Early Northern Iroquoian Language Books in the British Library Adrian S. Edwards An earlier eBLJ article1 surveyed the British Library’s holdings of early books in indigenous North American languages through the example of Eastern Algonquian materials. This article considers antiquarian materials in or about Northern Iroquoian, a different group of languages from the eastern side of the United States and Canada. The aim as before is to survey what can be found in the Library, and to place these items in a linguistic and historical context. In scope are printed media produced before the twentieth century, in effect from 1545 to 1900. ‘I’ reference numbers in square brackets, e.g. [I1], relate to entries in the Chronological Checklist given as an appendix. The Iroquoian languages are significant for Europeans because they were the first indigenous languages to be recorded in any detail by travellers to North America. The family has traditionally been divided into a northern and southern branch by linguists. So far only Cherokee has been confidently allocated to the southern branch, although it is possible that further languages became extinct before their existence was recorded by European visitors. Cherokee has always had a healthy literature and merits an article of its own. This survey therefore will look only at the northern branch. When historical records began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Northern Iroquoian languages were spoken in a large territory centred on what is now the north half of the State of New York, extending across the St Lawrence River into Quebec and Ontario, and southwards into Pennsylvania. Isolated groups could also be found further south in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. The Northern Iroquoian languages encountered by European colonists and missionaries, and which subsequently appeared in early printed books at the British Library, are Laurentian, Huron/Wyandot, Susquehannock, Tuscarora, Nottoway, Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga and Oneida. There are however further languages which are not represented in the Library’s antiquarian collections to any significant extent, Cayuga for example. Several of the long extinct and poorly documented languages of the Virginia-North Carolina coastal plain might also have belonged to the Northern Iroquoian branch. Table 1 provides a tentative list. Table 1. The Northern Iroquoian Languages 1. Laurentian Quebec 2. Huron/Wyandot (possibly including Neutral, Erie, Wenro, Petun,2 Tobacco, Tionontati, etc.) Ontario, New York. Later Quebec, Kansas, Oklahoma 3. Mohawk New York. Later also Quebec, Ontario 1 Adrian Edwards, ‘Early Eastern Algonquian Language Books in the British Library’, eBLJ (2005), art. 9. 2 See comments about the relationship between the Petun language, the Wyandot, and the Attignawantan variety of Huron in Floyd G. Lounsbury, ‘Iroquoian languages’, in William C. Sturtevant (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. xv: Northeast (Washington, 1978), pp. 282-89. 1 eBLJ 2008, Article 2 Early Northern Iroquoian Language Books in the British Library Quebec City Canada Montreal ‘Laurentians’ Toronto Mohawk Oneida Cayuga Onondaga Seneca Tuscarora (1715– Albany Huron Confederacy New York ) City Erie Susquehannock Washington United States Tuscarora (1700) Fig. 1. Map showing the location of North Iroquoian-speaking peoples at the time of European contact. 2 eBLJ 2008, Article 2 Early Northern Iroquoian Language Books in the British Library 4. Oneida New York. Later also Wisconsin, Ontario 5. Onondaga New York. Later also Ontario 6. Cayuga New York. Later also Ontario, Oklahoma 7. Seneca New York. Later also Ontario, Oklahoma 8. Susquehannock Pennsylvania 9. Tuscarora North Carolina. Later New York, Ontario 10. Nottoway Virginia 11. Meherrin (?) Virginia, North Carolina 12. Coree-Neusiok (?)3 North Carolina In linguistic terms, the Northern Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic. In other words, a single Iroquoian word may contain as much information as a whole sentence in English. An extreme Mohawk example is washakotya’tawitsherahetkvhta’se, which means ‘He ruined her dress’, or more literally ‘He made the thing that one puts on one’s body ugly for her’.4 The order of the elements that are put together to create these words is strictly regulated, and the separate elements may be meaningless on their own. As far as phonetics are concerned, these languages traditionally lack labials such as [b] and [p], and most also lack [m], [f], and [v]. The glottal stop and [h] are common, and have been represented in a variety of ways in early printed literature. In their written forms, several of the languages make use of the symbol ‘o ’, sometimes rendered ‘8’. This was originally introduced by Catholic missionaries to represent a vowel sound close to the French ‘ou’. Although this survey aims to identify all examples of printed literature in the Northern Iroquoian languages, it has been deemed practical to omit the large number of publications that simply reprint small amounts of previously published material, usually short word-lists or the Lord’s Prayer. Amongst works that fall into this category are: Johann Christophe Adelung, Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarten (Berlin, 1806-1817, and later editions). Benjamin Barton, New views of the origin of the tribes and nations of America (Philadelphia, 1797). George Catlin, Illustrations of the manners, customs and condition of the North American Indians (London, 1841). Albert Gallatin, ‘A synopsis of the Indian tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian possessions in North America’, Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, ii (1836), pp. 1-422. 3 Douglas W. Boyce, ‘Iroquoian Tribes of the Virginia-North Carolina Coastal Plain’, in William C. Sturtevant (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. xv: Northeast (Washington, 1978), p. 282. 4 Wikipedia. Entry for ‘Synthetic language’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_languages/ (consulted 21/06/2007). 3 eBLJ 2008, Article 2 Early Northern Iroquoian Language Books in the British Library That said, where short vocabulary lists are the earliest or only examples of a language in print (e.g. Laurentian), they have been included. Three volumes of Mohawk interest that appear in older catalogues of the British Museum collection were unfortunately lost during bombing of the Museum building in May 1941. These were the items at shelfmarks 3226.a.51, 3365.ff.15, and 3406.c.28. As they cannot be examined, they have also been excluded from this survey. Survey of Northern Iroquoian Books in the British Library Laurentian European documentation of the Northern Iroquoian languages begins in the mid-1530s with two short vocabularies. Fewer than 230 words are known of the language identified variously as Laurentian, Hochelagan or Stadaconan by linguists. Nevertheless, because they found their way into one of the early compendia of exploration literature, they have been reprinted many times over. It was the French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) who assembled the word-lists in question, and the Italian Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557) who included them in his influential work Delle navigationi et viaggi. Jacques Cartier first travelled up the valley of the St Lawrence River in 1534. He met and befriended a group of about 300 Indians who were on a fishing expedition from their home at Stadacona, a village at the site of present-day Quebec City. Two of the chief ’s sons accompanied Cartier back to France, where they stayed for about a year. Whilst in Paris, they helped compile a French to Laurentian word-list of fifty-eight terms, which were appended to the account of Cartier’s journey. The first time this list appears in print however is in the third volume of Ramusio’s Italian-language Delle navigationi et viaggi, printed in Venice in 1556 [I2]. The word-list, headed ‘Linguaggio della terra nuovamente scoperta chiamata la Nuova Francia’, appears on folio 440 of the ‘Prima relatione’. The British Library’s copy of this work was once in a royal collection, possibly associated with Queen Elizabeth I. Subsequent Venetian editions of the third volume (1565 [I3] and 1606 [I5]) also contain the list, as does John Florio’s English translation of 1580 [I4].5 Cartier returned to the St Lawrence River in 1535-6. He again met the people from Stadacona and also some residents of Hochelaga, a village located on Montreal Island. This time he seems to have kidnapped a chief and ten others who were taken back to France and not returned. These are the people who provided the vocabulary for the next French to Laurentian word-list, printed in Paris in 1545 at the end of Brief recit, & succincte narration, de la navigation faicte es yles de Canada, Hochelage & Saguenay [I1]. The second word-list therefore appeared in print eleven years before the first. It is headed ‘Le lãgage des pays & Royaulmes de Hochelaga & Canada’, and contains 170 entries, divided into basic numerals, body parts, and a general vocabulary (fig. 2). Ramusio again translates the material into Italian, and includes it in editions of the aforementioned third volume of Delle navigationi et viaggi (‘Seguita il linguaggio de paesi & Reami di Hochelaga e Canada’). The second word-list is also in John Florio’s 1580 translation.6 Cartier travelled to North America for a third time in 1541-2, but the published accounts of this trip do not contain any linguistic material. By the time that the explorer Samuel de Champlain (c. 1567-1635) visited the same area in 1603, it seems that it was no longer possible to identify the speakers of Laurentian. For linguists, the two Cartier word-lists are problematic. First, the transcription is not systematic: ‘g’, ‘c’ and ‘qu’ are all used interchangeably to represent a [k] sound. Second, both lists appear to include words from at least two different but closely related Northern 5 ‘The language that is spoken in the Land newly discovered, called new France’, p.