Laurentian, or St. Lawrence Iroquoian, was an Iroquoian language spoken until the late 16th century along the shores of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrenc ...

in present-day

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

and

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada. It is believed to have disappeared with the extinction of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, likely as a result of warfare by the more powerful Mohawk from the ''

Haudenosaunee The Iroquois ( ), also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the Endonym and exonym, endonym Haudenosaunee ( ; ) are an Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Ind ...

'' or

Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois ( ), also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the Endonym and exonym, endonym Haudenosaunee ( ; ) are an Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Ind ...

to the south, in present-day New York state of the United States.

History

The explorer

Jacques Cartier Jacques Cartier (; 31 December 14911 September 1557) was a French maritime explorer from Brittany. Jacques Cartier was the first Europeans, European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, wh ...

observed in 1535 and 1536 about a dozen villages in the valley between Stadacona and Hochelega, the sites of the modern cities of

Quebec City Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

and

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. Archeologists have unearthed other villages farther west, near the eastern end of

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The Canada–United Sta ...

. St. Lawrence Iroquoians lived in villages which were usually located a few kilometres (miles) inland from the Saint-Lawrence River, and were often enclosed by a wooden palisade. Up to 2000 persons lived in the larger villages. By the time the explorer

Samuel de Champlain Samuel de Champlain (; 13 August 1574#Fichier]For a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see #Ritch, RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December ...

arrived in 1608, however, he found no trace of the Iroquoians visited by Jacques Cartier some 75 years earlier. Scholars have developed several theories to explain the complete disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, among them devastating wars waged by the Mohawk from the south,

epidemics An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of Host (biology), hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example ...

of Old World

infectious diseases infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

, or migration towards the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

region. Archeological evidence points most strongly to devastating wars with neighbouring Iroquoian tribes, the Huron and the nations of the Iroquois League, especially the Mohawk.

Classification

Several dialects of Laurentian may have existed in the 16th century in the St. Lawrence River valley. The sparse records made by Jacques Cartier during his voyages cannot be considered conclusive, and the Laurentians may have spoken several distinct languages. A few Laurentian words are still in use today as toponyms: most notably the word , meaning "village" in Laurentian. Jacques Cartier used the word to describe both the region and the

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

that crosses it. The name of Donnacona, the Iroquoian chieftain Cartier met at Stadacona, remains in use as the name of the town of Donnacona, Quebec. Hochelaga remains in use in the

borough of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and the alternate spelling "Osheaga" serves as the name of Montreal's annual

Osheaga Festival The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival () is a multi-day music festival in Montreal, Quebec, that is held every summer at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène. The festival takes place on six stages with various audience capacities. Translated ...

. On the basis of the Laurentian vocabularies of Cartier, the linguist

Marianne Mithun Marianne Mithun ( ; born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position sinc ...

concludes that Laurentian was an Iroquoian language, and its speakers were "clearly in contact with the Lake Iroquoian peoples uron and Iroquois (Mithun, 1981). Charles Julian analyzed the available lexicon and compared it with those of Iroquoian languages still spoken in the 21st century and found that it shared the highest number of

cognates In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the soun ...

with Huron, Mohawk, and Onondaga, with 47 cognates found for all three. Many sound changes are found in common with Huron such as the reduction of consonant clusters containing /j/, however Laurentian also shares features with other Northern Iroquoian languages that Huron lacks. For example Laurentian shows the existence of an epenthetic vowel like found in

Susquehannock The Susquehannock, also known as the Conestoga, Minquas, and Andaste, were an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian people who lived in the lower Susquehanna River watershed in what is now Pennsylvania. Their name means “people of the muddy river.” T ...

, Old Mohawk and, Old Onondaga but not in Huron. Because of this he concludes that Laurentian forms its own subgroup within Northern Iroquoian.

Phonology

The presumed phoneme inventory of Laurentian is as follows (using the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

Consonants

Julian describes Laurentian /t/ and /k/ as having voiced allophones and between vowels or between a vowel and approximant or nasal consonant. Likewise, /ts/ may have voiced to zor ʒbetween vowels or voiced consonants. The /w/ seems to have been pronounced before a nasal vowel. The /ɹ/ may have been pronounced as a lateral in some words.

Vowels

An epenthetic vowel was in some cases pronounced between sequences of consonants in which one was an approximant or nasal.

Vocabulary

In 1545 Jacques Cartier published a journal of his voyages, including the first list of Laurentian words. Here are some examples (numbers and parts of the human body), as written by Cartier: A second shorter vocabulary list was appended to his journal of his first voyage, which was published much later, first in Italian and later in English and French.

References

*Jacques Cartier. (1545).
Relation originale de Jacques Cartier
'. Paris: Tross (1863 edition). (Vocabulary list on pages 46 to 48) * Floyd G. Lounsbury. (1978). "Iroquoian Languages," ''Handbook of North American Indians''. Volume 15. Pages 334-343. *Juan Francisco Maura. (2009). "Nuevas aportaciones al estudio de la toponimia ibérica en la América Septentrional en el siglo XVI". ''Bulletin of Spanish Studies'' 86. 5 (2009): 577-603. *Marianne Mithun. (1979). "Iroquoian," in Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, ''The Languages of Native America''. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pages 140-141. ("Laurentian") *Marianne Mithun. (1981). The Mystery of the Vanished Laurentians, in Papers from the 5th International Congress on Historical Linguistics (Anders Ahlquist, ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pages 230-242. *Marianne Mithun. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . *James F. Pendergast. (1998). "The Confusing Identities Attributed to Stadacona and Hochelaga", ''Journal of Canadian Studies''. Volume 32. Pages 149-167. *Bruce G. Trigger and James F. Pendergast. (1978). "Saint Lawrence Iroquoians", ''Handbook of North American Indians''. Volume 15. Pages 357-361. *Bruce G. Trigger. (1976). ''The Children of Aataentsic: a History of the Huron People to 1660''. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 214–228. ("The Disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians")

External links

List of Web sites on the Laurentian language
(Native Languages of the Americas Online Resources)

{{Iroquoian languages Iroquoian languages Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands Extinct languages of North America First Nations languages in Canada First Nations history in Ontario First Nations history in Quebec Native American history of New York (state) Languages extinct in the 16th century 16th-century disestablishments in North America