginia and North Carolina, or perhaps contact with French explorers using

1518-454: The majority of the lexicon is derived from Massachusett, it is assumed that speakers, especially the Natives themselves, pronounced the words according to the rules of Massachusett phonology. A handful of common words were either borrowings from other Algonquian languages or were archaic retentions that were better understood by other peoples. For instance, although the Massachusett Pidgin sanomp

1564-542: The new settlers were less eager to bother to learn the 'Indian language,' Massachusett Pidgin was rapidly eclipsed by the sole use of Massachusett Pidgin English. Massachusett Pidgin may have influenced the late-stage of the Massachusett language, and many of the small number of words recorded by Speck when he visited the elderly members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in the 1920s, many were actually Massachusett Pidgin derivations. The Massachusett language went extinct at

1610-448: The north. The accepted view of the origin is that it developed from contact with the French in the 18th century. But there is obscurity in that. It seems that there was a pre-European origin that is supported through its well-established use in diverse indigenous contexts, geographic overlapping with that of Southeastern Indian groups formerly associated in multilingual paramount chiefdoms of

1656-688: The outsiders did not have a full understanding of how special the nature and functions of Mobilian Jargon was. Because of this, the Indians created a cultural barrier, preserving their cultural integrity and privacy from non-Indian groups. The pervasiveness of Mobilian Jargon, as a result, created its longtime survival. Mobilian Jargon is a pidginized or "corrupted"/"complex" form of Choctaw and Chickasaw (both Western Muskogean ) that also contains elements of Eastern Muskogean languages such as Alabama and Koasati , colonial languages including Spanish , French , and English , and perhaps Algonquian and/or other languages. Pamela Munro has argued that Choctaw

1702-457: The pre-Columbian Mississippian complex, and its indigenous grammar. Mobilian Jargon has a recorded history of at least 250 years where the first reliable evidence dated 1700. For two centuries it was socially accepted to use as a lingua franca with the outsiders they interacted with, such as traders and settlers. It is presumed that fur traders spread the language to Choctaw and Chickasaw provinces. Though Indians spoke in Mobilian Jargon to outsiders,

1748-516: The pronominal information encoded in the verb declension. Mobilian Jargon Mobilian Jargon (also Mobilian trade language , Mobilian Trade Jargon , Chickasaw–Choctaw trade language , Yamá ) 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

1794-538: The same area. The Mobilians, like these neighboring tribes, were also multi-lingual. By the early 19th century, Mobilian Jargon evolved from functioning solely as a contact language between people into a means of personal identification. With an increasing presence of outsiders in the Indian Gulf coast community, Mobilian Jargon served as a way of knowing who was truly a native of the area, and allowed Mobilians to be socially isolated from non-Indian population expansion from

1840-584: The southern Mississippi River Delta region in the south. It is known to have been used by the Alabama, Apalachee, Biloxi, Chacato, Pakana, Pascagoula, Taensa, Tunica, Caddo, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Chitimacha, Natchez, and Ofo. There is some evidence that Mobilian Jargon was used about 500 miles upstream the Missouri River near the Oyo or Osage Indians during the late 18th century. Some scholars also have reason to believe that

1886-594: Was at one point a Muskogean- based pidgin. It was linguistically reduced from analytical grammar. Mobilian Jargon related to Muskogean proper linguistics and historical facts. Mobilians used a lot of Western Muskogean in their spoken language. Compare the personal pronouns among Muskogean languages: Mobilian Jargon consists of about 1,250 words of various origins. Of 150 words studied most were from Western Muskogean/ Choctaw - Chickisaw , 20 were split between Western Muskogean and Alabama - Koasati , 14 were from Alabama-Koasati, 3 were from English , 2 were from Spanish , 1

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1932-511: Was a minor Abenaki sachem ( sagamore ) who hailed from the Muscongus Bay area of Maine , and he learned to speak English from fishermen who plied those waters. Massasoit sent him to approach the colonists to find out whether their intentions were peaceful. Massasoit forged critical political and personal ties with colonial leaders William Bradford , Edward Winslow , Stephen Hopkins , John Carver , and Myles Standish , ties which grew out of

1978-525: Was from French , and one from Algonquin . Massasoit Massasoit Sachem ( / ˌ m æ s ə ˈ s ɔɪ ( ɪ ) t / MASS -ə- SOYT , -⁠ SOY -it ) or Ousamequin ( c.  1581  – 1661) was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem . Although Massasoit was only his title, English colonists mistook it as his name and it stuck. Massasoit's people had been seriously weakened by

2024-461: Was humane and honest, kept his word, and endeavored to imbue his people with a love for peace. He kept the Pilgrims advised of any warlike designs toward them by other tribes. It is unclear when Massasoit died. Some accounts claim that it was as early as 1660; others contend that he died as late as 1662. He was anywhere from 80 to 90 at the time. Wamsutta died suddenly within a year of his succession, and Massasoit's second son Metacom became sachem of

2070-592: Was often inserted to ease pronunciation. English words were also overtly marked with the Massachusett declensional pronoun and verb conjugation system, producing hybrid forms. Like Pidgin Delaware, verbs in Massachusett are simplified into the inanimate forms. For example, Massasoit is believed to have said to Winslow upon his deathbed, Matta neen wonckanet namen Winsnow ( Mata neen wôkanut nâmun Winsnow ), 'Oh Winslow, I shall never see thee again' but more literally 'Not I again see Winslow.' In standard Massachusett,

2116-492: Was resolved in March 1623 when Massasoit was gravely ill and Edward Winslow nursed him back to health. After his recovery, Winslow reports that Massasoit said, "the English are my friends and love me... whilst I live I will never forget this kindness they have showed me." In return for their kindness, Massasoit warned them of a plot against them. He had learned that a group of influential Massachusett warriors intended to destroy both

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