Shetimasha

The Shetimasha Language

Although my chief purpose in going south was to study the Shetimasha language, I cannot give here a full account of it, for it would fill not less than one hundred pages. This language, of which no other dialects are known to exist now, is vocalic, and nasalizes its vowels to a small degree only. It has a profusion of declensional and conjugational endings, suffixes the personal pronouns to the finite verb, forms a passive voice, and seems to be extremely polysynthetic as far as derivation by suffixes is concerned. Ternary and quaternary compounds are not uncommon. The numerals show … Read more

Shetimasha Tribe

The wide area of Louisiana was once the home of a large number of Indian tribes, whose names and locations are mentioned by the historians of the early colonies. These Indians were distinct from each other in language as well as in race, and if an investigator, of scientific attainments, had visited all of them 150 years ago, he would have probably discovered over forty dialects, belonging to at least eight linguistic families. Unfortunately, such a work was not undertaken at a time when it was possible to perform it, and all that we can do now is to collect … Read more