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The Sauk Language of the Sac and Fox of Oklahoma

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Language Preservation with the Help of Written Language: The Sauk Language of the Sac and Fox of Oklahoma KERSTIN MULLER REINSCHMIDT University of Tucson Ta ka we na nu ta ma. Ke ne no ta we?1 The chances of coming across a tribal member who can understand these phrases are small, because the tribe's main spoken language today is English. The Sac and Fox of Oklahoma2 have not been spared by history and share the fate of native language loss along with the majority of Indian communities across North America. Writing about the Mohawk language, Mithun and Chafe (1979:8) see the value of native languages as "the clearest symbols of their Indianness", and they ask: "Is such a loss inevitable, or, given the desire, can a community do something to retard or reverse it?" In this paper, I focus on Sauk orthography. Brandt (1988:328), who shows how linguists have served as consultants for North American tribes in various contexts, notes that "A central [context] is in orthography development and in teaching people to read and write their own languages."3 Within the contemporary context of literacy, Sauk needs to be visible as well as audible. Unfortunately, there has never been any agreement about the orthography to be used. While linguistic transcriptions vary from very detailed phonetic ones to more simplified phonemic representa­ tions, the Sac and Fox themselves have adopted what they call a "syllabic spelling" for their language. 1 "I speak a little Sauk. Do you understand?" The spelling is adopted from the Sac and Fox Primer Book (1977). 2 The Sac and Fox belong to the Central Algonquian tribes that originated east of the Great Plains in the upper Great Lakes area. Their native language is referred to as "Sauk", and sometimes the tribe itself is called "Sauk" instead of "Sac and Fox". 3 The work of linguists can be a small, initial step towards the actual process of language preservation. In principle, I strongly feel that linguists should co-operate with the particular language community. This paper, however, is only based on written material and previous fieldwork experience. 414 KERSTIN MULLER REINSCHMIDT I will place the Sauk language and its orthography into the historical context of linguistic endeavors, and show its relationship to other Algonquian languages. I will then outline the decline of Sauk and its contemporary use among Sac and Fox tribal members in Oklahoma. Several linguistic analyses of the Sauk sound system, the linguistic notations and the "Sauk syllabary" will be compared, and a revised sylla­ bary based on Sauk phonemes will be suggested. In conclusion, I will assess the role of written language for the survival of spoken Sauk. SAUK — AN ALGONQUIAN LANGUAGE Linguistic studies of Algonquian languages show a chronological depth which is unusual for Native American languages. The first studies are accredited to 17th-century colonial missionaries. These historical documents usually consist of Bible translations, however, they also include grammatical explanations, dictionaries, vocabulary and phrase studies. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, comparative studies of Algonquian languages began (Hoijer 1973, Teeter 1973; see also Pilling 1891). Sauk is the least known dialect belonging to the so-called Sauk-Fox- Kickapoo "conglomerate": The Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo are three dialects of a single language, for which there is no name in use either in English or in the language itself, it is usually referred to simply by hyphenating the names of the three tribes: Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo. Each dialect has archaisms and innova­ tions that set it off from each of the other two, but in general Sauk and Fox seem to be more similar to each other than either is to Kickapoo... Of the three dialects, Sauk is the least known... (Goddard 1978:584) Scanning the literature, one indeed finds that material on Algonquian languages in general, and Mesquakie and Kickapoo in particular, is abundant, but Sauk is practically undocumented.4 Since linguists and other scholars have not differentiated among the Sac and Fox, Mesquakie and Kickapoo tribes and their dialects, I will work mainly with the material written on the Mesquakie language. Joe E. Pierce, who attemp­ ted to determine the "intelligibility among dialects of natural languages", 4 For an overview on written material available on the Sac-Fox-Kickapoo language, see Pentland and Wolfart (1982). SAUK LANGUAGE PRESERVATION 415 conducted several field trips to Algonquian tribes (Shawnee, Kickapoo, and Sac and Fox) in Oklahoma and concluded that The average adjusted percentage of information transfer that Kickapoo informants scored on Sauk-and-Fox was 76%; the average that Sauk- and-Fox informants scored on Kickapoo was 82%. To compute the percentage of mutual intelligibility, for the Sauk-and-Fox and Kickapoo, ... [their sum was divided] giving 79%. (Pierce 1952:207) The inter-relatedness of Sauk, Mesquakie and Kickapoo may be of importance for a Sauk language project. Native Mesquakie or Kickapoo speakers might be asked for their expertise, because today they tend to be more fluent in their native languages than the Sac and Fox are. In his paper "Observations of the last stage of a vanishing Algonquian language" (1991), Michael Reinschmidt describes the history of language loss among the Oklahoma Sac and Fox.5 Sauk language loss needs to be understood in the context of American history, and 20th century sociocultural, political and economic ramifications must also be taken into account. During the early 20th century, ancestral language use was actively discouraged and even punished in Indian boarding schools. Use of Sauk as the official tribal language in everyday communication declined rapidly between 1935 and 1945. Reinschmidt (1991:296) summarizes: "the retention of the ancestral language... had to be sacrificed for economic success, i.e., fluency in English." Today, Sauk remains a symbol of the old values. Speaking Sauk today reflects a commitment toward the tribal past and embodies a link to the spiritual world, but also functions as a means of expressing "who's the better Indian" (Reinschmidt 1991:296-7). Occasions where one can witness Sauk as a spoken language are rare, because "the language symbolically survives in a rudimentary manner" (Reinschmidt 1991:302). There are only some 20 Sauk speakers left, none of whom is younger than 56 years of age. For these speakers, social and religious gatherings serve as welcome opportunities to communicate in Sauk. Members of the same family who still command Sauk may also speak their ancestral language privately. Non-fluent speakers frequently employ certain Sauk 5 Reinschmidt consulted not only written histories, but also included data gathered during his fieldwork between 1989 and 1991. 416 KERSTIN MULLER REINSCHMIDT phrases in order to underline their "Indianness".6 Generally, Sauk is spoken, or at least recited, for religious purposes in prayers or songs. Serious efforts aimed at language preservation include language instruction offered by a female tribal member. This language instruction is based on the Primer Book which was published by the Sac and Fox Nation in 1977. Although a first effort, the Primer Book deserves to be considered in relation to a revised orthography. PHONES, PHONEMES, AND ORTHOGRAPHY Franz Boas challenged the Western prejudice which claimed that Native American languages were less accurately pronounced than European languages. He argued that the "inaccuracy" claim was due to different European sound systems which perceived and interpreted the same Native American sounds differently (Boas 1911:16). But Boas also noted one characteristic of Native American languages that might have fostered the notion of "inaccuracy": This is the slurring of the ends of words, which is sometimes so pronounced that, in an attempt to write the words, the terminations, grammatical or other, may become entirely inaudible. (Boas 1911:78) The Central Algonquian languages were no exception to this observa­ tion. The Sac and Fox in particular, have been known for "swallowing" the last syllable of many words. Naturally, this characteristic makes identification of individual sounds more difficult. Sapir differentiated between phonetic and phonemic sounds: The concept of the "phoneme" (a functionally significant unit in the rigidly defined pattern of configuration of sounds peculiar to a language), as distinct from that of the "sound" or "phonetic element" as such (an objectively definable entity in the articulated and perceived totality of speech) is becoming more and more familiar to linguists. (Sapir 1949:46) Sapir identified the difference between phonetic and phonemic sounds and their spelling as crucial for the purpose of orthographies. According to Sapir, a phonetic orthography is more accurate, but too complex for a writing system, and, I would add, also redundant from a speaker's point of view. 6 Mo ko mo na 'white man, American', for example, is one of those words that can be heard frequently. SAUK LANGUAGE PRESERVATION 417 In the following, I will compare and contrast the sound system of Mesquakie as it was perceived by different linguists. These perceptions and the two existing syllabaries of Mesquakie will serve as basis for a tentative new orthography. One of the earliest descriptions came from the trader Thomas Forsyth, who was appointed sub-agent of Indian Affairs in 1812 (Forsyth 1912: 244). While Forsyth noted that some Sauk and Mesquakie sounds could not be represented by the alphabet, he listed others as (a b c h i k 1 m n o p q s t u w z). Forsyth (1912:239) perceived the accent to be generally placed on the second syllable, and sometimes on the first. Forsyth's lay linguistic observations prove adequate when compared to linguistic analysis. During the early 20th century, William Jones and Truman Michelson conducted linguistic studies with the Mesquakie of Tama, Iowa.
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