The Miami Illinois Language

The Miami-Illinois Language reconstructs the language spoken by the Miami and the Illinois Native Americans. During the latter half of the seventeenth century both Native communities lived in the region to the south of Lake Michigan in present-day Illinois and Indiana. The French and Indian War, followed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by massive influxes of white settlers into the Ohio River Valley, proved disastrous for both Native groups. Reduced in number by warfare and disease, the Illinois (now called the Peorias) along with half of the Miamis relocated first to Kansas and then to northeast Oklahoma, while the other half of the Miamis remained in northern Indiana. ø The Miami and the Illinois Native Americans speak closely related dialects of a language of the Algonquian language family. Linguist David J. Costa reconstructs key elements of their language from available historical sources, close textual analysis of surviving stories, and comparison with related Algonquian languages. The result is the first overview of the Miami-Illinois language.

David J. Costa presents a collection of almost all of the known Native texts in Miami-Illinois, from speakers of Myaamia, Peoria, and Wea.

The endangered languages crisis is widely acknowledged among scholars who deal with languages and indigenous peoples as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, posing moral, practical, and scientific issues of enormous proportions. Simply put, no area of the world is immune from language endangerment. The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in 39 chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. A comprehensive reference reflecting the breadth of the field, the Handbook presents in detail both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it, and broadens understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, encouraging further research. The Handbook is organized into five parts. Part 1, Endangered Languages, addresses the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part 2, Language Documentation, provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part 3, Language Revitalization, includes approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping ("dormant") languages. Part 4, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment, and the common forces that now threaten the sustainability of their diversity. Part 5, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.

Indian Removal was a process both physical and symbolic, accomplished not only at gunpoint but also through language. In the Midwest, white settlers came to speak and write of Indians in the past tense, even though they were still present. Winning the West with Words explores the ways nineteenth-century Anglo-Americans used language, rhetoric, and narrative to claim cultural ownership of the region that comprises present-day Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Historian James Joseph Buss borrows from literary studies, geography, and anthropology to examine images of stalwart pioneers and vanished Indians used by American settlers in portraying an empty landscape in which they established farms, towns, and “civilized” governments. He demonstrates how this now-familiar narrative came to replace a more complicated history of cooperation, adaptation, and violence between peoples of different cultures. Buss scrutinizes a wide range of sources—travel journals, captivity narratives, treaty council ceremonies, settler petitions, artistic representations, newspaper editorials, late-nineteenth-century county histories, and public celebrations such as regional fairs and centennial pageants and parades—to show how white Americans used language, metaphor, and imagery to accomplish the symbolic removal of Native peoples from the region south of the Great Lakes. Ultimately, he concludes that the popular image of the white yeoman pioneer was employed to support powerful narratives about westward expansion, American democracy, and unlimited national progress. Buss probes beneath this narrative of conquest to show the ways Indians, far from being passive, participated in shaping historical memory—and often used Anglo-Americans’ own words to subvert removal attempts. By grounding his study in place rather than focusing on a single group of people, Buss goes beyond the conventional uses of history, giving readers a new understanding not just of the history of the Midwest but of the power of creation narratives.

The endangered languages crisis is widely acknowledged among scholars who deal with languages and indigenous peoples as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, posing moral, practical, and scientific issues of enormous proportions. Simply put, no area of the world is immune from language endangerment. The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in 39 chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. A comprehensive reference reflecting the breadth of the field, the Handbook presents in detail both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it, and broadens understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, encouraging further research. The Handbook is organized into five parts. Part 1, Endangered Languages, addresses the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part 2, Language Documentation, provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part 3, Language Revitalization, includes approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping ("dormant") languages. Part 4, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment, and the common forces that now threaten the sustainability of their diversity. Part 5, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.

When Europeans first arrived on this continent, Algonquian languages were spoken from the northeastern seaboard through the Great Lakes region, across much of Canada, and even in scattered communities of the American West. The rich and varied oral tradition of this Native language family, one of the farthest-flung in North America, comes brilliantly to life in this remarkably broad sampling of Algonquian songs and stories from across the centuries. Ranging from the speech of an early unknown Algonquian to the famous Walam Olum hoax, from retranslations of "classic" stories to texts appearing here for the first time, these are tales written or told by Native storytellers, today as in the past, as well as oratory, oral history, and songs sung to this day. An essential introduction and captivating guide to Native literary traditions still thriving in many parts of North America, Algonquian Spirit contains vital background information and new translations of songs and stories reaching back to the seventeenth century. Drawing from Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Cree, Delaware, Maliseet, Menominee, Meskwaki, Miami-Illinois, Mi'kmaq, Naskapi, Ojibwe, Passamaquoddy, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, the collection gathers a host of respected and talented singers, storytellers, historians, anthropologists, linguists, and tribal educators, both Native and non-Native, from the United States and Canada--all working together to orchestrate a single, complex performance of the Algonquian languages.