1880.] 405 [Gatschet. 



THE TIMUCUA LANGUAGE. 



By Albert S. Gatschet. 



{Bead before the American Philosophical Society, February 20, 1880, as a 

 third sequel to the articles on this subject read April 6, 1877, and April 5, 

 1878.) 



This" third article on the Floridian language once spoken by the Timucua 

 or Atimoke people is herewith presented to those interested in linguistics, 

 with the remark of the author, that all his attempts to connect it by its 

 radical elements with some other language spoken in the neighborhood of 

 its native soil have proved infructuous, and that therefore he regards it as 

 constituting a linguistic family for itself. The position of the author as a 

 linguist of Prof. J. W. Powell's U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 

 D. C, has materially facilitated his researches upon the idiom, and any 

 further notice bearing upon the history, ethnography and language of this 

 remarkable nation, the last remnants of which are perhaps not yet ex- 

 tinct, will be received with thanks by the author. 



This article subdivides itself into the following portious : Historic Re- 

 marks, Ethnographic Remarks, Bibliography, Radical Affinities, Dialects, 

 Grammatic Notes and Selected Texts. Among the texts a missive sent in 

 1688 by the Timucua chiefs to the King of Spain will be read with much 

 interest. 



Historic Remarks. 



Our historic information about the Indians of Florida speaking the Timu- 

 cua language is very fragmentary up to the period of the publication of 

 Rene de Laudonniere's report on his expeditions to that country, or, as he 

 calls them rather unassumingly, "Voyages." His account treats of no 

 other American people but of this, for Florida was the only portion of this 

 continent of which he possessed a special knowledge. From the reports 

 of the chroniclers of the expedition of L>e Soto (1539-43) we can gather the 

 fact that this race extended across the whole northern part of the Floridian 

 peninsula, for they mention proper names of persons and places on its 

 western coast, which can be explained through no other language but that 

 of the Timucua. 



Modern research has proved that the dialects of the Indians inhabiting 

 the northern part of the Floridian peninsula belong to a linguistic family 

 differing radically from that of the Maskoki, Yuchi, Cheroki and Algonkin. 

 But the early explorers were not aware of this fact, or at least they did 

 not put it in evidence. In those times not even instructed people could 

 appreciate the enormous ethnologic importance of the difference of lin- 

 guistic stocks, and had only a vague idea of linguistic classification. The 

 disparateness of linguistic families means early local distance of the tribes 

 or nations speaking them, and those who have paid some attention to these 

 studies, know that these linguistic differences must go back into an epo^h 

 remote from ours by fifty or by a hundred thousand years. Thus the differ- 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XVIII. 105. 3h. PRINTED MARCH 20, 1880. 



