The Calusa language is an unclassified language of southern
Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
, United States that was spoken by the
Calusa
The Calusa ( , Calusa: *ka(ra)luś(i)) were a Native American people of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region. Previous Indigenous cultures had lived in the area for thousands o ...
people.
Classification
Circumstantial evidence, primarily from
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, suggests that all of the peoples of southern Florida and the Tampa Bay area, including the
Tequesta
The Tequesta, also Tekesta, Tegesta, Chequesta, Vizcaynos, were a Native American tribe on the Southeastern Atlantic coast of Florida. They had infrequent contact with Europeans and had largely migrated by the middle of the 18th century.
Loca ...
,
Mayaimi
The Mayaimi (also Maymi, Maimi) were Native Americans in the United States, Native American people who lived around Lake Mayaimi (now Lake Okeechobee) in the Belle Glade culture, Belle Glade area of Florida from the beginning of the Common Era u ...
, and
Tocobaga, as well as the Calusa, spoke dialects of a common language. This language was distinct from the languages of the
Apalachee
The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River,Bobby ...
,
Timucua
The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The va ...
,
Mayaca, and
Ais people in central and northern Florida.
Comparison with Tunica
Julian Granberry (1994) has suggested that the Calusa language was related to the
Tunica language of the lower
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...
Valley, with Calusa possibly being relatively a recent arrival from the lower Mississippi region. Another possibility was that similarities between the languages were derived from long-term mutual contact.
Phonology
Granberry (2011) provides the following inventory of Calusa phonemes.
A Calusa /s/
̠sound is said to range between a /s/ to a /ʃ/ sound.
Vocabulary
Little is known of the language of the Calusa. A dozen words for which translations were recorded and 50 or 60 place names form the entire known corpus of the language.
A few vocabulary examples from Granberry (2011) are listed below:
[Granberry 2011: 27-38]
* ''tepe'' 'join'
* ''kuči'' 'destroy'
* ''ñoka'' 'war'
* ''ño'' 'village'
* ''*śahka'' 'tree'
* ''mayai'' 'on the other side'
(*) denotes earlier century Calusa language records.
Some Calusa words, proper nouns, and phrases from
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda's writings (including his 1575 memoir ''Memoria de las cosas y costa y indios de la Florida'') that are cited in Zamponi (2024) include:
:
''Sipi'' is the name of a main idol in a Calusa temple, according to a 1743 report (''Informe'') by Fr. Joseph Xavier de Alaña that was sent to his superiors.
[Sturtevant, William C. 1978. "The last of the south Florida aborigines". In Jerald T. Milanich & Samuel Proctor (eds.), ''Tacachale: essays on the Indians of Florida and southeastern Georgia during the historic period'', 141–162. Gainesville, FL: The University Presses of Florida.]
See also
*
Indigenous people of the Everglades region
References
{{North American languages
Languages extinct in the 18th century
Unclassified languages of North America
Extinct languages of North America
Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast
Indigenous languages of Florida