-
8. The Language and Culture of Mid-Florida
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
8 The Language and Culture of mid-florida While not directly related to the Calusa themselves yet nonetheless impinging on definition of the languages and peoples north of Charlotte harbor, it is of considerable importance and interest to note that documentary evidence indicates that a geographically limited region on the west Central florida coast around present-day CrystalRiver–WeekiWachee–Ozello,intheWeedenislandcoastal corridor between the likely Calusa-speaking Tocobaga to the south and other Weeden island people to the north, seems to have been occupied by speakers of the Chitimacha language, a language, native tosouthern Louisiana,aspointedoutearlier unrelatedgeneticallyto Tunica or Calusa. This conclusion is clear from information left us by fray Luís Cancer, who described the area in 1549 by saying, “pensandoq [ue]estabamasarribahazialabahiademirueloodeapalacheyllegamosalasXXVIIIgradosym [edi]o(thinkingthatitwasfartheruptoward the bay of miruelo or Apalache and we arrived at XXviii degrees and a half)” (Worth n.d.b:290, 301, translation slightly modified). This is the specific area of Crystal River–Weeki Wachee–Ozello. he goes on to cite a straightforward Chitimacha sentence that he used to address some local indians, saying, “yo les dixe en su propia lengua he oça uluata q[ue] q[ui]ere dezir nosotros somos onbres buenos (i Language and Culture of mid-florida / 63 said to them in their own language He oça ulu ata, which means, ‘We are good men’)” (Worth n.d.b:293, 304). This sentence is the exact equivalent of modern Chitimacha He qasi huyi qatin ‘This man is very good.’ The Cancer document then goes on to state that “ellos todos en gritoybozaltarespondiero[n]lomismo(Theyall[theindians]responded the same with a shout and in a loud voice)” (Worth n.d.b:293, 304), which would certainly indicate that they had understood what was said to them and reciprocated the feeling. The fact that the Ais people of the north-central east coast of florida used the term Ais (pronounced like english ice) to refer to themselves and that this term, as mentioned earlier, is identical to the Chitimacha word for The People, the commonest self-designation ofpeoplestheworldwideandparticularlyprevalentintheAmericas, haslongintriguedthisauthorandledmetosuspectthattheoriginof the Ais people was, indeed, migratory groups of Chitimacha speakersfromextremesouthernLouisiana ,followingessentiallythesame path that the Tunica-speaking people of the Poverty Point trade network followed along the Gulf coast as far as southeast florida. The date of such a movement cannot, of course, be determined from linguistic data alone; only archaeological data for the corridor from the Crystal River region eastward across the peninsula to the Gulf coast can provide a reliable time line. John hann’s excellent article “The mayaca and Jororo and missions to Them” (1993) provides clear evidence that the mayaca of Central florida and the coastal Ais were in some manner linked. Whether this link was one of alliance or cultural relatedness is unclear from the meager data that we have, though the implication is that it was most likely a cultural link. These new language data from Cancer lead us back to consideration of the mayaca, Jororo, surruque, and Ais peoples of north Cen- [44.203.235.24] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:46 GMT) 64 / Chapter 8 tral florida, from the Atlantic coast (the Ais) in the Cape Canaveral region in the south and from the coast, presumably, to Lake George in the north (Lyon 1983:168–169) and at least as far inland as the Lake District of Central florida. As hann (1993:111, 112, 116, 118, 132–133) has pointed out all theethnohistoricdataindicatethattheAis,mayaca,andJororowere at least loosely related politically, perhaps culturally, and i would add therefore also perhaps and probably linguistically. if this was indeed so, and, once again, the term Ais is the Chitimacha word The People, then my suggestion is that the Ais, perhaps the surruque, the Jororo, and the mayaca may well have been speakers of Chitimacha , whose origins as well as prehistoric and modern location are in southern Louisiana both west and east of the mississippi River. The occurrence of the new language data, which are unequivocally Chitimacha, on the Gulf coast around present-day Crystal River would seem to extend the Ais-surruque-mayaca-Jororo realm completely across the peninsula from coast to coast, with Chitimacha spoken on the Atlantic coast and on the immediately opposite Gulf coast and, presumably and quite possibly and likely because of the clear political-cultural relationships between the tribal groups, in between by the intervening tribes as well. This, because of the extremely imperfect data, is, obviously, a hypothesis, not...