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Piscataway language

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Piscataway
Conoy
Native toUnited States
RegionMaryland
Extinct1748
Language codes
ISO 639-3psy
Glottologpisc1239
Catholic Catechism prayers handwritten in the Piscataway, Latin, and English languages by a Catholic missionary to the Piscataway tribe, Andrew White, SJ, ca. 1634–1640. Lauinger Library, Georgetown University[1]

Piscataway is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken by the Piscataway, a dominant chiefdom in southern Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay at time of contact with English settlers.[2] Piscataway, also known as Conoy (from the Iroquois ethnonym for the tribe), is considered a dialect of Nanticoke.[3]

This designation is based on the scant evidence available for the Piscataway language. The Doeg tribe, then located in present-day Northern Virginia, are also thought to have spoken a form of the same language. These dialects were intermediate between the Native American language Lenape spoken to the north of this area (in present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut) and the Powhatan language, formerly spoken to the south, in what is now Tidewater Virginia.

Classification

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Piscataway is classified as an Eastern Algonquian language:

History

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Piscataway is not spoken today, but records of the language still exist. According to The Languages of Native North America, Piscataway, otherwise called Conoy (from the Iroquois name for the tribe), was a dialect of Nanticoke.[3] This assignment depends on the insufficient number of accessible documents of both Piscataway and Nanticoke. It is identified with the Lenape dialects (Unlachtigo, Unami, and Muncy; spoken in what is now called Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut), and is more closely connected to Powhatan, which was formerly spoken in the area of present-day Virginia. The first speakers lived on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, today part of Maryland. In particular, they occupied the range of the lower Potomac and Patuxent River seepages. "Potomac" is a Piscataway word (Patawomeck) that translates to "where the goods are brought".[4]

The Jesuit evangelist Father Andrew White translated the Catholic catechism into the Piscataway language in 1610, and other English teachers gathered Piscataway language materials. The original copy is a five-page Roman Catholic instruction written in Piscataway; it is the main surviving record of the language.[5] White also wrote a grammar dictionary,[6] though it is now considered lost. A prominent speaker of Piscataway was Mary Kittamaquund, called the "Pocahontas of Maryland" due to her state as the daughter of a chieftain, marriage to an English settler and diplomatic ability.[7]

The National Museum of the American Indian Mitsitam Native Foods Café is named after the Piscataway and Delaware term for "let’s eat".[8] Similarly the University of Maryland, College Park named a dining hall Yahentamitsi, which translates to "a place to go to eat".[9]

Phonology

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This section gives the phoneme inventory as reconstructed by Mackie (2006).[5]

Piscataway Consonants
Labial Alveolar Post-alv./
Palatal 		Velar Glottal
Plosive p t k
Affricate tʃ
Nasal m n
Fricative voiceless s ʃ x h
voiced z
Approximant w j
Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i iː u uː
Mid e eː (ə) o oː
Open a aː
  • A mid sound [ə] may have also been present.

Notes

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  1. ^ "Manuscript prayers in Piscataway ." Archived 2018-09-28 at the Wayback Machine Treasures of Lauinger Library. (retrieved 4 Jan 2010)
  2. ^ Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  3. ^ a b Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7.
  4. ^ Bloom, John (2005). "Exhibition Review: The National Museum of the American Indian" (PDF). American Studies. 46 (3/4). Mid-America American Studies Association: 332. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 May 2015 – via JSTOR.
  5. ^ a b Mackie, Lisa (2006). "Fragments of Piscataway: A Preliminary Description" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 4, 2016. Retrieved February 12, 2016.
  6. ^ Barmann, Ed. "Key Figures Influenced Evangelization in the Americas" (PDF). Education Resources Information Center. Catholic News Service. p. 76(90). Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 April 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
  7. ^ Watson, Kelly L. (2021). "Mary Kittamaquund Brent, "The Pocahontas of Maryland": Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake". Early American Studies. 19 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 24–63. doi:10.1353/eam.2021.0001. S2CID 234311904. Retrieved 6 January 2023 – via Project MUSE.
  8. ^ William Neal, Skinner (2009). All For One: Nation-Making And The National Museum Of The American Indian (PDF). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University. pp. 36, 69. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 August 2017.
  9. ^ Lumpkin, Lauren (1 November 2021). "University of Maryland names dining hall Yahentamitsi, honoring Piscataway tribe". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 24 November 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2023.

References

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