KAS. LEG. — DIRECT. FOR USING HITCHITI GLOSS.A.RY, [163] 131 



SPECfAL Directions 

 FOR THE Use of the Hitchiti Glossary. 



The Hitchiti language, still understood by about six hundred 

 people dwelling among the Creeks and Seminoles in the Indian 

 Territory, is a vocalic and euphonic dialect of the Maskoki fam- 

 ily, and almost in every respect comparable with Creek. Its 

 phonology, accentuation, wealth of inflectional forms of the verb 

 and its peculiar syntax compare closely with the parallel feat- 

 ures of Creek. That Hitchiti was formed independently from 

 Creek is sufficiently proved by comparing both with the other 

 Maskoki dialects ; the differences are mainly lexical, nasalized 

 vowels are but little more frequent, and, although it borrowed 

 some terms directly from Creek as the more frequently used 

 dialect,* it approaches Cha'hta and Chicasa in many terms of 

 daily use, like oki ivater, okli toxvu^ pokoli ten^ yakni land. 

 Nevertheless it stands nearer Creek than Alibamu, Koassati, 

 Cha'hta, Chicasa, and Apalache, as well in grammar as in the 

 lexicon. The cumulation of the prefixes and suffixes, the use of 

 the verbal singular and dual with a subject standing in the plural, 

 the lack or non-use of relative pronouns, with many other feat- 

 ures, are common to Creek and Hitchiti. The excessive use 

 made of the participles and all sorts of verbals, produced by the 

 want of the relative pronoun and of suitable conjunctions, eft'ects 

 a cumbersome incapsulation and makes long sentences extremely 

 heavy in both dialects. Instances of this appear on every page 

 of our version of the legend, which is the first connected text 

 •of Hitchiti which has ever appeared in print. Verbals show- 

 ing syntactic subordination to the main verb occur in large num- 

 bers, where w^e would apply a finite vei'b introduced by some 

 pronoun or conjunction. Coordinate verbals like those in 24, 



* For instance : tchatu konawa money, tassikaya warrior, tamainapka drum. 



