In northeastern America, there is a confederacy founded by the Great Law of Peace, or the Gayanashagowa. This brought together five (and later, a sixth) nations, who would be collectively known as the Haudenosaunee, or the People of the Long House. To English and French colonists, the confederacy would be known by several other names, such as the Five Nations (and Six Nations) in English, and the Iroquois Confederacy by the French, although some would perceive the latter name as a pejorative. Consisting of the Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, and later, the Tuscarora peoples, the Haudenosaunee would exert their power from present-day New York in the United States, and Ontario and Quebec in Canada in the north, to present-day Virginia and Kentucky to the south at their greatest extent.
Having learned about the history of the Haudenosaunee, which was founded by Deganawidah the Great Peacemaker, Hiawatha (or Aionwatha), and Jigonhsasee, the Mother of Nations, I grew interested in the languages spoken by the constituent people groups, as well as their cultural practices. And so today, I would like to take a little look into the languages spoken by the members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which would be split into several parts.
Firstly, an overall look in the languages of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. These languages are collectively grouped under the Iroquoian language family, which also consists of Cherokee (Tsalagi Gawonihisdi), though the Cherokee were not part of the Haudenosaunee. Together, the Haudenosaunee languages are grouped under the northern branch, and most of the languages have been lost to time, or assimilation to other languages. These languages not only share a distinct lack of labial consonants like /p/ and /m/, but are also polysynthetic languages in their morphology.
Many of the currently-spoken languages have also experienced declines, as language shifts towards English and French would occur over time, reducing the transmission and usage of their languages. Nevertheless, speaking communities have collaborated with one another and with elders to preserve, restore, and revive the languages, so that their cultures and languages would be enjoyed and appreciated by future generations.
The most commonly-spoken Haudenosaunee language today is the Mohawk language, better known as the Kanienʼkéha (language of the Flint Place). The endonym, Kanienʼkéha, points towards the nature of trade practiced by the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka, which was flint trading for toolmaking. Kanienʼkéha is currently spoken in present-day New York, southern Ontario and Quebec, forming the eastern extremes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
There are fewer than 4000 native speakers of Kanienʼkéha today, which translates to less than 10% of the total Kanienʼkehá꞉ka population. Nevertheless, there are immersion schools dedicated to facilitate language transmission to children early on in their education, and additional cultural and language movements to preserve their culture, language, and lifestyles. For example, there is the Kanien’keháka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa to the south of Montréal in Quebec, which hosts podcasts, radio shows, and puppet shows in Kanienʼkéha, which aim to showcase the Kanienʼkéha language through creative media. There is also a radio station called CKON-FM (97.3 FM), licensed by the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, which broadcasts radio programmes partly in Kanienʼkéha. Kanienʼkéha has also been featured in popular culture, through games such as Sid Meier’s Civilization V (which features Hiawatha), and films.
Kanienʼkéha can be inferred to have three different major varieties, which differ primarily in phonologies. There are the Ohswé:ken and Kenhté:ke varieties forming the Western group, the Ahkwesáhsne variety for the Central group, and the Kahnawà꞉ke and Kanehsatà꞉ke varieties for the Eastern group. These groups mainly differ in how some of their sounds are realised, with the most notable one being how the /r/ sound is pronounced. In the Western varieties, it is generally pronounced /r/, but /l/ in the Central varieties, and the retroflex /ɽ/ in the Eastern varieties. The other consonants demonstrating these differences include the affricate consonant /d͡ʒ/, which is pretty much the ‘j’ sound in English.
As mentioned previously, Kanienʼkéha, like most other Haudenosaunee languages, lacks labial consonants in its phonological inventory, though these consonants do appear in loanwords. Additionally, the consonant inventory of Kanienʼkéha is pretty small, with around 10 consonants altogether. However, in its phonotactics, many two-consonant clusters are allowed, with them occurring in the middle of the word, and a subset of these can occur at the start of the word. This is complemented with a set of 6 vowels, distinguished by vowel length. There are both oral and nasal vowels in Kanienʼkéha, but these vowel groups are mutually exclusive. The oral vowels are /a e i o/, and the nasal vowels are /ʌ̃/ and /ũ/.
In addition to the consonants and vowels, Kanienʼkéha also has a restrictive tone system some might compare with a so-called ‘pitch-accent’. This basically combines stress and tone patterns in Kanienʼkéha words, resulting in a system where stressed syllables carry one of four possible tones. These tones (alongside stress) are marked using a colon, the diacritic called the acute accent, as well as the grave accent (for the long-falling tone). These tones are pretty predictable, as it depends on the environment the stressed vowel is in. The high tone occurs when the stressed vowel is short, and occurs in a closed syllable or before the /h/ sound, like oháha (road). The rising tone occurs when the stressed vowel is long and in an open syllable, such as shé꞉kon (still), while the long-falling tone occurs when the stressed vowel is long and before a consonant, such as kà꞉sere (car). This is a little less predictable compared to the other tones, either due to the presence of exceptions, or other phonotactical patterns.
Kanienʼkéha words tend to appear pretty long, but these words can be broken up into multiple morphemes, with each constituent carrying some grammatical or semantic function. As a polysynthetic language, affixes may also be added to impart further grammatical nuance to a certain word root as well. For example, prefixes on nouns can mark if the object the noun refers to is natural or man-made, such as oʼnenste (corn, natural) and kanhoha (door, man-made). Noun roots, however, as morphemes, cannot really exist bare, and require the attachment of prefixes or suffixes to make them grammatical in Kanienʼkéha. Suffixes on nouns can give information on location and attributes, which may be further augmented using suffixes like -koʼwa.
Another part of speech that has multiple morphemes making up a larger word is the verb. According to Bonvillain, Kanienʼkéha verbs, specifically the Ahkwesáhsne variety at least, may be split into up to six constituent morphemes. Leading the word is the pre-pronominal prefix, followed by thee pronominal prefix. These prefixes mainly pertain to agreement by person and number, and even tense and some aspects. These are then followed by the reflexive, and the incorporated noun root, where a verb essentially absorbs a noun into its construction. The verb root would be the penultimate element in this maximal verb construction, with other grammatical suffixes making up the final element in the construction. In transitive clauses, that is, clauses that take a direct object, these pairs are given their own specific prefix, such as the “I-you” pair carrying the prefix ku-.
So this has been a little introduction to the Haudenosaunee languages, as well as Kanienʼkéha. We will return to introduce more of the other Haudenosaunee languages over time, so watch this space.
Further reading
Bonvillain, N. (1973) A Grammar Of Akwesasne Mohawk, National Museum of Man, National Museums Of Canada.
