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...

Crow, a Siouan language spoken on the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana, remains one of the most vital Native American languages, with several thousand speakers. A Grammar of Crow is the first detailed description of the Crow language in a contemporary linguistic framework. Randolph Graczyk draws on more than thirty-five years of daily contact with speakers of the language and his training as a linguist to offer an in-depth description and analysis of the crucial elements of the language, illustrated with numerous examples. The grammar is primarily descriptive, couched in terms of...

At the time of European contact with Native communities, the Caddos (who call themselves the Hasinai) were accomplished traders living in the southern plains. Their communities occupied parts of present-day Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. It was early Spanish explorers who named a part of this territory "Texas," borrowing the Caddo word for "friend." Today there are approximately thirty-five hundred Caddos, most of whom live in Oklahoma. Their original language, which is related to the Plains languages-Pawnee, Arikara, Kitsai, and Wichita-is rapidly dying and is spoken only by a...

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

This volume is the first descriptive grammar of Kotiria (Wanano), a member of the eastern Tukanoan language family spoken in the Vaupes River basin of Colombia and Brazil in the northwest Amazon rain forest. The Kotirias, who have lived in this remote region for more than seven hundred years, participate in the complex Vaupes social system, characterized by long-standing linguistic and cultural interaction. The Kotirias remained relatively isolated from the...