Laurentian, or St. Lawrence Iroquoian, was an

Iroquoian language The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...

spoken until the late 16th century along the shores of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...

in present-day

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

and

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada. It is believed to have disappeared with the extinction of the

St. Lawrence Iroquoians The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were an Iroquoian Indigenous people who existed from the 14th century to about 1580. They concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and in the American states o ...

, likely as a result of warfare by the more powerful

Mohawk Mohawk may refer to: Related to Native Americans * Mohawk people, an indigenous people of North America (Canada and New York) *Mohawk language, the language spoken by the Mohawk people * Mohawk hairstyle, from a hairstyle once thought to have been ...

from the ''

Haudenosaunee The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

'' or

Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

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

History

The explorer Jacques Cartier observed in 1535 and 1536 about a dozen villages in the valley between

Stadacona Stadacona was a 16th-century St. Lawrence Iroquoian village not far from where Quebec City was founded in 1608. History French explorer and navigator Jacques Cartier, while travelling and charting the Saint Lawrence River, reached the village o ...

and Hochelega, the sites of the modern cities of

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), 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 Communauté métrop ...

and

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

. 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. The Canada–United States border sp ...

. St. Lawrence Iroquoians lived in villages which were usually located a few kilometres 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 (; Fichier OrigineFor a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December 1635) was a Fre ...

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

from the south,

epidemics An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time. Epidemics of infectious d ...

of Old World

infectious diseases An 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 in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

region. Archeological evidence points most strongly to devastating wars with neighbouring Iroquoian tribes, the

Huron Huron may refer to: People * Wyandot people (or Wendat), indigenous to North America * Wyandot language, spoken by them * Huron-Wendat Nation, a Huron-Wendat First Nation with a community in Wendake, Quebec * Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi ...

and the nations of the

Iroquois League The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

, 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.James F. Pendergast. (1998). "The Confusing Identities Attributed to Stadacona and Hochelaga"
, ''Journal of Canadian Studies'', Volume 32, pp. 156-157, accessed 3 Feb 2010 A few Laurentian words are still in use today as

toponyms Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

: 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 flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

that crosses it. The name of

Donnacona Chief Donnacona (died 1539 in France) was the chief of the St. Lawrence Iroquois village of Stadacona, located at the present site of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. French explorer Jacques Cartier, concluding his second voyage to what is now Can ...

, the Iroquoian chieftain Cartier met at Stadacona, remains in use as the name of the town of

, Quebec. Hochelaga remains in use in the

borough of

Hochelaga-Maisonneuve Hochelaga-Maisonneuve () is a neighbourhood in Montreal, Canada, situated in the east end of the island, generally to the south of the city's Olympic Stadium and east of downtown. Historically a poor neighbourhood, it has experienced significant ...

and the alternate spelling "Osheaga" serves as the name of Montreal's annual

Osheaga Festival The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival (french: Festival musique et arts Osheaga) is a multi-day indie 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 ...

. 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 professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 19 ...

concludes that Laurentian was an Iroquoian language, and its speakers were "clearly in contact with the Lake Iroquoian peoples uron and Iroquois (Mithun, 1981).

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