I’ve been asking a lot of questions I never asked before as I dig and pick things apart. I’ve also reached out to just about every linguist out there about the matter, and I’ve gotten brushed off in a dozen new ways. My name is going to be famous at this point, but not for the right reasons.
When you ask a question and have to wait for the answer, but you don’t want to stop looking into the matter, you sometimes will find the answer yourself. One question I have been asking is why, when you look at the Modern Mohegan dictionary I was given, did it turn out that not all of the words appeared to be Pequot or Mohegan? Some, it turned out, were Narragansett or Niantic. Gods know what else. More, I feel like with some of the people I’ve spoken to knew the answer, but when I asked they did not share.
You should know why if you’re picking up that old book even though the Mohegan tribe itself has taken down their online dictionary. There’s a computer programmer who taught himself linguistics and the Mohegan language. Where I was trying to put out supplemental material for learning the language, he developed an entire program.1 I haven’t looked at his program – and I simply will not for what I feel are extremely good reasons – but I’ve heard about it.
My goal was only to bring bits to the world in ways people would remember. What I was doing could easily have worked in tandem with someone else because my needs (and budget) were small. My project was designed to be that way.2 Anyway, I do not find it coincidental that when he came forward, the Modern Mohegan information disappeared off the internet. Perhaps he had a break through, or one of the people he finally got with on it did.3
That being said, my focus is on Old Pequot and reawakening our ways of thought. If our work overlaps we probably won’t talk about it. Rather let me turn your attention to Julian Granberry, who was a member of the Florida Anthropological Society and lived not far from where I grew up. The unnoticed impact he had on the Mohegan language is that he worked with the Mohegan tribe on it. The answer to my burning question “why?” just happens to be in one of his books, which I finally decided I was ready to begin tonight.
I’ll tell it to you in his words:
In April of 1998 the Council of Mohegan Tribal Elders resolved to use Jits Bodunaxa’s speech as the basis for a restored Modern Mohegan. Two years later, however, a change in the chairmanship and membership of both the Mohegan Tribal Council and the Council of Mohegan Elders altered this direction of language restoration. The new Councils chose instead to create a newly invented general New England Algonquian idiom from whole-cloth, using Massachusett phonology and grammar from Natick (Eliot) and Wampanoag sources, and for vocabulary using a pan-New England lexical input from all the related Southern New England languages without discrimination of language, time of origin, or the known phonological and morphological differences separating the languages. Thus at present there are no speakers of a restored Modern Mohegan; the dialect is still extinct.
Modern Mohegan: The Dialect of Jits Budunaxa, pp 5-6
I’m pretty sure that’s not all but that’s a pretty big deal. Even though Granberry himself states that the last living speakers of Niantic, Pequot, Montauk and Shinnecock walked on somewhere between the late 1700’s and the Victorian era, mid-1800’s4, I noticed that the dialect of Fidelia Fielding had some words that seemed to be more from one of those nations than not. So perhaps the entire lexicon was gone by then, but some words tenaciously remained.
The problem that I see at this point is that there are people who are and have been using Modern Mohegan Part II, the Pidgin-ening for a while. Language programs from tribe to tribe have incorporated the basis of this work. Children that are now adults were taught to use it. The fact that many tribes have started over on their dialects makes a lot of sense now, but it’s hard to turn around after something like that.
With my tribe, the Brotherton, it actually makes a little bit of sense to have an official pidgin language. My tribe’s history is a combination of several paths; the footsteps of five nations5 that came together into a common religious goal. They each brought their language and traditions, which would have walked with them when they were removed from New York to the town the bulk of them now call home. What few Brotherton words that have been historically preserved seem to be lexical borrowings, such as “bozu” for hello – a Mahican word.6
As I said, my focus is Old Pequot. I am enjoying the chase. I even feel as if the grandfathers and -mothers want me to do this, as I’ve gotten farther in a few days than I ever did chasing Modern Mohegan. I don’t think I’m on the level that Granberry hoped for though:
There are those within the tribal community, however, who still wish to see a restoration of the tribe’s genuine language heritage, and that restoration may yet take place in the future, replacing the currently non-Mohegan pidgin being taught to tribal members.
page 6
To do that in a reasonable amount of time would take a team effort. This is one reason why I’ve been reaching out to Algonquian language experts – not so they’ll do the work for me, but to give me some advice on how not to go wrong. How not to let my ego get in the way, as I’ve witnessed with other people. The people who have responded favorably provided resources for me to find, to read. Directions to go in. I’m pretty sure it’s because of them I’ve gotten this far.
Mohegan isn’t something to have gaps just “filled” like it were Klingon and you the author. The same goes for Old Pequot. No living language is. Reconstructing from sources where I question how they pronounced their own language much less another is tricky. There appear to be new discoveries all of the time.
I have no real feelings regarding the Modern Mohegan situation. If you’re Brotherton, then it’s a good language for your history because it matches after a fashion. Perhaps I could have been told years ago what the issue was – that bothers me a little bit. That’s years of my life down the tubes that I won’t get back again, and where some people knew the secret they chose not to let me in on it. Which makes them just as complicit in my mind.
I’ve been warned that Granberry’s work might not be that reliable. It’s my opinion that when looking at another persona’s notes you should keep your straight hat on; make sure your personal opinion is kept outside the center of study. Truth is we can say the same about a lot of the resources out there.
That’s anthropology 101 there. History 101, too. You look at history through a modern lens and expect to be correct. You’re lying to yourself if you do.
So the tribes will recover the way we’ve recovered from a hundred thousand other things in the past. I hope I find many more sources for the language, because I enjoy this. I hope others enjoy it as well. This is the ruins we stand in. But we’ll rise up, put on our fancy clothes, and dance new circles. It’s what we do.
Because we are strong and resilient.
_______________________________
- He told me in private he was naming his version of the dialect “Rabbit Mohegan” because Rabbit is a trickster. I do not know if he carried that out or not. ↩︎
- There have been those who did not want it to be so, and so it wasn’t. ↩︎
- In case you haven’t figured it out I know him personally, and yes we did butt heads over him getting a professional involved – which is the right thing to do. LOL ↩︎
- page 5 ↩︎
- Montauk, Mohegan, Niantic, Narragansett, and Shinnecock ↩︎
- This is why when I was doing the Mohegan Language Project, I was always looking for Brotherton words. The project had been started for the Brotherton so finding such words was important. ↩︎