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9. A Final Assessment
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9 A final Assessment The data we have on the Calusa language, its nature and probable connections, can be summarized in the following manner: (1) from the meager data we have on florida native languages other than Timucua and Apalachee—Calusa, mayaca, surruque, Jororo, and Ais—well summarized by John hann in his article “The mayacaandJororoandmissionstoThem”(1993)aswellasinhisvolume Missions to the Calusa (1991), it is very evident that the languages of those peoples were related neither to Timucua nor to Apalachee nor to the later seminole and mikasuki muskogean languages. it is also very clear that these languages all had an ultimate eastern Louisiana source and that regardless of the meager data we have on the Calusa language, these other peoples were not linguistically related to the Calusa. The only possible Calusa hybrid is the village name Nyaautina (hann 1993:117), in which the initial segment nyaa may be the Calusa ño (= nyo) ‘village, town’ and utina the Timucua word identifying a tribal subgroup of the Timucua, so that the name could possibly mean Utina Town, but this is guesswork, with no additional data to back it up. (2) What we can say with certainty is that the Calusa data indicate a close linguistic relationship to the Tunica language of north- 66 / Chapter 9 eastern Louisiana and that such a connection is not at all unreasonable given the growing archaeological data indicating a far-reaching trade network stemming primarily from Poverty Point, a probable Tunica or proto-Tunica–speaking community, and the neighboring natchez-speaking communities and, over the years, decades, and certainly centuries, their artifacts and traits spreading south along the mississippiRiverandeastwardalongthenorthernGulfofmexico coast, around the big bend area of florida at least as far as the Aucilla River, which archaeological data indicate was the probable northern boundary of the demonstrably Calusa-speaking Tocobaga of the Tampa bay–manatee River region, this particularly given a known migratory Tocobaga presence in northwest florida and the Apalachee region in the late period from 1677 to 1718 (hann 1991:347– 356), the latter not implying the presence of Tocobaga sites and people continuously from the Tampa region northward, but simply a late migratory movement. (3) That this route was a two-way street is also clear, given the early presenceofspiculatewaresatPovertyPointandthenorthflorida artifactsfoundattheAlligatorLakeandelliottsPointsites.sincethe earliest levels of both the latter sites do not exhibit the presence of pottery, it may be postulated that the Poverty Point trade network began prior to the westward spread of florida ceramic wares—or perhaps even brought about and stimulated the spread of such wares as the east-moving trade network developed. To recapitulate—the Poverty Point site itself is located in territory known to have been inhabited by Tunica speakers in earliest historic times, and the natchez were located just to the south (brain1988;hoffman1994;swanton1946:158–159,197).itisalso possible to say that linguistic and archaeological evidence together suggest that both the Tunica and the natchez were autochthonous [3.238.233.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:55 GMT) final Assessment / 67 Lower mississippi valley cultures (brain 1988; hoffman 1994) and, thoughsociallyandculturallydistinctanddifferent,itisnotunlikely thatoneorbothwereresponsibleforthecreation,perpetuation,and spread of the Poverty Point trade network. Without this assumption it is impossible to explain the natchez presence in northwest florida as evidenced by natchez place names and natchez phrases in the Apalachee language of 1688. All suggest a long-standing natchez presence, sparse or otherwise, on the north Gulf coast from mobile bay to the Aucilla River on the eastern border of northwest florida. it is also probable that the Chitimacha people took part in this eastward movement, given the name of the Ais people on the central Atlantic coast of florida—the name meaning “The People” in Chitimacha—and the apparent presence of Chitimacha speakers on the adjacent Gulf coast. The presence of Calusa toponyms south along the Gulf coast from north of Tampa bay through the Keys implies that east and south of the Aucilla, Tunican/natchezan languageswerethenormandweremostprobablylinkedtotheWeeden islandtradition,aboutwhichwehaveonlybeginning,thoughsignificant , archaeological and implied ethnographic information. That sixteenth-century Calusa forms show such a close and regular correspondence with twentieth-century Tunica forms suggests either that the Calusa language for which we have documentary records was a relative latecomer to florida or, more likely given the archaeological record, that there was more or less continuous, if perhaps sporadic, contact between Tunica and Calusa speakers over an extremely long period of time. The sixteenth-century Calusa, then, may have been the descendants of the last Tunica-stock migrants to...