Terms of Relationship in Timucua 



By John R. Swanton 



HjjHE Timucua Indians occupied the northern part of 

 aJl peninsular Florida and a small section of what is now the 



!P|| state of Georgia. On the Atlantic coast they extended 

 from St Andrews sound to a point somewhat north- 

 ^ ward from Cape Canaveral and on the coast of the Gulf 

 of Mexico from Ocilla river to Tampa bay. While their language, as 

 preserved to us by the Franciscan missionaries Pareja and Mouilla, 

 shows a number of striking resemblances, in both structure and 

 vocabulary, to the languages of the Muskhogean stock, the greater 

 part of the vocabulary is so divergent that it will be best for the 

 present to continue to classify it as entirely independent. These 

 people were divided into seven or more distinct tribes, each ruled by 

 a head chief with subordinate chiefs in the different towns under 

 him. The chiefs and their families were highly regarded and, as 

 nearly as can be determined, formed a kind of superior caste. In 

 fact, if we are to take Pareja literally, there were several different 

 orders of privileged classes. 



For our information regarding the social organization of the 

 Timucua we are almost entirely dependent on the material contained 

 in the Cathecismo of Father Pareja (pp. 107-130). A slight study 

 and a partial translation of this were made by the late Dr A. S. Gat- 

 schet, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, who published his results 

 in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society of Phila- 

 delphia (vols, xvi-xvui), but his work is marred by some unfortunate 

 mistranslations, particularly the rendering of sobrino as "cousin". 



In conjunction with the aristocratic system to which allusion 

 has already been made, there was a system of totemic clans gathered 

 into several phratries. At least such is the most probable construction 

 to be placed on Pareja's attempted description. Descent was matri- 

 lineal. In this particular, therefore, the Timucua resembled the 

 Creeks rather than the western Muskhogeans such as the Choctaw 

 and Chickasaw. 



Terms of relationship may be simple stem words or they may be 

 descriptive expressions compounded of such words, and one of the 

 pitfalls into which the investigator among primitive peoples is in 

 danger of tumbling is the obtaining of a descriptive expression where 



[451] 



